A detailed report about our second conference is now available
Following some snapshots and first impressions of our recent conference The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe we are delighted to provide a detailed account of this conference. The report, written by Sarita Malik, will also be published in a double issue of the Journal of Media Practice in autumn 2007 (8: 2/3).
Conference Report
The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Europe
12th-13th January, 2007, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London
A report by Dr Sarita Malik
Our second conference took place at the IGRS in London in January 2007. The day boasted an impressive line-up of practitioners, all of whom have had direct industrial experience of cinema. The young and international profile of the delegates (from as far as Göteburg, Istanbul, Sydney and Samarkand), suggested a rising interest in migrant cinema. The opportunity to interact with other academics and cultural workers was enthusiastically taken up, and an important platform for an exchange of ideas and perspectives between academia and the film industry was provided.The aim of the conference was to complement the first Migrant Cinema conference (held in Oxford in July 2006), also organised by the Research Network. This had focused on the theoretical and academic aspects of migrant cinema in Europe and included keynote presentations from Professors Hamid Naficy, Deniz Göktürk, Rob Burns and Dina Iordanova. This second conference was more concerned with getting down to the ‘nitty gritty’ of how migrant cinema in Europe gets produced, distributed, funded and exhibited.Where the first conference was primarily focused on the dynamics “inside” the film text, this conference was concerned with what is happening on the “outside”. Some of the key questions which underpinned this timely conference were, “What is the experience of making diasporic film?”, What specific issues are there around distributing migrant cinema across different European countries?, “What is the role of film festivals and transnational networks with regards to migrant cinema?” and “What are the dynamics between funding and cultural policy when moving towards transnationalism?” Speakers emphasized how policies that promote cultural diversity have changed over the past two decades and outlined the implications this has for ethnic minority filmmakers in Europe.The conference was launched with a well-attended double screening at London’s Ciné Lumière French Institute of Abdelkrim Bahloul’s, La Nuit du Destin/The Night of Destiny (1997) and Le Soleil Assassiné/The Assassinated Sun (2003). The two films were introduced by the director himself and were followed by a lively Q&A with Bahloul, actor Mehdi Dehbi and the audience. Bahloul, as an Algerian filmmaker based in France, also shared a very personal presentation with the conference delegates the next day, chaired by Dr Carrie Tarr. He spoke about some of the cultural expectations, hurdles and opportunities that he has experienced as a migrant filmmaker in Europe.
Bahloul’s session followed an opening presentation by filmmaker John Akomfrah, chaired by Dr Sarita Malik. Akomfrah, one of the leading figures of Black British cinema eloquently drew on some of the cultural, theoretical and practical issues at stake when making cinema in the UK. The session began with a clip of Akomfrah’s rarely-seen The Last Angel of History (1996), a cinematic essay exploring the relationship between science fiction, technology, Pan-African culture and “Afro-futurism”. Akomfrah went on to chart his experience as a Diaspora filmmaker back to the early 1980s (when the Black Audio Film Collective was set up) and spoke of the “dark side” of the hybrid, transcultural, Diaspora experience which is more typically celebrated and valorised in contemporary culture. The sense of indeterminacy and the losses that Akomfrah alluded to, led to an interesting discussion around exhibition and industry glass ceilings, hooked most challengingly around a question from one delegate, “You are a living legend but no-one has seen your work”.
These complexities of working within the Diasporic cinema space in Europe – specifically around gaining voice, winning support and being seen – were all touched on by other speakers through the course of the day. The opportunities and indeed commercial logic presented by moving beyond monolithic national cultures and transgressing established boundaries were also discussed. For example, Parminder Vir, in a session chaired by Dr Claudia Sternberg, spoke of her involvement in a recent initiative which sources film projects from the new voices of international cinema including India, China, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and the Diaspora for development, production and distribution. The threat to the US as the industry bigwig that drives revenue was highlighted, as were the exciting possibilities for Diaspora filmmakers looking for their position in the new global paradigm. Vir’s presentation encouraged us to think not just in European but global terms when considering future scenarios.
Eve Gabereau, the Managing Director of Soda Pictures, in a session chaired by Dr Dominique Nasta, gave conference delegates an excellent insight into migrant cinema from a distributor’s point of view including how films are categorised, marketed and packaged appropriately for different European audiences. The pressures on distributors to communicate titles clearly and meet the distinct demands of theatrical and DVD markets were explained. The specific examples of the award-winning Head-On (2004) and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005), both features by Fatih Akin (one of Germany’s most prominent and prolific film directors), were used.
The afternoon sessions focused on festivals, scriptwriting and filmmaking. Thierry Lenouvel and Gareth Jones together outlined their respective involvement: Lenouvel as the founder of Ciné-Sud Promotion, a company designed to promote and produce auteur cinema particularly (but not exclusively) of non-European origin and Jones as the person behind the recently-launched BABYLON, a European film development initiative which supports the work of filmmakers from Europe's minority communities. Importantly, Jones spoke of the need to refuse a discourse that starts from the position of migrant cinema or Diaspora filmmaking as problematic and rather as a goal of possibility that has to be “mechanized.”
The conference culminated in a session chaired by Dr Daniela Berghahn (the Migrant Cinema project leader), with Ralph Schwingel, one of the leading producers of Turkish-German cinema today whose films have included Short Sharp Shock (1998), In July (2000), Anam (2001), Solino (2002), Head-On (2004), Offside (2005) and Kebab Connection (2005). Schwingel of Wüste Film, who can be given credit for 'discovering' Fatih Akin, revealed many interesting things: that Solino was not granted a cinematic release in Italy because Italians had reservations about the film's authenticity, because it had a Turkish German director; that Short Sharp Shock and In July did not primarily appeal to Turkish German audiences, who favour American block busters or Turkish box office hits over what is essentially a form of art house cinema. The personal testimony of such a prestigious player in the migrant cinema terrain was a rare treat and, for not the first time in the day, highlighted how individual memory can provide us with a way to track salient cultural turns in contemporary culture.
As the interest in transnational cinema grows, attention needs to be paid both to what these films are “saying” at the level of representation, but also about what they are “doing” in terms of cultural production. In any case, there is deep value to be found in considering the dynamic between “the textual” and “the industrial”, something that was realised in the many issues and questions that were raised by this diverse and enlightening conference.
Posted by Daniela Berghahn on 12 Feb 2007 •