Community Media - Interactive World

I can't believe that's over two years of blogs.  Here are some of the most popular posts from the 80+ published :  18 Advantages of visual auto-ethnography for resea... Social Media, Revolution and Historical Consciousn... Reflections on social media and 'anarchy' in Birmi... Civil Society Groups and Volunteer Film Projects Our 3-minute film guide Film Editing for Beginners – Understanding the Pro... Radical Origins of the 'Big Society' ? 30 Tips to help you make an Award Winning Film on ... What is Community Film ? 30 Ways to Put the Community Into Film ... India's answer to Hollywood and No-Budget film pro... A Recipe for Auteur Film Directors (14-point toolk... Participatory Video - the role of the Trainer and ... Beyond CinemaScope and Technicolor: the World of A... Towards an Imperfect Cinema Worldwide Community Film Screenings Postcolonial and Transnational Cinema...

Namita Singh is currently pursuing a PhD on Participatory Video in UK, at the Open University. She is a researcher and consultant focused on participatory media. We welcome her guest contribution to this site and thank her for her insights into and for sharing her reflections on Participatory Video. "Namita Singh, the Trainer Vs. Namita Singh, the Researcher :  Things I taught and things I learnt!"  This one week taught me so much about doing Participatory Video, as a researcher. Going in, I never thought, it will be as tough – negotiating the thin line between Namita Singh, the trainer, and Namita Singh, the researcher. The former being my role throughout my working life prior to my PhD, the latter, I am supposed to strictly adhere to, so as not to lose sight and data, while I am at it. Every bit is important. Every bit might have some key, some vital insight – a hidden answer to my research questions – some serious business, this! I had wanted to us...

1. The auteur typically employs multiple perspectives on the same scene. This approach will enable the auteur to transform a short story into a film of epic proportions. The auteur characteristically demonstrates disregard for linear plotting . For the auteur Repetition is at the core of Deconstruction. 2. The auteur prefers grainy features to suggest the archaic; s/he prefers black and white to colour. The auteur composes lyrical essays on the lure of the silent film era; employs super 8 film, and cuts up video tapes using a manual process. At the other extreme, the auteur films his homage to Battleship Potemkin (1925) using only mobile cell-phones and skateboards. 3. The self-presentation of the auteur in interview situations is a form of self-preservation. There are two starting positions that should be adhered to without irony: (a) sentences that deploy stream-of-consciousness; multiple subclauses (think Henry James's Golden Bowl ); polysyllabic terms - especially...

Anamitra Roy, Indian filmmaker and no-budget forum member talks to Ian McCormick about his life and work in this interview conducted on 4th March 2012. See previous blog entry for a critical and contextual review of Anamitra Roy's film work and ideas. How long have you been making films? I don’t know if I’ve been making films. I think I’m mocking films because the set up one needs to make films is not accessible for me. I just shoot with whatever I get. I write scripts keeping in mind my resources like friends who can act, or the lights and cameras I and my friends own etc. I started editing back in 2006. I used to choose just any stock and chop something out of it. In 2008, Sriparna, my girlfriend, bought a second hand miniDV and in the same year I met poet Arupratan Ghosh. We made the first film together in the month of December. There was another guy named Arkapratim Mukherjee with us. I acted in and edited the film. It was not something good, mostly a failure exc...

Anamitra Roy’s recent ‘film’ Memories of a Dead Township (2012) expresses clearly the concept of existential angst but it also avoids falling into the trap of the student film maker's addiction to ambiguity and bleakness as merely self-indulgent ends in themselves. We sense that there is a difference between philosophical games and hard thinking . But in his latest intriguing film he is also presenting a sense of home that is always slipping away, and needing to be deconstructed and reconstructed. It is home as absence of home. But it is not just another exercise is postcolonial deconstruction theory . For Anamitra Roy there are two aspects to the issue of community. One is practical and economic; it is a case of voice and aesthetic survival: “I need my voice to be heard. It’s better to sing a chorus than shouting alone in the street. We didn’t even have money to submit to any international film festival till this year. So, if I have 10 friends to watch m...