Papers by Selmin Kara
Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media, 2022
Joshua Bonnetta and J. P. Sniadecki’s El Mar La Mar (2017), an experimental documentary on the mi... more Joshua Bonnetta and J. P. Sniadecki’s El Mar La Mar (2017), an experimental documentary on the migrant trail across the Mexico–US border, features a striking audiovisual assemblage that gives equal weight to sights and sounds, allowing the viewer to contemplate the history of not only the cinema of migration but also the various traditions that engage with field recordings. This chapter investigates the ways in which the film challenges our expectations of what a migrant geography feels like, with special attention to the film’s soundtrack, from its contact mic-enabled drone sounds to disembodied audio testimonials, and the broader acoustic ecology that the film construes (influenced by musique concrète and post-Pierre Schaeffer anecdotal sound, in the work of Luc Ferrari).
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities Volume 7, Issues 2-3, pp. 60-80, 2020
Screen Volume 61, Issue 2, Pages 315–321, 2020
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The Philosophy of Documentary Film (ed. David LaRocca)
in the anthology: "The Philosophy of Documentary Film," ed. David LaRocca. Lanham, MA: Lexington ... more in the anthology: "The Philosophy of Documentary Film," ed. David LaRocca. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books: 343-361. This is the version prior to the proofreading. For the clean version, please consult the book.
Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film, 2016
s sci-fi thriller Gravity (2013) introduced to the big screen a quintessentially 21st-century vil... more s sci-fi thriller Gravity (2013) introduced to the big screen a quintessentially 21st-century villain: space debris. The spectacle of high-velocity 3D detritus raging past
Music and Sound in Documentary Film
Another thing we know is that nature makes no blunders so untoward as to allow things, including ... more Another thing we know is that nature makes no blunders so untoward as to allow things, including human things, to swerve into supernaturalism. Were it to make such a blunder, we would do everything in our power to bury this knowledge. But we need not resort to such measures, being as natural as we are. No one can prove that our life in this world is a supernatural horror, nor cause us to suspect that it might be.
The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media
Over the last two decades, documentary has significantly benefited from the offerings of digital ... more Over the last two decades, documentary has significantly benefited from the offerings of digital technologies. The emergence of new amateur and professional technological devices, interfaces, and platforms made documentary filmmaking more accessible and center stage amongst mainstream media practices by granting it further mobility, ubiquity, and connectivity. They also paved the way for enabling user participation, database and feedback integration, expanded means of archiving and transmission, and broader forms of inter-medial as well as re-mixable storytelling. However, despite all the interest in fulfilling digital documentary's new promises, filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Aleksandr Sokurov, who are known for their frequent crossovers between fiction and nonfiction, seem to have channeled the new documentary's energy elsewhere. Coupling the aesthetic strategies of long-take cinema with abstract, eremetic meditations on nature, the works of these directors shift the focus from increased connectivity in documentary narratives to re-imagined connections among humans, technology, and nature in the digital era.
Studies in Documentary Film, 2009
, featuring a threepart narrative about the everyday life of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq un... more , featuring a threepart narrative about the everyday life of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq under occupation, emphasizes the affective encounter of different worlds, seen as inassimilable yet not completely autonomous, through its fragmented structure and evocative use of sound. The contrast among the urban noise of Baghdad in the segment about Sunnis, the overpowering sectarian sounds of the Shiites, and the suspenseful quiet of the Kurds opens up a dissonant space in which each fragment becomes a testimony to the cultural, ethnic, and religious disquiet of the nation and, the heterogeneity of its sonic landscape. The fragments construe Iraq as an assemblage of discontinuous sounds and music, implying that it is impossible to capture the nation in its entirety and that the idea of the social as totality, which Bruno and Manuel find problematic, is audiovisually untenable. Reassembling the nation 261
Documentary filmmakers behaving in an unruly manner are nothing new. Since the earliest examples ... more Documentary filmmakers behaving in an unruly manner are nothing new. Since the earliest examples of nonfiction cinema, filmmakers have been accused of violating or misrepresenting their subjects, and the credibility of their films has often been called into question. In 1922, Robert J. Flaherty's iconic silent film Nanook of the North purported to capture the everyday life of an Inuk man, Nanook, and his family; however, as it has been well documented, Nanook's real name was Allakariallak and the woman, portrayed as his wife, was not his actual wife. Furthermore, Nanook was encouraged to use a harpoon, a by-then-abandoned weapon, instead of rifles for a dramatic scene, which was staged by Flaherty to create an 'authentic' record of the vanishing tradition of walrus hunting and which put Allakariallak's life at risk. Another questionable scene depicted Nanook acting as if he was unfamiliar with modern technology such as gramophones, following the instructions of the filmmaker. While these were done in the name of salvage ethnography and its quest for authenticity, they also led to the misrepresentation of the documentary subjects and the Inuit culture of the day.
This article takes up the implications of the blurring of art and politics in two documentary con... more This article takes up the implications of the blurring of art and politics in two documentary contexts: Ai Weiwei’s art activism in China, as documented in Alison Klayman’s award-winning film Never Sorry, and the Gezi protests in Turkey, documented and disseminated virally through the Internet. Drawing parallels between the self-proclaimed hooliganism of Ai Weiwei and the Turkish protesters, who co-opted the hooligan label that the government used to incriminate them and turned it into a tool for resistance, the article argues that hooliganism is just another incarnation of unruly documentary artivism, which has become prevalent in an era of digitally mediated, global social justice
movements. As an interpretive framework for understanding how documentary hooliganism operates, the article proposes Tony D. Sampson’s theory of virality and its application of Dawkins’s neo-Darwinian memetic thought contagion model to the way ideas and political gestures spread in the twenty-first century. Hooliganism, like viruses or memetic thoughts, has a self-spreading tendency; its anarchic affect is contagious and creates volatile yet powerful social encounters. Therefore, the article claims that the foregrounding of hooliganism, which is itself
a phenomenon that describes ‘affective contagious encounters’ among anonymous crowds, in the artivist practices of Ai Weiwei and Turkish protesters point to the potential of unruly forms of documentation to influence and inspire self-organized mobilization.
Orijinali, ‘Beasts of the Digital Wild: Primordigital Cinema and the Question of Origins’ ismiyle... more Orijinali, ‘Beasts of the Digital Wild: Primordigital Cinema and the Question of Origins’ ismiyle, Sequence 1.4'te (2014) yayımlanan bu yazı, İlker Mutlu çevirisiyle Sekans Dergisinin Mart 2016 sayısında yer alıyor.
Teaching Documents by Selmin Kara
Syllabus for the 4th year undergraduate course "Future Cinema" at OCAD University
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Papers by Selmin Kara
movements. As an interpretive framework for understanding how documentary hooliganism operates, the article proposes Tony D. Sampson’s theory of virality and its application of Dawkins’s neo-Darwinian memetic thought contagion model to the way ideas and political gestures spread in the twenty-first century. Hooliganism, like viruses or memetic thoughts, has a self-spreading tendency; its anarchic affect is contagious and creates volatile yet powerful social encounters. Therefore, the article claims that the foregrounding of hooliganism, which is itself
a phenomenon that describes ‘affective contagious encounters’ among anonymous crowds, in the artivist practices of Ai Weiwei and Turkish protesters point to the potential of unruly forms of documentation to influence and inspire self-organized mobilization.
Teaching Documents by Selmin Kara
movements. As an interpretive framework for understanding how documentary hooliganism operates, the article proposes Tony D. Sampson’s theory of virality and its application of Dawkins’s neo-Darwinian memetic thought contagion model to the way ideas and political gestures spread in the twenty-first century. Hooliganism, like viruses or memetic thoughts, has a self-spreading tendency; its anarchic affect is contagious and creates volatile yet powerful social encounters. Therefore, the article claims that the foregrounding of hooliganism, which is itself
a phenomenon that describes ‘affective contagious encounters’ among anonymous crowds, in the artivist practices of Ai Weiwei and Turkish protesters point to the potential of unruly forms of documentation to influence and inspire self-organized mobilization.