Off the Screen

IDENTITY (IES) - difference and repetition

DATE: 3 to 7 of August 2016

LOCATION: Melgaço House of Culture

Off the Screen is the designation for the Summer Seminar that runs alongside FILMES DO HOMEM – Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival.

It will be a meeting for reflection, debate and the development of research and creative practices within Social Sciences, Arts and Communication Sciences, around the theme Identity (ies) – difference and repetition. The course derives from the partnership between the Melgaço Town Hall and AO NORTE Association, in collaboration with Universities and Investigation/Research Groups in Portugal, Galiza, Brazil and the USA.

The objectives of the course are the approximation of artistic and technological approaches, and human and social sciences to the cinema; the collaboration of Networks and Research/Investigation Groups participating at the Festival; the involvement of local populace and communities in artistic and cultural activities performed at the Seminar and in the Festival; to contribute for the affirmation of local culture and development.

The course will have a theoretical component – conferences and seminars, a theoretical-practical component with workshops, a practical component – with the presentation of on-going projects, field work and film viewing integrated with FILMES DO HOMEM and a final project and product to be presented by the participants that require a final evaluation.

Scientific Field – Social Sciences, Arts and Communication Sciences.

General Coordinator – José da Silva Ribeiro

Equipa de Coordenação do Curso - José da Silva Ribeiro / Daniel Maciel / Patrícia Nogueira / Casimiro Pinto.

Addressed to

• Local residents with a keen interest in the themes of identity
• Teachers and cultural animators
• Documentary film-makers
• Students and researchers

Schedule

All sessions will begin at 10h00h (detailed scheduling to follow). Participants will be able to attend all sessions from the Summer Course or pick and choose the ones that interest them. All sessions include theoretical and practical activities and the participation in the film screening sessions and activities of the Festival.
All those looking for final Course accreditation should participate in all its activities.

Registration

Participant - 50€

Registration of participants from the Melgaço municipality - FREE

Registration with room and board / single room (accommodation in hotel and meals on the 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) – 260€

Registration (two people) with room and board / double room (accommodation in hotel and meals on the 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) – 390€

Fill in the registration form, and email it, until 15 of July 2016, to docs@filmesdohomem.pt

Program

Identity(ies) - difference and repetition

Identity – what is it for?

Álvaro António Gomes Domingues, Faculty of Architecture at University of Porto

In a famous seminar, Claude Levi-Strauss insisted on the vague and mystifying character of identity for this to be no more than a symbolic narrative device that feeds itself off a huge diversity of real and imaginary facts, "... a kind of virtual household of obligatory reference to explain a certain number of things, but without ever having had real existence". Following this train of thought, the author asks himself whether, instead of invoking the ghosts spawn out of cheap psychology of identity, will not be better to investigate those facts or objective conditions that the alleged identity is a symptom or reflecting mirror. The challenge of globalization as a process, at the same time, of confrontation and dilution, is not the construction of a plastic meta-identity without sharp edges, like a heap of people spread around the world and plunged into an unevenly shared cultural magma. Also there are not many reasons to believe in the perfect paradise of intense communion in diversity, difference and unity of nations and beliefs. Just take a look at the news and see the fragmentation of conflicts or the emergence of global neo-tribes. Others move the identity issue to the political sphere and the construction of a common context of democratic organization. In this sphere lies the definition of "us" and the "others" (friend and foe, eventually) and the rules we tolerate or accept. It seems clear. No matter how much you investigate the debating issues when talking about identity, it seems more important to understand the purpose that such narratives serve. It is then that one realizes what is at stake.

Participative Audiovisual Ethnographies

José da Silva Ribeiro, CEMRI – UAb, University of Goiás – Faculty of Visual Arts

Participatory audiovisual methodologies and digital visual technologies are changing the research methods in the humanities and social sciences. Resistances and suspicions regarding the images are fading out and the development of new technologies is allowing for their integration in multiple research projects. Participatory visual methodologies offer not just wide multisensory and multisemiotic information and the construction of narratives driven by the worldviews and interests of research participants, but also by their access to the objectives, methods and means of investigation and the legitimization, by the academy, of local knowledge and colloquial expressions. The plethora of information and communication technology often opens wide pedagogical possibilities of action research and participatory planning in public policy. There is, however, a long way to go through case studies and the development of good practices. The intention is for reflection on the implications, challenges and obstacles that technology brings to areas and key concepts for anthropological research, like the methodological field, culture, social identities and human nature itself, but especially to confront ourselves with case studies and move to an active practice of collaborative knowledge production deriving from the questioning of local identities.

Melgaço: an imagined reality

Manuela Matos Monteiro and João Lafuente, Gallery MIRA and Mira FORUM

Assuming that the participants are from outside Melgaço, we intend, within the allotted time, to confront their representations about the place and the very same place through photographic records produced during field work activities.
The diversity of ways of reading and recording the reality will allow for the questioning of both the concept of identity and its representations.

Collaborative Sound Cartographies

João Martins, Visões Úteis (Porto), Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (ESMAE-IPP) and Academia Contemporânea do Espetáculo (ACE)

The discovery of soundscapes that surround us and their potential to create narratives is the main object of this action. We propose a reflection on how we listen and how sound influences our perception and our state of mind and, addressing equipment and recording techniques, as well as audio editing and production basics, we will hold a series of practical exercises, with the objective of studying the Festival’s deployment territory. Recording techniques: Use of portable digital recorders (mono and stereo microphones, binaural settings and surround) and mobile devices. Editing tools: Audacity.

Project Sea Villages_ Culture of the sea, Culture of life

Daniel Maciel, AO NORTE Association

The Sea Villages project involves the production of a set of audiovisual content for online viewing, whose main objective is the appreciation, promotion and enhancement of fishing communities covered in the Sea Villages territory.
The addressed topics, like the Sea and its Resources, Memory and Traditions, Gastronomy, Museums and Museum Nuclei, cover the economic, cultural, ethnographic and social dynamics related with the activity of fishing communities. In the concept that formed the basis for the project, a sea village presupposes the existence of a recognized fishing community in activity, located in a coastal or estuarine area.

A Place Called Diaspora

Andreia Alves de Oliveira, fotógrafa e investigadora independente

Projecto fotográfico que investiga o tema da migração através de um estudo da emigração de Portugal para Londres no Reino Unido, onde vivo há quase dez anos.
Numa época de movimentação e fluxo à escala global, Portugal é o país com a maior taxa de emigração da União Europeia e a décima segunda maior do mundo. Historicamente, é um país de emigração cíclica. Porque emigramos? O que diz a emigração sobre nós?
Enquanto artista e emigrante, pareceu-me importante tentar entender a emigração para além dos números e dos dados socioeconómicos. Através de entrevistas, retratos e fotografias de lugares, o trabalho aborda a experiência do deslocamento e dos seus efeitos pessoais, nomeadamente em relação a sentimentos como o de pertença ou de identidade definida em termos de Nação e nacionalidade. O projecto pretende desta forma criar um retrato estático e não narrativo, que visa arrestar o fluxo da emigração e oferecer ao espectador elementos para esta recriar através do seu pensamento e emoções a experiência que lhe é transmitida.

Project Socheo: weaving the memory of A Guarda

Beli Martinez, University of Vigo e IES Audiovisual of Vigo

Project Socheo is an attempt to counter to some extent the impact of the forgetfulness that occurs over time in A Guarda and Lower Miño region. Through this platform we intend to join together in the same site all those images that presuppose a reinforcement to avoid the fragility of collective memory. We live in a time where we are inundated with audiovisual material on a daily basis and it is here that we intend to bring it all together and preserve it, thus helping to enrich the heritage of A Guarda. One way to rethink the past, doing it in the presence and resize it for the future. The intention of this project is to invite holders of pictures and images of A Guarda and its people to open and display their archives thus helping in the thickening of this common project. But not only individuals have tried to establish links with other social agents: cultural associations, sports associations, companies and institutions.

Talking Photos: Tell me about San Sadurniño

Carmen Suarez Nieto, CEMIT Network in the San Sadurniño Municipality

Tell me about San Sadurniño is a project searching for the local identity and social memory of a small community of 3,000 inhabitants in northern Galicia. It’s a collaborative space in the network where simple, talking photographs load with collective sense the small individual experiences that seem disconnected, but only in appearance. However the project not only intends to reflect the remote memory of San Sadurniño, but also its present through images, sounds, videos or documents that "talk of San Sadurniño" nowadays, and to become an integral living space to the memory holding the lives of people, companies, associations or land creators of San Sadurniño. In its two and a half years the project has become a benchmark in the initiatives for the recovery of memory through photographs and films, having already had more than 800,000 visits.

Video mapping the countryside

Manuel González Álvarez, professor of History at IES Concepción Arenal of Ferrol

The abandoned Galician rural territory is taking up more space by the day in the audiovisual film practices, as demonstrated enough by the so-called "New Galician cinema", as well as some experiments in territories outside the conventional audiovisual production. The report will examine some of these film practices made in San Sadurniño, both by unusual social agents like teenagers, peasants, youtubers and neighbors and also as creating poles on the forefront of Galician film with the audiovisual experience "Chanfainalab". All of this occurs without leaving the universe of San Sadurniño, a small rural parish of 3,000 inhabitants in northern Galicia.