Framing torture on screen: negotiating the unwatchable
Images are an integral part of how we experience, judge, and remember life's events. However, representing torture – the impossibility of it – is complex. This chapter contends that, in contrast to the imaginations of many fictional (Hollywood) films, non-fiction filmmaking as a form of artisti...
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
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2023
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| In: |
Contesting torture
Year: 2023, Pages: 117-138 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Summary: | Images are an integral part of how we experience, judge, and remember life's events. However, representing torture – the impossibility of it – is complex. This chapter contends that, in contrast to the imaginations of many fictional (Hollywood) films, non-fiction filmmaking as a form of artistic research can manage the balancing act of avoiding aestheticising violence and yet contributing to a politics of emancipation from it. An analysis of Raed Andoni's Ghost Hunting reveals how documentaries can enter a critical aesthetic mode that is non-linear and non-linguistic, exploring what embodied experiences can do and how they affect us without a graphic exploitation of suffering. The camera shoots back, facing the ethical dilemma of responsibility, probing the limits of representation and negotiating the un-showable so that the audience engages critically and sensitively with the images. As such, non-fiction film becomes a site of both knowledge production about and contestation of torture practices that demands confrontation. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 136-138 |
| Physical Description: | Illustrationen |
| ISBN: | 9781032308692 |
