A – The Thin Blue Line and the case Randall Adams
B – Analysis of how Errol Morris uses sylistic devices and re-enactments to explore the accuracy of memory
B.1 – Analysis of the introduction of The Thin Blue Line
B.2 – Analysis of the use of real evidence (newspaper articles, photos, etc)
B.3 – Analysis of the use of music/film score
B.4 – Analysis of arrangement and use of interviews
B.5 – Analysis of re-enactments
C – Memory is not always accurate and rarely equal to the truth
History not a chain of events to be told chronologically
no: cause->effect->cause->effect
society is not neccesarily moving forward but sometimes regressing
History is an accumulation of the shuffle of people: interests push into different directions
-> subjective point of view for the filmmaker
the “angle” of the camera changes what you portray/see
Benjamins Thesis VII
In history books you always get the view of people that were “better off”
WWII: winners tell the story as they are more powerful
-their stories are carried with them: cultural treasures
-historical materialsm accepts that they are stolen
-cultural treasures not only efforts of great minds but also workers
-there is no document of barbarism (there is at least two perspectives)
-passed on through fights, struggles, etc
-historical materialism wants to see the flipside
-see the things that aren’t presented to us obviously
->notion of rubble: what remains after deconstruction
Thesis IX
“angel of history”:
While we see history as a chain of events the angel sees catastrophy (rubble after rubble)
-wind blows angel into the future with back turned to it
Antropologists film in Africa:
after presenting the work to the population they are only interested in the chickens in the background
-villagers see something that wasn’t intended to be seen
-people with different backgrounds percieve things differently
The Pianist:
Pov of character is more narrow
pan-> POV of entity that raises up above everyone else “Angel of History”‘s POV
Spaces: street (death): officers shooting people; inside buildings: survival
Chung Kuo China
narrative reality against the grain of ideology
in village: no one has been trained to not look at camera
at work: no one looks apart from children
-> constructed image
film is saying what government wants it to say -> but government can’t completely control
something that falls out of the official image is rubble
Vertov, D. (1984) ‘Artistic Drama and Kino-eye” in Michaelson, A. (ed) Kino-Eye: The writings of Dziga Vertov, Berleley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
Art and Everyday Life debate:
thermometer of our reality, high significance
the camera can reflect the mood and energy of the masses
no actors and romantic-detective fictions needed
kino-eye helps one to see
The essence of Kino-Eye:
wants to help every individual understand the world around them
using facts to influence workers consciousness: facts
To the Kinoks of the South:
basis of the program is not film production for entertainment or profit but bond between USSR and the rest of the world
peasant has a particularly developed mistrust of everything artificial on screen
Kinopravda & Radiopravda:
workers and peasants have to take the word of some individual who describes the lifes of workers and peasants living elsewhere
Kino-eye persues bond between the workers of the whole world
promote “mixed programms”
fixed radio between entertainment pictures and scientific ones
not only vision but also sound
in the near future: visual and auditory phenomena recorded by radio-movie camera
The same thing from different angles:
film fact: every instant of life shot unstaged, every individual frame shot just as it is in life
The Factory of Facts:
simple adaptation of kino-eye’s externer manner alone by the so called artistic film, suffices to create a big stir in that area of film as well (Potemkin, Strike)
Peter Childs and Patrick R.J. Williams, “Introduction: Points of Departure” in An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory, Herfordshire: Prentice Hall
When is the post colonial?
period after end of colonialism
dismantling of colonial structures in late 1950s/early 1970s
whose colonialsm? mostly British and French colonies
post-colonial is now
Where is the post-colonial?
different empires, different needs, different strategies
Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal: swift, peaceful decolonisation
Algeria, Mosambique, Kenya: vicious and bloody
-> some critics say it is too soon to talk about post-colonism with them
but also decolonising of metropoles like France and Britain: large-scale immigration from former colonies
Who is the post-colonial?
people formerly colonized by the West
but decolonized country does not mean decolonized people
for many groups and individuals post-colonialism is the experience of confronting the desire to recover lost pre-colonial identities
who is post-colonial therefore partly unaswerable
What is the post-colonial?
the term post-colonial downplays multiplicities of location and temporality
the term effects a recentering of global history around the single rubrik of European time
McClintock: post-colonial is the only term which signals any kind of history – however inadequately it may be felt to do so
Davies: post-coloniality can only have meaning if we accept postmodernism as the only current legitimising narrative
Ahmad: post-colonialism is unacceptable because it privileges colonialism as the structuring principle of other people’s histories
Conclusions?
we do not think post-colonialism is a singularised ahistorical abstraction
we do not think that it is an adjunct of some hegemonic project of postmodernism
post-colonialism has inescapable global dimensions but therories are not trying to explain EVERYTHING
Reading Notes on White, H. (1996) ‘The Moderist Event’, in Sobchak, V. (ed) The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television and the Modern Event , Routledge: New York and London
The Modernist Event
-White argues: no notions of character and plot in modernist cinema
-modernism knows how to represent reality realistically
-post modernism: fictionalises historical events
Postcolonialism
Study of cultural interaction between colonizing powerd and the societies they colonised
Problems: who does it refer to? has colonialism ended?
-leads to hybridity
The Mabo Case
-Murrey Islands seeking confirmation of their tradtional land rights
-Australia as “land that belongs to no one”
The History Wars
1992 Paul Keating’s Redfern Speech
-for australian multiculturalism
-away from historical ties with britain
Tracey Moffat
-Night Cries: A rural Tragedy
shot entirely in studio
inspired by Jedda (Chauvel, 1955)
-The Tracker (2002)
We were shooting “Swings and Roundabouts” on the 11.2. and 13.2. with our actors Tijana and Dom.
Ilona was directing, while I was operating the camera and Teresa was responsible for sound recordings.
The post production took part in the week after and the finished film was handed in on the 6.3.
Swings and Roundabouts is the Story of a man, whose past relationship went wrong badly. The memory of this affects him and his relationship with his new girlfriend.
Benjamin, W (1973) ‘Thesis on the Philosophy of history” in Arendt, H. (ed) Illuminations. London : Fontana/Collins
Thesis VII
-historians should look at at a certain point in history without thinking about what came afterwards
-one is likely to only pick facts of that moment that fit with their knowledge
-a historical materialists looks at those with cautious detachment, as they don’t know the origin
-it’s between contemporaries and created stories, tainted by barbarism
-tainted because they were transmitted through barbarism
-it’s “his task to bruch history against the grain”
Linda Williams: “Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History and The Thin Blue Line” in Documenting the Documentary
-Fredric Jameson: cultural logic of post-modernism as new depthlessness
-much faith once placed in the ability of the camera to project truth
-but: remarkable hunger for documentary images of the real
-JFK (1991) as good example of ultimate loss of historical truth
-Stone belives that it is possible to intervene in the process in which truth is constructed
-documentaries very popular, often grim, historically complex subjects
The thin blue line as prime example for postmodern documentary approach:
-most remarked for the film-noirish beauty, re-enactments, etc
-Morris captures a truth, elicits a confession
– but in a film that is temporarity manipulated by the docu auteur
-rather than voyeuristic objectivity he achieves something more useful to the production of truth
-strategic approach to truth
still: no one ever believed in an absolute truth of cinema vérité.
-truth is not guaranteed and cannot be transparently reflected by a mirror with a memory
-new historicizations are fascinated by an inaccessible, ever receding, yet newly past which does have depth
-Errol Morris choice of discrediting some versions but never fixing one as the truth gives The thin blue line its power of truth
-Michael Moore’s Roger & Me: self-promoting placement of himself at centre of film, at times no objective portrayal of historical facts -> criticism from Jacobson
Where should documentaries draw the line in manipulating the historical sequence of their material
-Shoah: Lanzmann replaces memory of witness with another false memory: Lanzmann not to challenge the false testemony but dramatizes its effects -> rather action than memory
Williams conclues that not all postmodern documentries succumb to depthlessness of the simulacrum or that it gives up on truth. -> there can be historical depth to the notion of truth
Film History Memory Blog 