Encompassing 40 years of immigrant life in Britain, Sandhya Suri’s filmic essay I for India (2005) is a collage of amateur home movies, British newsreels as well as film stock shot by the director herself. The home movie footage was filmed by Suri’s father who came to Britain as an immigrant doctor in the 1960s and who exchanged super8-films andaudio reels as cine-letters about his new life with his family in India. After having rediscovered the material on the attic of her family home, Sandhya Suri transformed it into her graduate thesis film at the The National Film and Television School in London. Dealing with memory, nostalgia and migrant experiences in Britain, I for India establishes a counter-history to the hegemonic national discourse in which migrant experiences are marginalized, objectified or rendered invisible.My paper is going to examine the role of the amateur footage for reflecting on the ontology of the image and the materiality of the different film formats. How does the reception of the footage change in the course of its dissemination? In what way does the filmic montage in I for India contribute to challenging the dominant media discourse on Asians in Britain? I would like to argue that the amateur footage helps to counter the ethnographic, Eurocentric gaze on the new citizens and subverts the hegemonic use of images of migrants as a means of control and classification (Alan Sekula) or as a weapon (Susan Sontag). How do the amateur images migrate into the collective (national) visual archive? Finally, the example of I for India might also show that Zygmunt Bauman’s binary opposition between tourists and nomads needs to be complicated.

Collective film-making practice in Germany is still a blind spot in film historiography. During the 1970s and 1980s independent film and video workshops established a nationwide network to provide ‘counter information’ (Negt/Kluge) in order to challenge dominant media representations. Therefore, the works of the video collectives can become a relevant source for historians and journalists alike. While the videos can be perceived as an important contribution to left-wing cultural memory, this memory of the various media practices of the last decades is currently fading away. The videotapes slowly disintegrate and as digitization is costly and time-consuming, many video productions will not survive. This has consequences not only for historiography, but also for the visual iconography of cultural memory. This article focuses on the archival practice of three workshops in Hamburg, the stronghold for German independent film-making after 1968: the Medienpädagogikzentrum (Centre for Media Pedagogy, 1973–), bildwechsel (1979–), the umbrella organization for women in media, culture and art, and die thede (1980–), an association of documentary film-makers. The examples show how archival practice can be conceptualized not only as part of the hegemonic national archive alone, but also as an act of counter-memory. © 2011 Intellect Ltd Article.

The fact that Black artists are quite often pigeonholed as spokespersons of Black experience is due to a mimetic understanding of art. Using examples from 1980s Black British diasporic filmmaking I would like to shift the analytical focus from representation and mimesis towards art as interventionist practice. The mysterious deaths of young Black men in police custody form the point of departure for an exploration of memory and mourning in Mysteries in July (Black Audio Film Collective, 1991). Additionally, the Sankofa film collective's Territories (1985) is an exploration of urban space, historiography, heterotopia and Black masculinities, while practices of surveillance and the framing of Blacks via media discourses are addressed in Handsworth Songs (Black Audio Film Collective 1986). These filmic essays, instead of looking at the black male as a given social problem, reflect on its construction through discourses of media and governmentality. Rather than creating a counter-discourse, these films abstain from trying to depict events "as they really happened". Instead, they deconstruct the hegemonic media discourse through the use of self-reflexive means. While counter practices often assume a unified essentialist stand (as in concepts of Afrocentrism and négritude, for example) I would suggest that in 1980s diasporic Black British filmmaking self-reflexivity is employed as a strategy which might be able to solve a notion of "strategic essentialism" (Spivak). Filmmaking thus serves as an epistemological tool to deal with the gaps, fissures and absences in the national visual archive and in hegemonic historiography while at the same time defying notions of homogeneity and authenticity. The use of self-reflexivity enables the films to reflect on modes of exclusion of the Black subject from hegemonic discourses on the ontology of the image and on the filmic apparatus. To sum up, my paper outlines auteurist strategies of dealing with the exclusion of both the official canon and of the collective visual archive of the nation.

Das populäre Hindikino, schon immer hybrid, ist seit den 1990er Jahren ein globales Phänomen. Die Ausrichtung auf ein internationales Publikum hat Konsequenzen für die Produktion, Ästhetik und Distribution der Filme. Inwiefern kann eine transnationale Perspektive dem Wandel Bollywoods vom Kino zur Kulturindustrie (Rajadhyaksha) Rechnung tragen? Der Beitrag untersucht veränderte Distributionsbedingungen, lokale Rezeptionen und Aneignungen sowie Bollywoods globale Fankultur.

Review of the DVD edition of Macpherson's experimental film "Borderline", a British avant-garde classic negotiating issues of race and sexuality.

This article describes the function of the metareferential turn in black British filmmaking of the 1980s. Metaisation is here a result of the impact of European art cinema (Godard, Paradjanov, Kluge) as well as of Third Cinema practice and of the ‘essay film’ represented by Alain Resnais, Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard. Using the examples of Handsworth Songs and Seven Songs for Malcolm X by the Black Audio Film Collective, directed by John Akomfrah, as well as Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston and The Attendant, this article outlines five functions of metareference. First, it can be regarded as a means to counter and reflect on the absences in the visual archive in Britain and of questioning the master narrative of British historiography. Second, it is used as a way of transgressing the boundaries of representation and of escaping the fruitless debate about negative and positive stereotypes. Third, metaisation is employed as an artistic strategy in order to inscribe oneself as an auteur into film historiography. Fourth, it can be regarded as a means of escaping the critical label of the social realist filmmaker who deals with the representation of black experiences. Finally, metaisation contributes to a reconceptualisation of the works in terms of both media theory and the essay film.

Review of filmmaker and DJ Don Letts' autobiography

Intervju med Werner Krebs, medlem av de oppositionella s k "Swingjugend" under nazismen.

Intervju med Hans Peter Viau, medlem av de oppositionella s k "Swingjugend" under nazismen.

Artists like Isaac Julien or John Akomfrah, founding member of the legendary Black Audio Film Collective, have recently made increasing use of the gallery space and the art circuits. John Akomfrah's The Genome Chronicles and Mnemosyne were created and exhibited as film installations, and so were most of Isaac Julien's recent works, e.g. Fantôme Créole, True North and Baltimore. Yet, even more striking is the fact that Handsworth Songs, the 1986 filmic essay by the Black Audio Film Collective, initially commissioned for television (Channel 4), 25 years after its premiere has experienced a renaissance when it was screened at the renown international art exhibition documenta XI. Recently, Tate Britain has acquired the piece for its collections, which in turn has been shown as a temporary video installation. What impact does the shift from the black box to the white cube have for Black British avant-garde film-making? I argue that the changed modes of distribution and exhibition are closely connected to a reconceptualisation of the works (Eshun 2011, Brunow 2011). This, in turn, has consequences for the auteur-status of the artists and, subsequently, the canonisation of their films and installations. I suggest that Handsworth Songs, while previously being classified as a 'documentary' (Corner 1996) and as a representation of a pre-given reality, should be perceived as a mediation on memory, colonialism and historiography. In creating a collage of archive footage, photographs and tableaux vivants, the film reflects on the ontology of the image and the racifying structures inherent in photography and the filmic apparatus. In the paper I will analyse the film’s aesthetic politics while taking a closer look at the use of intermediality and self-reflexivity as a means to transgress the notion of representation in favour of a performative turn towards the notion of film-making as intervention.

A review of the recent issue of the feminist journal of film studies "Frauen und Film" and the previous edition of the journal testcard with its focus on gender studies. Using the issue of "Frauen and Film" as an example, the review argues for the need to include the notion of masculinity into gender studies.

This paper explores contemporary art practice in Hamburg as a way to counter current trends of regeneration in different areas of the city. While officials promote the concept of “the growing city”, artists have employed various strategies of resistance.

For a couple of years now, artists, urban anthropologists or filmmakers have been mapping the city from different perspectives (urban, audio, post-colonial). The paper presents the case study of an artistic intervention organised by the independent radio station FSK collaborating with a dozen artists and researchers in a workshop. In a “futurist search for traces” a mapping of disappearing city sounds forms the first part of the project. In a second step these soundfiles are archived on the website of radio aporee (http://aporee.org/maps/). Here the sites and sounds can be accessed by GPS-enabled mobile devices. Aporee thus forms an expanding archive which enables us to trace changes in urban space, e.g. in the course of gentrification. The paper analyses the politics of disappearance as a counter strategy and critically examines archival practices to rescue oppositional experiences.

How do artists deal with the lack of discursive space for the representation of Blackhistory? While Spike Lee depicts the story of Malcolm X in an epic mode, the British Black AudioFilm Collective (BAFC) rather focuses on the ruptures, gaps and fissures of Black history. Theirfilm Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993), which hit the cinema screens only a few months later than its US-counterpart, thus forms an interesting contrast to Lee’s feature film, in particular as itwas photographed by Spike Lee’s and Julie Dash’s cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Moreover, boththe BAFC-productions Handsworth Songs (1986) and Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1989)acknowledge that Black history cannot be told in a linear mode. Instead, in centring around memoryand oblivion they focus on the “ghosts of stories” rather than on a chronological positivist narrative.My argument is that during the 1980s the BAFC (John Akomfrah, Reece Auguiste, Edward George,Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, David Lawson, and Trevor Mathison) as well as other British filmcollectives like Sankofa (Isaac Julien, Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood and Nadine Marsh-Edwards) developed a modernist filmmaking that consciously employs formalistic means in orderto undermine the traditional depiction of history and memory inscribed into the Industrial Mode ofRepresentation.My paper explores the following questions: In what way did the industrial context in the 1980s enablethe avant-garde practices of British independent filmmaking? What aesthetic devices does the BAFCemploy to point at the “absence of ruins” (Derek Walcott)? How are modernist poetic strategies usedto reveal the “ghosts of history”? And in what way can Black British filmmaking be regarded as a siteof remembrance, as a part of postcolonial historiography?

Acclaimed German film director Fatih Akin‘s documentary Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren (We forgot to return home, 2001) and Sandhya Suri’s film essay I for India (2005) both deal with questions of memory and belonging. Both films employ a parallel strategy of the filmmakers interviewing their parents, who migrated to Germany (from Turkey) or to Britain (from India) respectively. Suri’s film is based on super8-footage shot by her father that was originally sent to his family in India, recording the life of this 1st generation migrant family in Britain. In turn, Suri’s family received films and tapes from India. Thus, the home movie footage forms an epistolary account of the creation of transnational memory production. Furthermore, her film shows how some experiences are silenced and how a certain (official) narration of home and belonging is created. Also Akin’s film not only documents migrant history, but is in itself a document of the construction of memory.I would like to focus on the following questions: How does individual memory become collective memory? What aesthetic devices (use of archive footage, modes of self-reflexivity) do the filmmakers employ to broaden the narrative, to make the personal political? In what way do these films form a counter-history to the hegemonic national discourse in which migrant experiences are marginalized, objectified or rendered invisible?In what way can these films become a source for migrant historiography? Do they even exceedthe representational level? My point is that these films are not mere documentaries and should not only be read from a mimetic perspective, as “representations” of “ethnicity”, but are more interesting to look at from the perspective of performativity. They show in what way memory is shaped, how a narrative is constructed and how individuals create their own perception of reality. Thus, they take an anti-essentialist stand and avoid presenting their characters as objects, granting them agency and subjectivity instead.

In its highly self-reflexive mode, questioning the notion of filmic images as ‘visible evidence’, the essay film is an epistemological tool for the study of visual politics. Therefore, it can offer useful insights into the mediatization of cultural memory. This paper will look at the use of the essay film by minoritized groups (Black, diasporic, feminist, queer), focussing on the remediations of archival footage. How can essay films be conceptualised as an emancipatory practice opening up discursive spaces for vernacular and alternative memories without lapsing into essentialism? Using Black British avant-garde filmmaking as an example, this paper examines filmic interventions into the visual archive. It outlines three practices of an anti-essentialist use of images defying notions of ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’:  reworking the archive as a) ways of deconstructing hegenomic representation, b) as archaeological excavations into the archive, and c) as a mode of carving out discursive spaces for utopian visions.

A portrait of the Swedish director Roy Andersson

Collective filmmaking practice in Germany is still a blind spot in film historiography. This is all the more surprising since independent film and video workshops established a nationwide network of political media practice during the 1970s. Inspired by Brecht and Tretjakov, Negt/Kluge and Enzensberger, their aims were twofold: first, to empower political activists departing from Tretjakov’s idea of “operative” art and second, to establish film archives and distribution networks. Yet, currently the archives are facing severe problems concerning  preservation: as the video tapes slowly disintegrate, the memory of the various media practices of the last decades is fading away. As digitization is costly and time-consuming, many video productions will not survive. This has, as I will argue, consequences not only for (left-wing) historiography, but also for the visual iconography of cultural memory. My paper focusses on the archival practice of two workshops in Hamburg: the mpz (Medienpädagogikzentrum, 1973-) and bildwechsel, the feminist film archive (1979-).  International influences such as the independent workshop sector in the UK as well as questions of auteurism and canonisation will be discussed.

Departing from the opening scene of Roy Anderssons’s 1991 short Härlig är jorden/World of Glory, the article gives an overview of the director’s political aesthetics outlined in his book Vår tids rädsla för allvar (‘Our Time’s Fear of Seriousness’, 1995/2009).

Through the use of static long shots, stylization and the condensation of time and space Andersson attempts to activate reflection upon existential questions such as solidarity, mutual support and the individual’s responsibility. In this scene from World of Glory Andersson links these ideas with a critique on Swedish passivity during the Holocaust.

About the mainstream-success of the Asian-British BBC-comedy "Goodness Gracious Me"

Hell broke loose when Bollywood megastar Shahrukh Khan arrived at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. While until then popular Hindi cinema and its star system had gone practically unnoticed in the German mainstream media, SRK's visit to the Berlinale epitomised that Germany, like Israel and the Gulf nations, despite its comparatively small numbers of NRIs, is an expanding market for the Hindi film industry.My aim in this paper is two-fold. First, instead of offering empirical audience research, I would like to emphasise the importance of the industrial context for the reception of film. Therefore, I am going to have a closer look at how distribution and marketing have contributed to changing the reception of Bollywood from being a diasporic cultural practice among NRIs (as well as for instance Turkish and Afghan immigrants) to attracting (female) audiences of the German majority. While reception studies often deal with the function of Bollywood for diasporic audiences, my focus lies thus on the discursive shift from margin to centre.Second, using the city of Hamburg as an example, I would like to complicate the category of “nation” in reception studies. Therefore, I am interested in aspects of how physical spaces like cities shape the reception of cultural products. In what ways have Bollywood films been distributed and circulated in Hamburg? What impact did the shift from community screenings in cinemas to video rentals in Desi stores to DVD consumption have? Does the internet eventually contribute to outweighing localised cultural practice? In short: what are the defining factors that the German reception of Bollywood can no longer be exclusively conceptualised in terms of “where you're from”, but of “what you're at”?

The article theorises how the radio as a medium constructs gender positions and presents a case study of the Hamburg independent radio FSK 93,0