ÌÇÐÄTV

Wednesday, 31^st October, 13:00-14:00, G50, Millburn House

Outline:

This talk examines representations of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers in some recent fiction films and documentaries, largely made by white Europeans. Austin will pay particular attention to the symbolic and ethical implications of decisions made by filmmakers, including questions of agency, benefaction, voice and individuation.

In contrast to the indifference or outright hostility with which migrants and refugees have repeatedly been treated, a well-intentioned but Eurocentric trope, evident in both fiction and documentary films, (Le Havre, Terraferma, Ode to Lesvos) follows the attempts made by ‘ordinary’ citizens to help those arriving at the continent’s borders. This celebration of benefaction often reduces the recipients of such hospitality to narrative prostheses, whose main function is to enhance the characterisation of white European characters.

By contrast, Mediterranea shuns the benefaction template to explore links between clandestine immigration and cheap undocumented labour which underpins Europe’s neoliberal economies. In addition, the documentary Les Sauteurs presents migrants’ own actions as in part a form of political resistance, while Imagining Emanuel interrogates the scrutiny and discipline endured by asylum seekers, processes that form part of the unmarked ‘objective violence’ that sustains the European system.

Biography

Thomas Austin has published widely on both popular and documentary film, including such seminal film studies texts as From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis (Pluto Press) and Hollywood, Hype, and Audiences: Selling and Watching Popular Film in the 1990s (Manchester University Press)

He is currently co-editing (with Angelos Koutsourakis) Cinema of Crisis: Film and Contemporary Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) which traces European filmmakers’ diverse responses to interlinked upheavals and emergencies of the past three decades, including: the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the eastern bloc; deindustrialisation and financialisation; the 2007-8 crash and eurozone debt crisis; escalating neoliberal policies and austerity; 'post-democratic' tendencies; scapegoating, exclusionary politics and 'illiberal democracies' within the EU; 'Fortress Europe' and the current 'refugee / migrant crisis'.

Please contact Paula Watkins to RSVP (P.Watkins@warwick.ac.uk)

Professor Caroline Pauwels (Vrije Universiteit Brussels)

Professor Pauwels is a leading international expert on European and national media policy and the economy of the media sector. She is currently Rector at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and has received the Francqui Chair at Ghent University as well as held the Jean Monnet Chair. In 2017 she was selected as the ‘Brussels Leader of the Year’. In 2015, she organized the first World Difference Day () discussing freedom of speech and media.

Professor Pauwels has published extensively on media policy and economics including The Palgrave Handbook of European Media Policy (2014) and Private Television in Western Europe: Content, Markets, Policies (2013).

17^th October, 13:00-14:30

IAS, Millburn House

Please email Paula Watkins (P.Watkins@warwick.ac.uk) to RSVP.

On 11^th July 2017 Chris Bilton will co-present a workshop on innovation and leadership at ÌÇÐÄTV in London’s venue in the old Google building near King’s Cross Station. Chris will be running the workshop alongside Linda Green, of , formerly head of the BBC Leadership programme. Aimed at emerging leaders in medium-sized organisations, this one-day workshop will show you how to recognise and direct innovative ideas, how to lead innovation in others, and how to build a capacity to innovate at both individual and organisational level. Each participant will leave with an action plan to put these ideas into action in their workplace. Details of the event are available .