Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media
Deniz Bayrakdar
Robert Burgoyne
Dudley Andrew
Dora Apel
Selmin Kara
Nevena Dakovic
Iva Lekovic
Nagehan Uskan
Deniz Gokturk
Erik Marshall
9789463724166
304 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
Migration in the 21st century is one of the pre-eminent issues of our present historical moment, a phenomenon that has acquired new urgency with accelerating climate change, civil wars, and growing economic scarcities. Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media consists of eleven essays that explore how artists have imaginatively engaged with this monumental human drama, examining a range of alternative modes of representation that provide striking new takes on the experiences of these precarious populations. Covering prominent art works by Ai Weiwei and Richard Mosse, and extending the spectrum of representation to refugee film workshops on the island of Lésbos as well as virtual reality installations of Alejandro G. Iñárritu and works by Balkan and Turkish directors, such as Melisa Önel, the chapters included here focus on the power of aesthetic engagement to illuminate the stories of refugees and migrants in ways that overturn journalistic clichés.
Author Bio
Deniz Bayrakdar is a Professor of Film Studies at Kadir Has University. She is the Chair of the Communication Committee at Turkish National Commission for UNESCO.
Robert Burgoyne is a writer and lecturer whose work centers on the representation of history in film. He was formerly Chair in Film Studies at The University of St Andrews, and Professor of English at Wayne State University.
Dudley Andrew, at Yale University, is biographer and translator of André Bazin, whose ideas he extends in ''What Cinema Is!'' and ''Opening Bazin''. After several books on French cinema, he is preparing ''Encountering World Cinema''. Andrew was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Dora Apel’s work is inspired by art and politics. She has authored six books on subjects including imagery of the Holocaust, contemporary war, lynching and racial violence, Detroit ruins, and, most recently, Calling Memory into Place, on the dynamic nature of memory, memorials, and inherited trauma.
Selmin Kara is an associate professor of Film and New Media Studies at OCAD University in Toronto. Her primary research interests are digital aesthetics and ecological sensibilities in cinema as well as the use of sound and new technologies in contemporary documentary.
Nevena Dakovic, PhD is professor of Film Theory/Film Studies (FDA, Belgrade) and Director of the Institute for Theater, Film, radio and Television (FDA). She is the author (Film Studies: Essays in Film Texts of Memory, 2014; Balkan kao filmski žanr: slika, tekst, nacija, 2008…..) and editor of many books (Film and Screen Media Studies: Serbia 3.0, 2019; Me_x0002_dia Archaeology, 2016; Representation of the Holocaust in the Balkans in Arts and Media, 2015) etc. Nevena Dakovic publishes widely in the national and international framework (UK, Turkey, Slovakia, Italy, Austria, France, USA), participates at the conferences and is committee member of international project groups (COST and TEMPUS projects). She is visiting professor at European and American Universities and is member of Academia Europaea. As of January 2021 she is to be associate editor of ER (European review, Core Cambridge Journal). Main research themes: cinema, media, nation, representation, the Balkans, Holocaust, cultural memory.
Iva Lekovic is a PhD student in the Department of Theory and History at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She holds a BA degree in Art History and an MA in Cultural Policy and Management. She has participated at several international conferences and has published articles as well as exhibition and film reviews.
Nagehan Uskan lives in Lésbos Island, Greece. After studying cinema at Bologna and Lyon II Universities, she finished her PhD at the Sociology Department of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, on the topic of Kurdish documentary cinema in Turkey. She conducted a postdoctoral research on the topic of the visual self-representation of migration at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She is the co-founder and the artistic director of Istanbul Silent Cinema Days and also works as a film programmer for different institutions. She has been part of different grassroots visual media collectives with migrants in Lésbos Island.
Deniz Göktürk is a professor of German Studies, Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on theories and practices of migration and media transformation in a global horizon. She is co-editor of The German Cinema Book (2002, 2020); Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration (2007); and Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? (2010).
Erik Marshall teaches Screen Studies at the University of Michigan Dearborn. In addition to film studies, his interests include video games, virtual reality, and data studies.
Eileen Rositzka (1988-2021) holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of St Andrews. Her dissertation has been published under the title Cinematic Corpographies: Re-Mapping the War Film Through the Body (2018). She was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin
