Distinguished colleagues, dear participants, and guests
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- KEYNOTE
- Lunch
- Complementary Dinner at a downtown German Quarter restaurant. Transportation provided from the University and back to the hotel. Thursday May 19 .
- SESSION 2
- SESSION 4 : Identity
- SCREENING
- Chair
- Contact
- Mauthausen´s Open and Hidden Visualizations in Photography and Film
- British and American NGOs in Belsen Concentration Camp, 1945
- Anat Tzom-Ayalon, Film Editor The Ethics of Close-Up Filming. A case-study: Alan Berliner’s First Cousin Once Removed (2012) and Netalie Braun’s
- Dr. Orna Raviv, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
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Distinguished colleagues, dear participants, and guests, On behalf of the Faculty of Humanities and the MA Program for Culture and Film Studies at the University of Haifa, we are honored to host our first annual conference on documentary ethics. We believe that the study and teaching of documentary ethics are vital to the future of cinema and to the role it plays in securing our civic, democratic culture. Accordingly, we aim to promote greater awareness of the ethical state of documentary filmmaking. Through scholarly debates, screenings, theoretical research, symposia, and popular education in the field of documentary ethics, we are committed to a profound engagement in a critical reflection on the ethical and moral problems facing documentary thinkers and practitioners. We encourage dialogue among theoreticians, documentarians, and diverse audiences and consider that while it is indisputable that any documentary culture faces its own particular moral quandaries, it is imperative to study documentary’s ethical qualities qua universal substance. Unsurprisingly, we inaugurate this meta-ethical revision with a critical focus on the Israeli documentary scene. We locate it in a temporal context and ask about documentaries past, present, and future in terms of their ethical dimensions. In the forthcoming conferences, we will engage in a comparative study of the documentary ethical contentions of other documentary communities. Hence, we understand the ethical condition and dimension of documentary to be a universal constant—a locus of contention shared by all living in the 21st century, the most visually documented era ever. Accordingly, we invite international collaboration of any sort. In the spirit of the great ethical thinkers from Aristotle to Levinas, we trust in cultivating the documentary ethical discourse. In that vein, only multidisciplinary and international collaboration can ensure that the universal voice of documentary will continue to toil vigorously in the public sphere and resonate for the next generations of filmmakers with all its multifaceted potential. In this same distinctive manner, we comprehend ethics to be a creative rather than a restrictive force. We thank you for making the trip here to Haifa. Moreover, we thank you for contributing your knowledge, wisdom, experience and good faith to our communal study. Enjoy!
Conference Founder and Organizer Research Fellow, MA Program For Culture and Film University of Haifa, Israel
and Film Studies University of Haifa, Israel
PROGRAMME Wednesday May 18, 2016. Aviva and Sammy Ofer Observatory, 30th Floor, Eshkol Tower. 10:00 – 10:30 Registration and Coffee 10:30 – 11:00 Greetings: Dr. Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan, Head, MA Program
Dr. Harry Sieratzki, London 11:00 - 12:00: Chair: Dr. Dan Geva, Haifa University. KEYNOTE: Prof. Brian Winston, Lincoln University, UK: “Analog Shibboleths and Digital Affordances 12:00 – 12:15 Coffee 12:15 – 13:45: SESSION 1: Ethics in/of/as History Chair: Dr. Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan. Presentations by; Frank Stern, John Michalczyk and Johannes-Dieter Steinert. 13:45 – 15:15: Lunch 15:15 – 16:45: SESSION 2: Justice & Alterity: Levinasian thoughts in Documentary Ethics Chair: Danny Muggia: Presentations by; Ohad Ufaz, Anat Tzom-Ayalon and Orna Raviv. 16:45 – 17:00 Coffee 17:00 – 18:30 SESSION 3: Ethics of Documentary Activism and New Perspectives on Activation Chair: Prof. Yonny Asher: Presentations by; Gilad Pavda, Yaara Uzeri and Ayelet Bechar 18:45: Complementary Dinner at a downtown German Quarter restaurant. Transportation provided from the University and back to the hotel.
09:00 – 10:30: SESSION 1: Ethics of the Real. The reality of Ethics Chair: Avishai Kfir. Presentations by; Amir Har-Gil, Macabit Abramson and Shachar Brenner. 10:30 – 10:45: Coffee 10:45 – 11:45: SESSION 2: Work in Progress’ Ethics: A conversation with David Fisher Chair: Dr. Dan Geva: Presentations by; David Fisher and Ron Omer 11:45 – 12:00 Coffee 12:00 – 13:30 SESSION 3: Ethics as (a) Medium (in Crisis) Chair: Prof. Gur Elroy: Presentations by; Lisa Gotto, Aner Preminger and Eric Zakim 13:30 – 15:00: lunch 15:00 – 16:30 SESSION 4: Identity: Ethics of Exclusion, Inclusion, nationalism and participation Chair: Dr. Amir Har-Gil: Presentations by; Tamar El-Or, Helena Oikarinen-Jabai and Rebecca Ora 16:30 – 16:45 Coffee 16:45 – 18:15 SESSION 5: Afterthoughts on Documentary Ethics: Case in Point: The Israeli Documentarian Chair: Prof. Avner Feingelerent: Presentations by; Yulie Cohen, Yariv Mozer and Sylvain Biegeleisen 18:30 SCREENING: The Look Of Silence/ Joshua Oppneheimer 20:00 Complimentary dinner served at the Druze Restaurant Al-Ch’eir near the conference venue ABSTRACTS Wednesday, May 18. 11:00 - 12:00
Given that documentary in some sense depends on photography’s claim on the real, digital’s undercutting of the image’s referential integrity is of profound potential significance. In Analog Shibboleths and Digital Affordances, documentary ethics in 20th century will be examined. The documentary filmmaker has faced (and still faces) two sets of ethical concerns: a duty to the audience and a duty to those filmed. The two are rather different but, nevertheless, difficult to disentangle -- if you will, a yin and yang. The yang is the filmmaker/spectator relationship. For the audience, ethical documentarists, in essence, make as great a claim on the real as they can achieve. How does the digital affect this? Where does it leave such old justifications for less than perfect ethical behaviour -- eg the shibboleths of “the public’s right to know” or the “public interest.” The yin is the filmer’s relationship to the filmed. This has involved more immediate and direct an obligation: in essence, that “no harm”, as J.S. Mill insisted, shall come to those involved in the production at their hand. Filmmakers, just like every member of society, have always been subject to the constraints of the Millian “harm principle.” None should cause another, in his phrase, any “perceptible hurt,” that is: a damage readily discerned by any third party. But digital affordances allow the people being firmed far greater degrees of control -- even to become themselves filmmakers. How much does this consequence of the digital answer the old ethical questions -- eg the shibboleths of “informed consent” and “giving a voice”? Digital affordances impact on all these shibboleths. Whether for good or ill is the subject of this paper. Brian Winston has been involved with documentary since 1963, working for Granada TV and the BBC in the UK. In 1985, he won a US prime-time Emmy for documentary scriptwriting (for an episode of WNET’s CIVILIZATION AND JEWS). He has written widely on media technology and free expression and, on documentary, he is the author of CLAIMING THE REAL (second edition, 2008) and LIES, DAMN LIES AND DOCUMENTARIES (2000). Most recently he has edited THE DOCUMENTARY FILM BOOK (2013) for the British Film Institute. THE ACT OF DOCUMENTING: documentary film in the 21ST CENTURY (with Gail Vanstone & Chi Wang) will be published in November. He holds the Lincoln Chair at the University of Lincoln, UK.
Schwerpunkt Visuelle Zeit- und Kulturgeschichte Institute for Contemporary History / Institut für Zeitgeschichte University of Vienna
Based on visual documentary material, feature films and photographs the paper deals with perpetrators, bystanders, victims and postwar reactions to the realities of the Nazi camps. The visual archive of Mauthausen and its impact will be scrutinized and specific photos and film sequences analyzed. Among the questions to be tackled are: Which photographs were shot for the SS and were there any possibilities to counter the desired Nazi contents and aesthetics? By which means was photography used as a means to dehumanize the prisoners and enforce the politics of psychological death? How did postwar filmmakers and documentarists deal with these problems and the images of antagonistic memories? The concentration camp Mauthausen was of immense relevance for the politics of Nazism and characterized by its outstanding public visibility as a murderous castle and bulwark of Austrian and German terror. Due to its impact on postwar recollections be it through the death-marches the complicity of the majority of Austrians, through the immediate documentation of survivors, or through the consequences of many secondary camps all over Austria, Mauthausen, in contrast to the death camps in the East, became part of the public sphere of Austrian society. This had consequences for non-fictional and fictional presentations dealing with the realities and the aftermath of the concentration camp. Frank Stern is professor for visual culture and contemporary history at Vienna University. He has taught at Tel-Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Columbia University in New York, Georgetown University in Washington, Humboldt University in Berlin and Andrassy University in Budapest. From 1997 to 2004 he was Professor of Modern German History and Culture and director of the Center for German Studies and the Austrian-German Studies Program at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, in 2002 Acting Chair at the Department of Film and Television at Sapir College, Sederot, and from 2004 on he has been the Chair of the Visual and Cultural History focus, Institute for Contemporary History at Vienna University. Among his recent publication are a volume on „Feuchtwanger and Exile” (Lang 2011), articles on Jewish culture in the German-speaking lands and visual presentations of the modern Jewish experience. Since 2006 he has been organizing an open-air Shoah related film series each summer at the Mauthausen Memorial, and since 2008 he has been the director of the Jewish Filmclub Vienna, and on the board of the Los Angeles based (USC) International Feuchtwanger Society.
SESSION 1. Wednesday, May 18, 12:15 – 13:45 
Ethics in/of/as History Prof. John Michalczyk. Assistant Chair. Director, Film Studies Program Boston College Documenting the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen: Interviews and Authenticity The British documentary Memory of the Camps (1945/1985) brings to light the unfinished work of the producers of the graphic liberation of Bergen-Belsen. This camp first housed prisoners of war but later in 1944 and early 1945, up to 60,000 Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and political prisoners coming from other camps. To provide authenticity to the film two decisions were made, the first in April 1945, to offer eye-witness testimony to what the British and Canadian liberators experienced. The second came in the editing process of the summer of 1945, the decision to locate the site of the camp for the viewer to recognize the area. In the film, a British soldier and a chaplain testify to the horror of a camp where thousands of corpses filled the mass graves. Accompanying these interviews are images of bulldozers plowing the bodies into their final resting place, a scene shockingly depicted in Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955). The choice to pinpoint and make more identifiable the geographical site of the camp was made by Alfred Hitchcock, coming from America where he was working with producer David O. Selznick. The implication of this decision was to reflect that the camps were located near towns and cities, and to refute those Germans who denied that they knew of their existence. The immediate message of the film as envisioned—a vivid testament to the horrors of the Nazi regime--was lost due to the change in the post-war political climate, but a visual document remains that extends far into our understanding the tragedy of the Shoah. The follow-up film, Night Will Fall (2014), offers further eyewitness testimony to the events and the authentic documenting of them. After completing his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University on French novelist and filmmaker André Malraux focusing on art, propaganda and the Spanish Civil War, John Michalczyk joined the Boston College faculty in 1974. His lectures and publications have included works on World War II, the Holocaust film. His documentaries, many for national and international television, have focused on history, social justice and conflict resolution. To offer a sequel to his film on Nazi medicine, “In the Shadow of the Reich,” his latest documentary deals with Nazi law and premiered on March 9 at the Cayman Islands Documentary Film Festival dedicated to social justice films.
When British troops entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945 it was obvious that the liberators had no idea about what was to confront them. During the following days and weeks a number of specialised military units as well as the first relief teams provided by the British Red Cross, the Society of Friends, and the American Field Service were called to take care of the 60,000 dying, sick, starving and exhausted people encountered at the camp. While the role British military units played in providing emergency relief in Belsen has been the focus of intensive research, the contributions of British and American NGOs in early rescue work remains widely unknown. The paper is based on British, German and American archival documents. Special consideration will be given to: • The British governmental and non-governmental planning during the war. • The training of relief workers. • The cooperation of British military and NGOs in Belsen concentration camp. Thanks to permission received from the American Field Service archives, about 5 minutes of contemporary film footage will be screened at the end of the presentation. Johannes-Dieter Steinert is Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. In 2015, he was a Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. His research interests focus on German, British and European social and political history, with special emphasis on international migration and minorities, forced migration, forced labour, survivors of Nazi persecution, and international humanitarian assistance. Most recent book publication: Deportation und Zwangsarbeit. Polnische und sowjetische Kinder im nationalsozialitischen Deutschland und im besetzten Osteuropa 1939-1945, Essen: Klartext 2013. Current research project: Jewish child forced labourers in National Socialist Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe, 1938-1945.
One of the fundamental problems of documentary filmmaking arises from the act of exposing the personal story of the documentary subject to public eyes. Documentary testimonies of the Holocaust bring this problem to a boiling point, as filmmakers find themselves caught between their personal responsibility to the witness and their obligation to expose the witness’s personal trauma to the public. Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin faced this problem when they brought a personal testimony of the Holocaust to the screen for the first time, in their groundbreaking film Chronicle of a Summer (1961). In Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, philosopher Emmanuel Levinas employs the concept of “the Third” (person) to bridge the gap between personal proximity to the Other, on the one hand, and public justice, on the other. If the filmmaker's responsibility to the Holocaust witness – the documentary subject – can be described in Levinasian terms as ethical proximity, then, I ask, can the filmmaker’s obligation to share the witness’s testimony with the audience be better understood by engaging with Levinas's concept of the Third? My presentation explores the problem of the exposition of the subject and the concept of the Third by focusing on two testimonies: Marceline Loridan’s pioneering testimony before Rouch and Morin in Chronicle of a Summer, and the testimony of photographer Henric Ross, a key witness in the Eichmann trial, before David Perlov in Memories of the Eichmann Trial (1979). Rouch and Morin, and later Perlov, furthering their ethical legacy, maintain their personal responsibility to their witnesses and at the same time fulfill their obligation to the Third – their viewers. My argument is that in doing so, they achieve one of Levinas’s utmost missions: to mediate to the public their love for and proximity to the Other along with the Other’s personal call for justice. Ohad Ufaz is a filmmaker, a teacher of film at Oranim College, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communications at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research contends with the ethical questions raised by the films he loves, teaches, and makes. His films include: The Boys from Lebanon (2008), Open Eye – Open I (2006), The Wandering Samaritan (2004), Going Dutch (2002), and Abud Bypass (1998). Contact: ohadafi@hotmail.com SESSION 2: Wednesday, May 18, 15:15 – 16:45 
Justice & Alterity: Levinasian thoughts in Documentary Ethics Anat Tzom-Ayalon, Film Editor The Ethics of Close-Up Filming. A case-study: Alan Berliner’s First Cousin Once Removed (2012) and Netalie Braun’s Metamorphosis (2006) I discuss here two documentaries definable as ‘essay films’, those focusing on modes of cinematic expression no less than their central theme. Both engage with trauma, death and sickness, and observe the protagonists in close-up. Berliner focuses on an old man with Alzheimer’s, whose consciousness is dwindling, while Braun frames the faces of women who suffered the trauma of incest and rape. The ideological and political choice to create visibility via close-ups on people excluded and distanced from the public sphere could simultaneously create a ‘spectacle of suffering’. In Metamorphosis, while the close gaze lets us listen attentively to the women, it also penetrates into their intimacy. The frame can be construed as an imprisoning frame presented without a body, no history other than their trauma. In First Cousin Once Removed the man revealed is completely unaware that he is being filmed. Consequently, an ethical question runs through the film: does the visibility which Berliner creates succeed in presenting him non-exploitatively? A close-up is immanently composed of the tension generated by contradictions: on one hand it has intimacy and proximity, represents the subject, discloses the hidden interiority. Focusing on the face detached from the concrete temporal and spatial continuum, making it possible to access a philosophical abstract idea. Yet the close-up is also considered an exaggerated, even monstrous enlargement, transforming the subject into an object, the total abstraction might lead to the effacement of the face. Both films engage with silencing, speech, and the inability to speak, in the context of trauma and death. Braun deals with severe violence through women’s testimonies: it encourages a discussion of trauma and testimony and the inability to give evidence. Berliner simultaneously dismantles and reassembles the filmic language and spoken language by using jump-cuts. My argument is that the aesthetic choice of the close-up can create a diegetic space between viewer and screen. It is an encounter charged with significance embodying the complexity of relations with the Other. It is also suggested that the cinematic face can be connected to Emanuel Levinas’ ambiguous concept of ‘the face of the other’ (le visage) His ethics consist of an encounter which acknowledges the other’s existence and difference. Assisted by Levinas and the connection he charts between the revelation of ‘the face’ and the revelation of ‘speech’(le dit), I try to connect the close-up with attentiveness and the awakening of ethical responsibility towards the Other. Anat Tzom-Ayalon, a film editor, is currently a graduate student at the Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, and at an advanced stage of writing her thesis, under the supervision of Prof. Anat Zanger and Dr. Shmulik Duvdevani. The thesis explores three documentary films from the past decade, whose directors chose the close-up as their primary rhetorical means, and I examine the ethical complexity of presenting the face of the Other. Contact: anat.tzom.ayalon@gmail.com SESSION 2: Wednesday, May 18, 15:15 – 16:45 
Justice & Alterity: Levinasian thoughts in Documentary Ethics Dr. Orna Raviv, Tel-Aviv University, Israel Yüklə 1,96 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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