PUTNEY DEBATER
A personal blog
Archival Values: A report on losing a documentary archive
Almost thirty years ago, I attended an international seminar at the Babelsberg film school in Berlin, the first time that teachers of documentary from west and east Europe met together to compare notes on pedagogical methods and values. On the second day, Klaus Stanjek, the seminar’s convenor, disappeared and returned later in the day with a van full of film cans. ‘Someone called from the other side of the city,’ he explained, ‘they said people at the old East German film school were about to junk their archive, so I just had to go and rescue what I could before it was too late’, and then he rushed off to get some more. I am put in mind of the episode because I now find myself forced to oversee the loss of an archive that I have myself built up over several decades and which then expanded considerably after I moved to the University of Roehampton in 2007.
Open Letter to the Vice-Chancellor Sheffield Hallam University about Shahd Abusalama
Dear Professor Husbands,
I wish to add my voice in protest against your ill-advised treatment of Ms. Shahd Abusalama, a young Palestinian academic whom you have suspended from teaching, apparently on grounds of spurious accusations of antisemitism.
I have read the series of tweets she wrote in December last year in response to an incident in which a first-year student made a poster with the slogan “Stop the Palestinian Holocaust” and was accused (by another, Jewish student) of antisemitism for using the word Holocaust. Her comments, spelled out in less than 400 words, are a lucid deconstruction of the use of the word ‘holocaust’, and a model of responsible academic engagement with social media. I am also cognisant of her response on Facebook three years ago to attacks on her by various Zionist organisations for her cultural activities, in which she criticised her younger self and, far from being antisemitic, aligned her position with Jewish anti-Zionists like Jews for Peace, etc. All this can be discovered in a few clicks. Read more
‘Corazon Azul’ by Miguel Coyula
It would be better to think of Corazon Azul (Blue Heart), the new film by Cuban independent Miguel Coyula, as a quirky political satire for the digital age rather than science fiction. As science fiction, the plot could take place anywhere. Genetic experiments have produced human mutants with strange powers who go rogue. But it happens in Cuba, where the aim is to create Che Guevara’s ‘New Man’ and the secret project is called ‘the Guevara experiment’.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/323473315[/vimeo]