News
2012/13
Congratulations to Ylva Rodny-Gumede who has recently completed her PhD, titled “Race and the transformation of South African news media: 1994 – 2010”, earlier this year. Ylva is a Lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.
2011/12
Don't Cut My Head Off, a film by Somnath Batabyal, Matti Pohjonen, Kazimuddin Ahmed and Pradip Saha, is a plea from people who face reality, to the smart people who negotiate to manage reality.
Seno Tsuhah, from Chizami village in Nagaland went to the Copenhagen Climate Meet in 2009, and came back home disappointed. The film travels between Copenhagen and Chizami, and captures the ‘disconnect’ between the reality of climate change and its articulation in hyper mediated spectacles like United Nations’ Climate Meet.
Seno represents a farming community that operates within a matrix of natural world. She hoped that she would be able to offer climate negotiators some clue on how to manage the earth. Nobody listened. In the midst of hard bargaining between the world’s political elites, Seno, or a drowning fisherman from Tuvalu, became abstract notions.
There is a Naga folksong. Two women walk through a forest to attend a friend’s wedding. But they have to negotiate with a headhunter inside the forest. Don’t Cut My Head Off is a story about millions of the world who have to negotiate with their killers for survival.
The film is distributed by Magic Lanterns. It has been screened at several international festivals and conferences including Delhi, Istanbul, Rome, London, Heidelberg and Stuttgart.
2009/10
Congratulations to Luke Robinson who has recently completed his PhD. Full thesis title: "Xianchang: On Location with China's New Documentary Film Movement". Current Job: Lecturer, Film and TV Studies Institute Nottingham University.
Congratulations to Wendy Willems who has recently completed her Phd. Her full thesis title is: "Imagining the power of the media: global news, nationalism and popular culture in the context of the 'Zimbabwe crisis' (2000-2007)". I will start on 1 January 2010 as Lecturer in Media Studies in the School of Literature and Language Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. wendy.willems@wits.ac.za
Congratulations to Silke Neihusmann who has recently completed her PhD. Her full thesis title is: "Manga: lost in translation?"
