Documentary

""Working digitally allows the ‘conventional’ documentary narrative form to shift from temporal to spatial, from horizontal to vertical, from sequential to concurrent. Digitality also provides interactivity. With interactivity comes a potentially spontaneous, engaged and active audience able to choose how they receive the content. Yet, documentaries need to convey critical pieces of their narrative for their story to be comprehensible to their audience. The critical question for documentary makers, then, is how to incorporate these new digital technologies, with their potential for innovative narrative structures, and still make a factual story understandable to their audience.

Identifying the Internet as the primary site that has opened up space for digital storytelling Lundby (2008, 3) says"
"(The Internet) offered new options to share the ‘classical’ small-scale stories created in story circles at various corners of the globe. The World Wide Web also gave rise to new forms, Blogging, in text only or with video, as well as the social networking sites on the web offer new opportunities to share short personal stories".

Examples of these online story spaces will be explored in this paper, along with early televisional forms, computer specific forms, gallery specific forms and performative forms. This selection of work illustrates the experimentation with digital form that Manovich in The Language of New Media (2001) terms ‘database narrative’ and Hayles (2005, 1-35) calls ‘possibility space’. Both terms help to define the territory in which the form of documentary is shape-shifting as a result of the revolution in digital technology.""

"Errol Morris’ film "Standard Operating Procedure" (2008) employs soldiers’ pictures, videos, interviews, letters and journals to produce a narration of the tortures perpetrated at the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. The  documentary reconstruction of the incident is coupled
with the analytical exercise on the photography posings, on the mise-en-scène of the torture. Through editing  and reframing techniques it’s possible “to see beyond the frame”, beyond the contingency of the snapshot,  and to deal with the plastic and fi gurative construction
of photographs, as well with the devices which inscribe and instruct the gaze of the observer.  It’s the fecund intertwining between the documentation of the horror and the analysis of its representations
to mobilize the photographic archive of the tortures perpetrated at Abu Ghraib and to regenerate its testimonial effectiveness.
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Con l’avvento delle tecnologie digitali, la fotografia sembra aver perso la sua credibilità in quanto traccia del reale, subendo così una crisi di legittimazione. Le possibilità di manipolazione offerte dal digitale minano, secondo le recenti teorie del visivo, le basi tecnologiche della fiducia referenziale associata alla fotografia. Eppure, la proprietà indessicale della fotografia, intesa come premessa per un ritorno al “reale”, sembra essere ancora una dimensione essenziale, una caratteristica dirimente, quando si tenta di fare i conti con le immagini del dolore e della sofferenza che saturano la cultura visiva contemporanea.
Il film di Errol Morris Standard Operating Procedure (2008) ricostruisce, attraverso le fotografie scattate dal personale militare, le torture perpetuate dai soldati americani e britannici nei confronti dei prigionieri reclusi nel carcere iracheno di Abu Ghraib. Da questo punto vista, sia il film che le fotografie assumo una valenza documentaria: lo scopo è quello di ricostruire una narrazione veritiera dei crimini commessi, a partire dalla cornice spazio-temporale in cui le foto sono state scattate. Il luogo e l'ora dello scatto fotografico, l'apparecchio utilizzato, i soggetti e i comportamenti inquadrati, diventano delle prove indiziarie per mezzo delle quali è possibile ricostruire gli eventi e sanzionarli. Sulla base della prova fotografia è possibile costruire una narrazione veritiera, giuridicamente e socialmente accettata. Oppure, le fotografie vengono utilizzate dagli stessi militari come prova della loro innocenza: una contro-narrazione, costruita attraverso i diari, le immagini e le interviste, con cui operare una denuncia “dall'interno” dei crimini e delle nefandezze commesse.
A questo paradigma indiziario, che utilizza le immagini fotografiche come prova documentaria, il film di Morris affianca una seconda strategia. In primo luogo, la forsennata attività fotografica non ha soltanto prodotto le prove della colpevolezza o i tentativi della contro-narrazione, ma può essere considerata come un meccanismo di soggettivazione e assoggettamento - sia delle vittime che dei carnefici – proprio del campo di detenzione. In secondo luogo, attraverso le tecniche di montaggio e di re-incorniciatura delle fotografie è possibile “vedere oltre il fotogramma”, al di là delle contingenze dello scatto, e farsi carico dei dispositivi che inscrivono e istruiscono lo sguardo dell'osservatore.
L'efficacia testimoniale delle fotografie scattate all'interno del carcere di Abu Ghraib non passa solo attraverso i modi dell'attestazione (effetti di realtà e di presenza), ma può essere rintracciata anche nelle tecniche di montaggio che il film di Morris adotta per analizzare le componenti riflessive e meta-operative connesse alle strategie di archiviazione e gestione sociale delle immagini della tortura e dei loro effetti patemici."""

"Resumen
Considerado uno de los ejemplos más representativos del ensayo fílmico, el cine de Chris Marker se ha caracterizado hasta la reciente fecha de su muerte por una insistente interrogación sobre el poder y la función de la Imagen. En este sentido, el filme Sans soleil (1982) supone una referencia ineludible al establecer un punto de acceso a una nueva etapa de su dilatada carrera donde  el interés por las imágenes del presente se iría sustituyendo por una obsesión por las imágenes del pasado, ya sean aquellas que han servido para escribir la Historia, ya sean aquellas de carácter más íntimo que se arremolinan caóticamente en las memorias individuales. Unas y otras imágenes componen Sans soleil, imágenes acumuladas por un coleccionista consciente de la especial melancolía que las impregna, y que pasan a constituirse en escritura fílmica. Es precisamente esta escritura el objeto de estudio del presente artículo, más concretamente, la manera en la que ésta desarrolla un característico discurso sobre el tiempo, la imagen y la memoria que se demostrará decisivo en la posterior filmografía markeriana.

Abstract:
Chris Marker’s films, which are considered to be some of the most representative examples of film-essay, have been marked until his recent death by a persistent questioning over the power and the purpose of Image. His film Sunless (1982) is at that respect an unavoidable reference when establishing a first step into a new phase within his long career. A phase where he slowly dropped interest for images of the present and developed instead an obsession for images from the past. The obsession comprised those images used to write History, as well as the more intimate ones that belong to the chaotic flow of individual memories. Sunless is made out of both kinds of images. Images accumulated by a collector who is aware of the special melancholy they are steeped in. Images that become film writing themselves. This article explores this writing, and more specifically, its characteristic discourse about time, image and memory, which will prove to be decisive along the following markerian filmography.
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"Reality Television" has little to do with reality and everything to do with television form and content. "Reality TV" takes the reality television phenomenon to be a significant movement within documentary and factual programming. This book analyses new and hybrid genres including observational documentaries, talk shows, game shows, docu-soaps, dramatic reconstructions, law and order programming and twenty-four/seven formats such as "Big Brother" and "Survivor," These programs, both popular with audiences and heavily debated in the media; are at the center of heated debates. These discussions focus on tabloidization, media ethics, voyeurism and the representation of the real. Through detailed case studies, this book breaks new ground by linking two major themes together: the production of realism and its relationship to revelation. It addresses 'truth' telling, confession and the production of knowledge about the self and its place in the world within forms that produce new configurations of social and media space.

"Vision
A well trained multi-skilled, self-employed, and self-sustained rural young men and women who move to cities for higher education. 

Mission
Train and equip young undergraduate and graduate men and women from rural communities with multiple business and career development skills while they are pursuing advanced studies in urban centers.

Goal
To train young undergraduate and graduate women and men in practical community organizing for social transformation, business skills, time management and enterprise development for sustainable independent livelihoods during and after their studies.
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"This is a pilot project for a longer work. It is our take on the City Symphony genre developed in the 1920's by the work of Ruttman, Vertov, Ivens and Vigo.
The piece is semi-improvisatory in that it is edited live using MAX MSP audio software, whereby diegetic sounds are triggered and effected in real time. The visual track is sequenced by a Korg Kaptivator, whereby image banks are triggered and effected in real time. We decided on a basic structure of how we would like the audio and visual track to develop beforehand and then worked together as sound composer (Cox) and video composer (Marley).
This film contributes to our greater body of work that analyses and devlops the use of non-conventional modes of representation within documentary film making, and also contributes towards my Phd research.
We will be producing a longer (approx 25-30 minute) film about Nice, created using traditional editing software (Final Cut Pro and Pro Tools), rather than via "live" performance. The due date is end of April 2010
To see work that inspired this film look to A Man With A Movie Camera (Vertov); A Propos De Nice (Vigo); Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City (Ruttman) and Regen (Ivens).
A journal article, written by myself will accompany this work in order to provide a theoretical context to our practice. Details to follow."