Memory and Screen and Film Studies Research Groups, Department of
Communication and Media
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/research/groups/screen-film/
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/research/groups/culture-space-memory/
School of the Arts Library
Monday 30 September 2019 5-7pm
Dr Alyssa Grossman
As a visual anthropologist, I have been working with film in my research
on everyday sites and practices of remembrance work in post-communist
Bucharest, Romania. Engaging with the filmmaking process has also made
me increasingly curious about the relationship between memory and the
visual/multi-sensory medium of film itself. How can memory be invoked
through the moving photographic image, when memory’s very existence
implies an absence of the object of recollection? What experimental or
alternative filmmaking techniques could be mobilised to capture
internal, affective aspects of memory that cannot be directly manifested
through traditional visual documentary means? In this presentation I
will screen my film, /In the Light of Memory/, which aims to convey the
frameworks and contents of individual and cultural memories in the
contemporary Romanian post-communist context. I will also discuss my
somewhat unorthodox usage of the ‘traveling shot’ in the film, as an
attempt to communicate something of memory’s own textures and tones,
experiences that are more visceral, fragmented, and multi-layered than
the narratives often conveyed by conventional (textual and visual)
ethnographies.
Film synopsis
In the Light of Memory (39 min.) explores everyday sites and practices
of memory in Bucharest, twenty years after the fall of Romanian
communism. Shot in Cișmigiu Gardens, one of the oldest public parks in
Bucharest, the film interweaves individuals’ recollections of the past
with present-day scenes from the park, creating a montage of images and
voices, stillness and motion, landscapes and people.
All welcome.
—
Les Roberts (Dr)
Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies
Department of Communication and Media
School of the Arts
19 Abercromby Square
University of Liverpool
Liverpool. L69 7ZG. UK
tel: +44 151 794 3102
New book: /Spatial Anthropology: Excursions in Liminal Space/
<https://www.rowmaninternational.com/book/spatial_anthropology/3-156-debf2849-7e0a-435b-85fd-5e67a047631a>//
www.liminoids.com/ <http://www.liminoids.com/>
www.liv.ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/les-roberts/
<http://www.liv.ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/les-roberts/>