In this paper, I will discuss the production of my thesis film, Lost In The Fire. The main subjects of this paper are Writing, Directing, Production Design, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, and Technology. I will also be talking about the ways the Graduate Film program at UNO prepared me to accomplish this project. In addition, I will share my process and reflect on the failures and successes of making this film.

My honors capstone project deals with the issues of reproductive rights and onscreen representations of women. I created a performance-based documentary style piece entitled Talk Over Me. It focuses on men’s opinions and stories surrounding abortion and conveys the disconnect between a woman’s face on screen and her opinions, thoughts and personal identity.

East Asian cinema is receiving increasing global attention. This attention is not focused merely on the fiction and feature films produced in the region, but also on the documentaries produced there; films such as Petition (2009) by Chinese director Zhao Liang which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2009. This attention to East Asian documentary can be traced to the documentary film festivals organised in the region, particularly those that devote their programming to independent documentary productions from the region. These festivals open a window that enables such works to be exhibited for the rest of the world. But these festivals do not aim merely to exhibit and screen these works. They also pay attention to the filmmakers. The attendance of filmmakers at festivals has previously been assessed to be of low importance. By encouraging filmmakers to visit and participate the festivals examined here can be seen to represent shared concerns regarding the cultivation of documentary filmmaking in the Asian region. The four film festivals that serve to exemplify this are the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) in Yamagata, Japan; the Documentary Film Festival China (DOChina) in Beijing, China; the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) in Taichung, Taiwan; and the Hong Kong’s Chinese Documentary Festival (CDF). Each festival forms the basis of a case study in the hope that the context of documentary film festivals in the East Asia can be delineated. Particular aspects of the festivals are discussed in relation to a significant underlying dimension that is identified in each of the festivals in question: the emphasis on communication in YIDFF that enhances the sense of connectedness in the participating festival community; the independent and underground status of DOChina that is embedded in the festival as a form of resistance to the state government; the relocation of TIDF to a government-supported museum contextualises the festival and draws on the general functions and purposes of a museum: exhibition, education and collection. The fourth case study examines the multi-faceted nature of CDF through the previously examined concepts to demonstrate the generalisability of the concepts to, and the inherent complexity of film festivals. A common theme underlies all of these concepts: a sense of the local, of ‘local-ness’. The ‘local’ here is a relative term that depends largely on where it is that these events regard as home. So, it is not merely the immediate locale of the festival that can be regarded as ‘local’; the ‘local’ can be extended to encompass the nation or the entire region if that is where ‘home’ has been identified. Such an extensive and fluid understanding of ‘local-ness’ not only defines those areas to which the festivals pay specific attention, it also furthers understanding of the festivals’ shared ambitions; ambitions rooted in the cultivation of a ‘local’ documentary filmmaking milieu.

Au croisement des champs du design graphique, des visual studies, et de l’épistémologie, cette thèse interroge la dimension politique du regard, au travers d’une histoire critique de la modernité en design graphique. Empruntant à Bruno Latour ou Philippe Descola, cette histoire permet de faire apparaître comment le design graphique s’est constitué, à l’époque moderne, comme discipline consacrée au travail de la représentation. À l’image des sciences, le visible a lui aussi fait l’objet d’un « Grand partage », contribuant à construire et à structurer notre espace visuel, en imprégnant le regard moderne de ses préjugés et de ses inclinations. Les catégories qui se présentent alors sous une forme visuelle semblent bien pouvoir, par la métaphore, recouvrir des distinctions épistémologiques plus fondamentales, permettant d’une certaine manière de considérer que les principes de vision (les manières de voir) sont aussi des principes de division (des manières de comprendre et de connaître). / From the intersection of the fields of graphic design, visual studies and epistemology, this thesis explores the political dimension of the gaze through a critical reading of modernity in graphic design. In this history, which borrows from Bruno Latour and Philippe Descola, graphic design emerges as a discipline that, in the modern period, has been devoted to the work of representing. Like the sciences, the visible has been subjected to a “Great Divide,” which has participated in how our visual space is constructed and structured by imbuing the modern gaze with its biases and inclinations. Categories that now appear in visual form seem to be able, through metaphor, to contain more fundamental epistemological distinctions. They also allow us to see how the principles of vision (ways of seeing) are in some sense also principles of division (ways of knowing and understanding).

My final thesis project analyzes self-branding, online influencers, and microcelebrity culture that contribute to shaping self-identity on social media. The project focuses on online identity through the lens of digitally created or cyborg accounts made for the purpose of promoting consumer culture lifestyle. Cultural notions around celebrity culture as a means of profit are expanding and are more inclusive due to social media formats that nurture self-branding and self-promotion. Companies take advantage of personalized media creation and distribution by using online influencers to promote products because of the minimal payouts and labor required. Therefore, ideologies of buying and selling become deeply rooted online and have come to change its users’ conceptions of themselves and shape an identity linked almost exclusively with the internet across platforms. Self-branding, online influencers, and microcelebrity culture are distinct forms of labor on social media that generate value through branding and shaping a profit driven self-identity that leads to the erosion of a meaningful distinction between notions of the self and the production and consumption imperatives that benefit digital entrepreneurialism.

My senior thesis deals with contemporary depictions of sexualized violence against women in fashion photography. Images of bloodied, bruised, and dead-looking models have proliferated in fashion magazine editorials and advertisements since the 1970s and I want to explore why sexualized violence is seen as sexy and compelling advertising, in light of the fact that domestic violence is the greatest cause of injury to women in America. I produced my own fashion photographs in locations of actual female homicides in Los Angeles County, particularly those nearest to Claremont, with the use of The Los Angeles Times online homicide database, which pinpoints every homicide reported in L.A. County since 2007. We live in a world plagued by violence and by creating my own violent, fashion photographs in actual homicide locations, I hoped to jar the viewer out of neutrality and expose violent advertisements and editorials for what they are: objectifying, exploitative, and perverse expressions of hostility against women. The images abuse and demean commercial speech privileges and glamorize and trivialize horrific, actual experiences of violence suffered by countless women.

This thesis examines images of volunteer tourism—or voluntourism—on internet sites and describes how the photographs that appear on them contribute to maintaining global systems of power. Voluntourism is defined as either the payment of a program fee to an organization to travel to a developing country to perform various volunteer tasks or as the pause of gainful employment in one’s own country to work for an extended period of time in a developing country at a local wage. Currently there is debate as to the real benefits of volunteer tourism: is it truly the sustainable form of responsible, alternative tourism it is intended to be, or does it merely replicate the conditions of mass tourism and exploit those it is intended to benefit? This study explores visual representations of voluntourism in non-Western cultures in developing countries, and the consumption of those representations by participants in Canadian-based volunteer tourism organizations. The primary focus is photographs of interpersonal relationships between “voluntourists” and “voluntoured” in an examination of how culture and skin colour are manipulated in an attempt to maintain Westerners’ positions of power in pictures and, by extension, in global power relations. I suggest that a complex interaction of the pictorial codes of tourism, colonialism and the popular media converge in voluntourism’s photographs, resulting in images that simultaneously offer potential volunteers the opportunity to “do good” in the world as well as to consume cultural difference as a commodity. The main body of work is a visual discourse analysis of the photographs of five Canadian volunteer organizations’ websites. I identify the thematic categories used to promote voluntourism and discuss them in relation to patterns of mass tourism, charity advertisements, colonial travel narratives and their associated visual representation. This paper includes interviews with Canadian past volunteers to assess the importance of images to their experience of voluntourism. I close with a discussion of multiculturalism in Canada which brings together the experience of working within another culture in voluntourism and the conditions of Canadian multicultural society. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-27 20:23:25.935

Orientador: Jorge Sidney Coli Júnior / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T11:13:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Souza_CyraMariadeAraujo_M.pdf: 17168573 bytes, checksum: 44c8dc04b66daacc70a649bb5f114300 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: As imagens de cunho pericial, como as que se encontram no Laboratório de Fotografia do Instituto de Criminalística em São Paulo (IC), enquadram-se num grupo de produção visual que pode ser chamado de descartável. Para além de sua função ilustrativa nos laudos periciais (e de sua força de argumento como índice do acontecido), a fotografia de natureza criminal (cenas de acidentes, de crimes, corpo de delito, procedimentos de autópsia, enfim, prova visual/material em inquérito policial e processo criminal judiciário) parece, num primeiro momento, incapaz de ser pensada como passível de interpretações visuais outras, se não o de uma imagem que adere a seu referencial. No âmbito acadêmico, por exemplo, a imagem forense quase sempre surge periférica e ilustrativa em estudos de caráter histórico/sociológico, ligados ao tema da criminologia ou variações sobre a marginalidade urbana. Um acessório apenas. Diferentemente, o estudo aqui realizado tem como objeto de pesquisa visual um acervo formado por negativos fotográficos de cenas de crimes (grupo "Sangue", nome dado a casos de Homicídios, Suicídios, Encontro de Cadáver e Morte a Esclarecer pela Equipe Técnica do Instituto de Criminalística) acontecidos na região metropolitana de São Paulo no período de 1987 a 2007. Durante o processo de levantamento e escolha de imagens, e a partir do convívio diário com fotógrafos no IC, a pesquisa terminou por também resgatar uma espécie de trajetória da fotografia forense e do fotógrafo pericial na Polícia Científica de São Paulo, principalmente através de conversas com os profissionais mais antigos ainda atuantes, já que não há arquivos precisamente preservados ou documentação histórica oficial sobre a fotografia e o fotógrafo pericial na Polícia Científica Paulista / Abstract: The forensic image, such as those found in the Photo Lab of the Institute of Criminology in São Paulo (IC), are part of a group of visual production that can be called disposable. In addition to its role in the illustrative expert reports (and its force of argument as an index of what happened), photographs of criminal nature (scenes of accidents, crimes, corpus delicti, autopsy procedures, finally, proof / visual material in police investigation and criminal justice) seems, at first, unable to be thought of as capable of other visual interpretations, if not an image that adheres to its material reference. In the academic sphere, for example, the forensic image almost always remains in peripheral and illustrative studies of a historical / sociological criminology related to the subject or variations on urban marginality. An accessory only. Unlike the study performed here as a research subject has a visual collection consists of photographic negatives of crime scenes (group "Blood," the name given to cases of homicide, suicide, corpse encounters and not clarified death, by the Institute of Criminalistics) that occurred in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo in the period 1987 to 2007. The intention is to treat these images as visual construction and representation, distancing the relationship between photography and indicial primary objective reality to highlight the link between real violence and speeches about violent death and the body with narratives that permeate modern and contemporary visual culture. During the assessment process and choice of images, and from daily contact with photographers in the IC, the study also ended up restoring a history of forensic photography and the police photographer expert in Sao Paulo, mainly through conversations with older professionals still on duty, since there is no politics of preserving files or official historical documentation about the photograph and the photographer expert in São Paulo?s forensic police / Mestrado / Historia da Arte / Mestre em História

En abordant les problèmes que pose l’apparence animale à la philosophie, ce travail a pour objectif de défendre une approche esthétique du vivant au sein même de la biologie. L’œuvre morphologique d’Adolf Portmann et celle, étho-écologique, de Jakob von Uexküll permettent de poser des questions majeures à l’histoire de la philosophie des sciences en abordant les différentes épistémologies et métaphysiques impliquées par l’étude des formes animales sur une période allant de la modernité à l’époque contemporaine. Afin de sortir du fonctionnalisme néo-darwinien qui oriente les critères d’objectivité aujourd’hui largement partagés par la communauté scientifique, nous avons argumenté en faveur de la nécessité pour la biologie de valoriser une approche empirique de la nature en renouant avec une zoologie trop souvent envisagée comme une discipline obsolète. / Doctorat en Philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Ink Painting was first initiated by Lui Shou Kwan (1919 - 1975) in the 1960s and it had a significant and remarkable influence on Hong Kong painters. It aimed to revitalize Chinese painting as a reaction largely triggered by the dominant trend of imitative practice of the Lingnan School in Hong Kong at the time. Lui stressed the importance of gen (根 root) and shi (適 adaption) and signaled many possibilities of ink painting as a new category. Gradually, a group of artists pursuing the same goal gathered and made the Ink Painting Movement possible. Irene Chou was one of the prominent and dedicated artists involved in the Ink Painting Movement. She demonstrated a lifelong exploration of art and the expression of her inner self to art. This study attempts to analyze how Chou’s art manifested the core values and concepts of Ink Painting. Born in Shanghai, Chou moved to Hong Kong in 1949. She did not commence painting until her mid-thirties when she studied with the second generation of the Lingnan School master Zhao Shaoang (1905 - 1998). Her artistic career began with imitation. However, after she met and was inspired by Lui in the mid 1960s she soon realized art was about self expression. Her art evolved from representation to abstraction and eventually developed into her own style which is very distinct from other Ink painters. After her stroke in 1991, she immigrated to Australia. Despite the unfamiliar environment and poor health, Chou did not surrender herself to these physical challenges. In contrast, her spirit elevated and she continued the exploration of self through her creations. By using Chou as a case study, the research aims not only a scrutiny of Chou’s artistic pursuits and innovation, but also a juxtaposition of her pursuits among a few link painters of her time in order to have a better understanding of some crucial and complex concepts of Ink Painting.