[-empyre-] Welcome to the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Dale Hudson]

Welcome to the April 2018 discussion: new media documentary practice, moderated by Dale Hudson (AE/US).

I hope that the discussion opens expectations about documentary to modes that use digital technologies to help us reengage the complexities our world. Some recover repressed or overlooked histories; others speculate on possible futures. Some analyze the everyday mediated images of the world that shape our perceptions of global connections; others locate themselves in particular locations to reveal subtle and often subjective details that might otherwise escape notice.

The last three weeks will focus on artists, scholars, and others participating in the “Invisible Geographies” exhibition for the twentieth edition of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, which reimagines how we think about documentary across vectors that are visible and invisible, material and immaterial, audible and inaudible.

Confirmed guests include: Philip Cartelli (US/FR), Dawn Dawson-House (US), Helen De Michiel (US), Adam Fish (UK), Garrett Lynch and Frédérique Santune (IE/FR), Erin McElroy (US), Liz Miller (US/CA), Max Schleser (AU), Naz Shahrokh (IR/AE), Sarah Shamash (BR/CA), Toby Tatum (UK), Steve WetzeL (USA), and Patricia R. Zimmermann (US).

For the first week, the discussion will focus on Patricia R. Zimmermann and Helen De Michiel’s new book _Open Space New Media Documentary: A Toolkit for Theory and Practice_ (Routledge, 2017), which reimagines how we think about and teach documentary practice.

They highlight community-based practices that are sustainable, scalable, and relatively inexpensive. They also select and analyze documentary projects made between 2000 and 2017 by artists and scholars in Argentina, Canada, China, Ghana, Indonesia, Peru, Syria, Ukraine, United States, and elsewhere, including the in-between spaces of diaspora and exile.

Their book also bridges what is often conceived as a divide between theory and practice by offering a “toolkit” for putting theory into practice, but also one for opening theory to considering a range of practices that have emerged with new technologies and even been ignored or marginalized by past generations.
 
With this message, I invite the –empyre subscriber list to discuss these issues in our soft-skinned space with our distinguished group of weekly guests. 

Best,
Dale

Guest bios:

Patricia R. Zimmermann (US) is professor of screen studies at Ithaca College in the United States. Her books include _The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema_ (2017); _Open Space: Openings, Closings, and Thresholds of Independent Public Media_ (2016); _Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places_ (2015), and many others.
 
Helen De Michiel (US) is a filmmaker, writer, and community designer based in Berkeley in the United States. Her documentary projects include the work-in-progress _Knocking on Doors_, _Lunch Love Community_ (2015), _The Gender Chip Project_ (2004), _Turn Here Sweet Corn_ (1990), the dramatic feature _Tarantella_ (1994), and many other shorts and media installations.


Moderator bio: 

Dale Hudson (AE/US) teaches in the Film and New Media Program at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) in the United Arab Emirates. He is a digital curator for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) and coordinator of Films from the Gulf at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) FilmFest. He is author of _Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods_ (2017) and co-author of _Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places_ (2015). 
 
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