SCREEN MEDIA PRACTICE WORKS (SELECTED)
Demystifying the North.
An Inquiry-driven Micro-documentary About Migration & Affective Liminality.
16’ 48” | Digital with animation | 2021
Research Questions:
Demystifying the North aims to explore these questions:
● What feelings and emotions does an immigrant from the Global South experience in their post-asylum life in the Global North?
● What are the mental, social, and cultural challenges a Global South immigrant faces in assimilating into a Global North society?
● How does one’s immigration to the Global North from the Global South complicate the concept of happiness?
Context:
Demystifying the North taps into the affective turn in the humanities and social sciences. The affective dimension of immigration, and particularly, the affective experiences of immigrants from the Global South living in the Global North, have been the focus of recent works in Citizenship Studies (Waerniers and Hustinx, 2020; de Wilde and Duyvendak, 2016; Foner and Simon, 2015; Stewart and Mulvey, 2014; Derluyn and Broekaert, 2008). These publications mark an epistemological shift from examining immigration from a purely legal lens to a psychological or, more precisely, an affective lens. Meanwhile, in Film Studies, affect has been an object of inquiry since the late 1990s within a subfield known as the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (Plantinga, 2009a). This research enterprise focuses primarily on the spectator’s affect. Due to the predominant attention to narrative fiction film within this subfield, the documentary film affect was a minor concern except for Carl Plantinga’s works (1997, 2005, 2009a). His theoretical output, particularly on characterization and character engagement in documentary films, helps shed light on how documentary filmmakers characterize their subjects and how their strategies affect audience engagement with them (Plantinga, 2018, 2009b). More recently, though, an edited volume by Brylla and Kramer (2018) has advanced this inquiry into documentary film cognition and affect.
Bibliography
Brylla, C. and Kramer, M. (eds) (2018) Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Derluyn, I. and Broekaert, E. (2008) ‘Unaccompanied Refugee Children and Adolescents: The Glaring Contrast Between a Legal and a Psychological Perspective’. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. 31(4), pp. 319–330. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2008.06.006
Plantinga, C. (2005) ‘What a Documentary Is, After All’. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 63(2), pp. 105–117. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00188.x
Plantinga, C. (2009a) ‘Emotion and Affect’. In: P. Livingstone and C. Plantinga, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 86–96.
Plantinga, C. (2009b) Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Plantinga, C. (2018) ‘Characterization and Character Engagement in the Documentary’. In: C. Brylla and M. Kramer, eds. Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 115–134.
Plantinga, C.R. (1997) Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge, U.K.; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.
Stewart, E. and Mulvey, G. (2014) ‘Seeking Safety Beyond Refuge: The Impact of Immigration and Citizenship Policy Upon Refugees in the UK’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 40(7), pp. 1023–1039. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.836960
Waerniers, R. and Hustinx, L. (2020) ‘The “affective liminality” of young immigrants in Belgium: from ruly to unruly feelings on the path towards formal citizenship’. Citizenship Studies. 24(1), pp. 57–75. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2019.1700913
de Wilde, M. and Duyvendak, J.W. (2016) ‘Engineering Community Spirit: The Pre-Figurative Politics of Affective Citizenship in Dutch Local Governance’. Citizenship Studies. 20(8), pp. 973–993. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1229194
A Conversation with David Bordwell:
Poetics of Cinema, Film Stylistics, and Research Valorization
53’ 24” | Digital | 2013
I consider this more than a conversation, even though the title says so. It is a masterclass in research methodology, a discussion about the state of the academia and research valorization, and a contemplation on his scholarly career. All in all, it is a tribute to a person and his works that help me understand certain aspects of cinema better.
H U M B L I F I E D
08’00” | Digital | 2013
HUMBLIFIED Is about Cleetus Taylor, an arm wrestler from Chuttanooga, Waynesville, North Carolina. He comes to the Netherlands for the International Arm Wrestling World Championship. Throughout the process, he has learned to embrace and accept failure rather than being obsessed with winning. In short, he becomes HUMBLIFIED from the experience! The short film was made for the 48 hour film project Leeuwarden, The Netherlands 2013.
The Scholar-Practitioner Hybrid Series
BLOCK, LIGHT, RESEARCH, SHOOT// Episode 1//
In this series, I am interviewing people who combine or attempt to bridge theory and practice in film. In other words, not only do they engage in academic research, but they also make films---non-fiction documentary, narrative fiction, or both---either as a part of their scholarly activities or as an outlet for their creative expression.
In this first installment, filmmaker and PhD student Dag Yngvesson from the University of Minnesota shares his backstory as a film crew in L.A. and a staff at a camera rental company that led him to make his first documentary feature about the porn industry: Rated X, A Journey Through Porn (1999). He has also worked as a cinematographer on a documentary chronicling the life of the legendary sk8boarder from the 1980s, Mark "Gator" Rogowski in Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator (Helen Stickler, 2002). Having done a couple of ethnographic films in Indonesia, he decided to go to grad school in Minneapolis that got him the current position as a PhD working on the political history of Indonesian cinema.
11’ 49” | Digital | 2015