No Borders Leeds film & Sex Worker Open University

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

A short and simple video commissioned by No Borders Leeds aimed to show other asylum seekers the atmosphere and safety of their demonstrations outside the UK Border Agency. It is also a brief introduction to the issues surrounding the upcoming immigration bill

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

The Brown Envelope

Performed and written by Women Asylum Seekers Together

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

swou fundraiser (in process) initial filming session

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

This is just a couple of clips totally unedited, have not added the separate sound recording yet, so the sound will be better. There are two short clips one after the other, first one is without any effect, second has some very basic color grading to get an impression of how it can look. The main problem with this footage was that the lighting was bad because we did not have adequate lighting due to lack of access to college resources. I tried my best with the lighting provided, but I had to widen the aperture to compensate for the darkness and shadows, which meant that the art of the face near the window is over exposed. There were no curtains. If I had had a bright high wattage continuos light it would have balanced it out and I could have brought the apeture down. I support I could have filmed them facing the window.. but this would have made them very flat, and plus that side of the room looks very unappealing. I think I may have to do this footage again.

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

Just a clip of some of the footage of SWOU Indie Go Go cmapign video, this shows and example of before and after Color Grading.

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

Reach Out / No Borders excerpt from discussion at Reach Out an LGBT Asylum support conference held at Wharf Chambers. Leeds

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

Roughcut of No Borders Leeds Film without Color grading and graphic design

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

Telephone interview with Maria, at Yarlswood detention centre. I researched and wrote all the questions down and was present for the intervew, but I thought maybe a female interviewer might be more friendly and less intimidating, especially because they have a lot of male authority figures around them all the time. Below is the interview script.. as you can see I have edited it so it is just clare interviewing and not me.. I thought this would work better. 

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

  no borders preview, not yet published publicly, this upload is a bit over compressed and fuzzy, we will have to think of a why to upload without this happening. This is yet to be approved.  first fine edit

[raceit]

Even though we think of colonialism as a remote past, the practice of domination over another group of people continues to exist through different forms. When we were discussing about colonialism a few weeks ago, I was reminded of this article I read in an anthropology class. In Lutz and Collin’s…

[cinestruction-blog]

Since visual images invoke the spectator’s experience of unmediated access to the inner world of the subject, the evocative power of photographic images may readily reproduce forms of voyeurism. This under-theorizing becomes particularly problematic in projects that document the lives of migratory and marginalized women. Drawing on several decades of prior field research and documentary film projects, Professor Haaken presents a study carried out with women refugee and asylum-seekers in the UK. In discussing photographic images from the study, Haaken provides a framework for working through a series of ethical, political, and methodological dilemmas. She draws on psychoanalytic feminist theory, critical psychology, and participatory action research methods to argue for the importance of an approach to the visual that includes the dynamics of spectatorship as well as the dynamics of the research setting itself as an affectively rich and conflicted site of knowledge production.

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

The Film is at the last 10 minutes of so. 

The reason I watched this is because Haaken  talked about psychoanalysis techniques when speaking about these subjects. which I thought might relate to my studies on the gaze, identification, pleasure and objectification. She does not go in this very much in this discussion.  In the film I did not like the english persons voice over explaining everything.. especially when the use of still images given to the women were intended to show the womens agency.. I felt the voice over was taking this symbolic agency away from them.. when I was watching I was wondering what is the purpose of this? who is the intended audience and what effect does it have? I felt as though the documentary posed some of the same problems as the ‘victim narrative’ commonly used in tv documentary. 

[shedresseskindaprochoice]

"Māori women made picturesque, accessible and malleable subjects for the colonial photographer. With little idea of the motives behind the camera lens, these women submitted themselves to the Pākehā patriarchal gaze, to be costumed, posed, photographed, captioned, distributed and possessed. As such they unknowingly presented to and reinforced in the Western mind a canon of stereotypes about themselves: sexually inviting and/or immoral; inherently violent; ignorant; either in a process of civilisation or unwilling to change and be successfully assimilated; a conquered and dying race."

Jacqui Sutton Beets, “Images of Māori Women in New Zealand Postcards after 1900”, Bitter Sweet: Indigenous Women in the Pacific, ed. Alison Jones, Phyllis Herda and Tamasailau M. Suaalii (2000) pg 30. (via shedresseskindaprochoice)

[theblackcondition-blog]

"The act of looking involves the gaze, but it is not restricted to or by it. The gaze, as Mercer allows, is spectatorial. It presumes there is a visually noticeable object that is dialectically connected to a codified and signified subject. Scripting [the process by which Black bodies were…

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

[vinnymakingfilms-blog]

[vinnydocumentaryprojects-blog]

"With a precisely defined goal, expectations are transparent for both the creator and potential backers. Backers can judge how realistic the project’s goals are, as well as the project creator’s ability to complete them. And for creators, the practice of defining a project’s goal establishes the scope of the endeavor, often an important step in the creative process."