Making Audible: Transmedial Perspectives on Sound and Memory in Documentary Filmmaking

This week Dagmar Brunow, Professor of Film Studies at Linnaeus University, will present a paper titled: "Making Audible: Transmedial Perspectives on Sound and Memory in Documentary Filmmaking"

About the seminar

Documentary films create sonic memories. This paper looks at the trope of “giving a voice to disenfranchised groups” in documentary filmmaking. While this idea has been an impetus for documentary filmmakers, it has increasingly been criticized for reinforcing the status of ‘the Other’ (Rangan 2017). This paper asks: How can an intermedial perspective help us to untangle processes of recognition? How can we study the complexities of sound and listening in filmmaking with the help of a multimodal framework – and what are its limitations? How can a media historical perspective help us to better understand the media transformations at work? I will discuss the transmediation of working-class memories, asking: how are working-class members recognized in times of urban reconstruction and on what terms are they made audible? And what does this tell us about the situatedness of listening and the possibilities to encounter ‘the Other’ at ear’s level?

How to attend the seminar

It is possible to attend the seminar from Dacke in Växjö and via Zoom. Contact us at ims@lnu.se if you want to participate via Zoom, or sign up for our external email list to receive automatic updates on our events (zoom link and additional information are sent out one week in advance).

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen