On day 1, I saw three intense and provocative films:

SECRETS OF THE TRIBE is a new classic. So well-aimed and well-executed. I have had Jose Padilha’s films recommended to me, but this is the first one I have seen. I will definitely be checking out his other work.

WAR DON DON is the first in the “Building Peace Strand.” It is a heavy-duty film, and the panel was extraordinary – the main subjects just continuing to battle the war-crimes case. Sky, the festival director introduced the film and also the building peace series which will all have top-notch panels – this is really unique stuff and I think it will be a highlight of the festival for me. I also got to watch this and discuss with one out our international documentary fellows from Kenya and Uganda, which gave me a whole different perspective on this film.

PRESUMED GUILTY was probably the least sophisticated of the films I saw, but the most emotionally compelling. I spent most of the film on the edge of my seat just wanting with all my heart for things to work out for this beautiful kid in the worst of circumstances. I am one who can do without the activist call to action (let the audience make their own conclusions, I say), but still a great film.

I saw THE KIDS GROW UP at FullFrame, but it was great to be around another screening night with Doug, his family and the D-worders. It occurred to me how much in contrast Doug’s film stands to all three that I saw yesterday. Specifically, the root metaphor of all three of those films is a fight between traditional adversaries (a trial, a war, an academic battle . . ), and it is in an adversarial way that each film engages with its audience – a sort of intellectual sparing that is a current trend in documentary.

It is the idea that audiences are distrustful by nature and rather than snow them, a smart filmmaker engages in a mental duel of reveals and you-decide moments designed to provoke consideration and anxiety. This is effective. I like these docs, and aspire to do this in my own work.

Doug’s film is fundamentally different. It is not a fight; It’s a big hug.

All three of the films I saw seem to have the underlying message: the world is fucked up (which surely it is). Doug’s film seems to be saying: if we are brave, and we care for each other, we can make it ok (which is important to remember, in light of the first point).

On to day 2!

So, this is a bit late, but I wanted to share the great work of the students in the Online Journalism Workshop that I co-teach with Professor Mike Shanahan at GW’s School of Media and public Affairs.

Much thanks to all of the students who gave their all to these pieces.

One of the most buzzed about films at the 2010 FullFrame Documentary Film Festival was THE OATH – and rightfully so. I can think of no rubric for documentary to put against this film that it does not come up winning.

A character-driven drama? Check.

Artfully shot? Definitely.

Takes us somewhere we have never been? Indeed.

Enlightens a social/political issue through a human lens? Ah, yeah –  and then some.

I could go on  – this is a really superb piece of filmmaking.

Laura Poitras (MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY) has rendered the parallel stories of two brother-in-laws: Abu Jandal, former bodyguard to Osama Bin Laden, and Salim Hamden, prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. In do so with utmost subtlety, she has reflected the entirety of post 9/11 politics anew.

One point of comparison is TAXI RIDE TO THE DARK SIDE, Alex Gibney’s 2008 academy award-winner that also parallels two post 9/11 detainees. The strength of Gibney’s film is the visceral depiction of torture and the nuanced exploration of how it came to happen under US authorities.

However, Gibney does little if anything to challenge people who are already sympathetic to the idea the torture is a bad policy. In contrast, THE OATH is a much more complex work, completely willing to challenge us all to see extremists as people with the contradictions intact.

In this sense, a more interesting comparison is FOG OF WAR, Errol Morris’s 2004 academy award-winner about the life of Robert McNamara. The beauty of Morris’s film is that it taps into the general liberal sentiment of a generation of Americans that McNamarra is (and is only) an arch villain of history. Morris then proceeds to show us a side of McNamarra is charming and thoughtful and all too human for us to continue to see him as a caricature.

But Morris performs his frame-shifting critique from the safety of a 30-year historical bubble. Feelings about 9/11 certainly run as deep as feelings about Vietnam, but they are much fresher, more raw, and less set into cultural tropes.

Therein lies the true courage in Poitras’s film: she is willing to ask the most difficult questions of both subject and audience, and she does it not with a long historical lens, but with a magnifying glass that reveals the world as it is today . . . and tomorrow.

I have plans to see a lot of docs on the big screen this year, and I thought it would be fun to start reviewing them.

I believe that film, documentary in particular, is political. There is something special about seeing a film with a public audience, especially if there is a panel or Q&A. One of the highest ideals we can aspire to is to make media that engenders real discussion of issues.

My goal is not to review every single film I see, but I’m going to limit myself to those I see at public screenings: no DVDs, no cable or Netflix.

First up is NO CROSSOVER: THE TRIAL OF ALLEN IVERSON by Steve James, the director of HOOP DREAMS. On March 29, SilverDocs sponsored a special screening with the filmmaker at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. The film is part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series and will air on the network in April.

Hoop Dreams is a  special film to a lot of people. If you are my age, and you are into documentary, it is  likely that this film made an impression on you when it came out 15 years ago. Perhaps more than any other film of it’s era, Hoop Dreams seemed to teach us the potential for documentary to get at the emotional heart of a story.

So my anticipation level was high for Mr. James to cover the controversial 1993 trial of provocative NBA star Allen Iverson. As a Philly native, I have been a fan of Iverson’s game for a long time, but I knew only a bit about his legal troubles as a celebrated (and vilified) high school athlete in coastal Virginia.

On the surface, this may look like a familiar story: a “racially charged” incident, a young black male railroaded through the justice system, and a community divided . . . but there is more here, and much of it less familiar and more challenging.

How does race divide not just a community, but also a family and even an individual? Are Americans, as attorney general Eric Holder said, cowards about race? And perhaps most striking to me personally: can a white filmmaker justly tell the story of a black subject?

This film goes there, and to a lot of other places that are complex and vital. Iverson himself would not sit for an interview, but James still delivers new insights into what is a perplexing public personality. Toward the end of the film, we see an 18-year-old Iverson receive his GED with obvious pride at a homemade ceremony. This is juxtaposed with the same man, 10 years later and now a millionaire, moved to tears as he is thanked for a scholarship.

But this is far from a hagiography.  We are asked to ponder still deeper questions: has Iverson transcended his circumstances, or does he still carry those wounds deep in his psyche? And to what extent are his injuries self-inflicted?

I liked this film a lot, but I might have liked the QA even more. One way you know your film really worked is when viewers feel the need to give an extended introduction about their own identity to preface their question. If you have been to many Q&As, you have probably witnessed this phenomenon. An audience member comes to the mic, and before she or he can actually get a question out, there is the need to explain where they are from, how race was talked about in their family growing up, and maybe something about their own racial or ethnic identity.

This makes for a slow panel, but it is a sign that the film has touched people in a deep place. They cannot help but reveal these things because the film has forced them into self-examination . . . powerful.

James himself was self-effacing and rather brilliant, and journalist Kevin Blackistone was erudite and provocative. Comparing Iverson to Mohammed Ali, he rightly identified representations of black masculinity as one of the most vexing aspects of American racial history. This led to some disagreement from audience members and some more very smart analysis from the panel and the audience  alike.

And there we were, a relatively diverse  group of over one hundred, talking about race. REALLY talking about it. Agreeing and disagreeing, pushing on points, relenting, listening, and maybe even (at least partially, at least for a moment) understanding.

Not sure how long it has been on the nightstand, the last time I read it lying in bed, or in fact when I first read this book and it (must have) influenced my whole world view.  I mean, that must be what happened, because there it is, a fundamental piece of my personal mythology and moral landscape, and the volume I turn to when I need a little inspiration before falling asleep.

Here is a taste:

“What is the real potential of the intersection of data processing and digital media? How can Final Cut Server lead to new ways of thinking about media production and consumption? What can we make with this tool that can help communicate and understand the world in deeper and more meaningful ways?”

As promised (both in person and on Facebook), I have posted my speaker notes:

PDF 22MB

Keynote 43MB

I’ll briefly relate my own experience: my book was pirated as PDF, almost certainly through a security breach at the publisher. After being notified, the publisher’s attorneys pursued notice and takedown on all of the sites where the bootleg was available. All of the sites complied with the request EXCEPT for Pirate Bay, who wrote back basically to say “Fuck You, we pride ourselves in flaunting your laws.”

Now generally, I am very sympathetic to the idea that information wants to be free, a proponent of liberal application of fair use, and fan of the digital frontier organization, open source software and etc. However, there ought to be basic protection of intellectual property at the purest level (for instance in the case of my publisher and Pirate Bay). Right?

I mean, do people agree that Pirate Bay is in some sense in the wrong, and should (in terms of civil society) be held accountable for their actions? Or, do people have radically different views than mine?

To be honest, I struggle with these questions, but come on, when someone steals your stuff, and you ask them nicely to stop distributing for free (or to profit from ad revenues) and they say fuck you – shouldn’t the authorities take them to task?

Toward a Fuller Conception of Participatory Culture

“Media convergence” and “participatory culture” are two often-heard phrases in current theoretical and practical discussions of Internet video. Henry Jenkins defines media convergence as:

. . .the flow of content across media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the type of entertainment experience they want (2).

He cautions that we not see convergence as a mainly technical phenomenon but as “a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content (3).” Jenkins defines participatory culture as a move away from the traditional notion of audience and producer:

Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understand (3).

Essentially, convergence is the breakdown of the barriers between traditional media types and participatory culture is the breakdown between the conventional roles of consumer and producer.

The premise of this thought paper is that media convergence (both the evolution of media technologies as well the cultural shift that Jenkins focuses on) is well under way, but the shift toward a participatory culture is just getting started. Media producers, consumers and theorists have all become relatively comfortable with the idea that the borders between media types are eroding irrevocably. In contrast, media prognosticators and the public at large have been slower to grapple with the possible new set of rules that Jenkins suggests for a participatory culture. The breakdown between the traditional roles of media producer and consumer is potentially more profound culturally than the breakdown of the traditional media types. It is also (so far) less defined in the cultural imagination. If this premise is correct, then we have already seen a relatively clear vision of what convergence looks like, but we have seen only a hint of the full potential of participatory culture.

Evidence of the mainstream acceptance of media convergence is apparent not only in academia but also in popular culture. Fahrenheit 451, originally published in 1953, depicts homes with full-wall screens to deliver the maximum amount of converged media (as the government prosecutes a campaign to eradicate books [Bradbury]). In the present day, a TV commercial for media services has a football player literally leaping from the TV to the computer to the cell phone. Companies like Apple Computer have made the concept of media convergence a consumer ideal and a marketing message. While we don’t yet have the exact technologies depicted in Fahrenheit 451 or the football commercial, our collective culture has at least contemplated both the shiny perfection of converged media as well as its dystopian potential.

Evidence for the claim that our conceptualization of participatory culture is not fully developed is harder to come by because it is notoriously difficult to identify that which is not yet imagined. Two things that can help ameliorate this problem are: (1) identifying examples of formulations and terminologies that are outdated or inherently insufficient and (2) exploring emerging examples of participatory culture that are on the cutting edge of challenging our conception of the relationships between media, creator, and audience.

One example of the first approach is the phrase “user generated content” when used as a catchall for (among other things) social networks, online video platforms, and citizen journalism. While these phenomena are important examples of our emerging participatory culture, the phrase “user generated content” works against deep re-examination of the traditional roles of producer and audience. It assumes a “user” who (it is inherently implied) is fundamentally different than a producer (or professional). The language describing some of the best examples of the emerging phenomenon undercuts the potential for its ultimate development.

My own thought process as I approached this conference is also revealing. Looking at the participants and topics, I felt that there was a wealth of knowledge regarding the consumer side of Internet video, but that I could bring a special perspective to the changes that online video technology has brought to the video creation process. Then I realized that I had made the same error, placing an artificial barrier between creators and consumers and letting old ways of thinking define how I approached a situation. Future “prosumers” of media in a participatory culture (I had to remind myself) may not draw the same distinctions between viewing, commenting on, editing, creating, and repurposing media. As Jenkins says, they will be operating under “a new set of rules that none of us fully understand.”

One place that new conceptions are emerging is the rapidly growing world of social networks. A friend from college posts videos of obscure rock and punk shows he finds on YouTube to his Facebook wall. The most recent is “The Cramps: Live at Napa State Mental Hospital.” He also writes commentary, for this one it is: “The Cramps, punks, Californian mental patients. The concert of a Nembutal delirium. The lines blur, everyone dances.” He is not producing this content, but he is curating, reviewing, and syndicating it. Moreover, he has created a micro channel, broadcasting to an audience defined by knowing him. All he has technically done is link a video from one Internet platform to another and written a comment. Those few clicks have a direct influence to what I watch online.

A final example of emerging participatory culture is the videos made by players of games and residents of virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. Known as “machinima” (a neologism combining “machine” and “cinema”[Bailey]) these virtually created videos thoroughly defy the conventional division between consumer and producer. Traditionally we think of the players of a game as consumers, and the makers of a video as producers – but in this case, participants are doing both simultaneously.
Neither of these examples is without issue. Who is the owner of this content? Is this repurposing cheating the performers in the concert videos and the designers of the game environments? What about, as in Second Life, if other participants create large portions of the virtual environment that is the setting for the video? These questions can be vexing at the moment, as Jenkins points out: we do not yet understand the new rules.

A turn toward the questions surrounding participatory culture is warranted as we continue to experience and theorize Internet culture and new forms and models of video content creation and distribution. New vectors may emerge from more thorough conceptualization of a deep blurring of the traditional lines between creators and consumers of media.

Works Cited

Bailey, Anthony. “Origins of the word ‘Machinima.’” Anthony Bailey’s blog. 9 Sept. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008. <http://anthonybailey.net/blog/2007/09/09/origins-of-the-word-machinima>

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Random House, 1953.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2006.