Au service du marechal?:French documentary under German occupation

Following the fall of France in June 1940 and the installation of the Vichy Regime, government set about establishing its own New Order. A reprogramming of national consciousness was attempted through an emphasis on a return to traditional values which was disseminated in various fora. Despite publications on divers aspects of Vichy's propaganda machine, work on film production of the period has merely touched on mainstream documentary without further analysis. Such a lacuna appears inexplicable in light of the production of 550 or so documentaries between 1940 and 1944, especially in view of a 1948 comment by the film writer Roger Régent that documentary in many ways provided a focal point for the regime's wishes for "moralisation collective". This thesis sets out the first steps of a new evaluation of the role of documentary during the Occupation. After an overview of the changes to the industry and the ideological framework of the Révolution nationale, the thesis discusses theories of propaganda together with direct examples of Vichy propaganda documentary. The 'control' thus established is then applied to an examination of the 'Arts, Sciences, Voyages' series of documentary screenings (1941-43) and the Premier congrès du film documentaire (1943), tracing thematic and ideological consonances and evaluating the use of documentary film of the Occupation in the Service of the Marshal.

An evaluation of aerial photography as a source of environmental information

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The Library of Birmingham project:lifelong learning for the digital age

The Library of Birmingham (LoB) is a £193million project designed to provide a new space for lifelong learning and knowledge growth, a physical and virtual portal for Birmingham's citizens to the wider world. In cooperation with a range of private, public, and third-sector bodies, as well as individual citizens, the library, due to open in June 2013, will articulate a continuing process of organic growth and emergence. Key delivery themes focus on: arts and creativity, citizenship and community, enterprise and innovation, learning and skills and the new media ecology. A landmark design in the heart of the cultural district of the city, the LoB aims to stimulate sustainable economic growth, urban regeneration and social inclusion by offering a wide range of new digital learning services, real and virtual community spaces, and new opportunities for interpreting and exploiting internationally significant collections of documentary archives, photography, moving image, and rare printed books. Additionally, the LoB will offer physical space for creative, cultural, enterprise, and knowledge development. This paper outlines the cultural and educational thinking that informs the project and the challenges experienced in developing innovative service redesign.

The application of aerial photography to surveys of potential disposal sites

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From the medicalisation of dementia to the politics of memory and identity in three Spanish documentary films:Bicicleta, cullera, poma, Las voces de la memoria and Bucarest: la memòria perduda

This paper explores how the concept of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is constructed through Spanish media and documentary films and how it is represented. The article analyses three documentary films and the cultural and social contexts in and from which they emerged: Solé´s Bucarest: la memòria perduda [Bucharest: Memory Lost] (2007), Bosch´s Bicicleta, cullera, poma [Bicycle, Spoon, Apple] (2010) , and Frabra’s Las voces de la memoria [Memory´s Voices] (2011). The three documentary films approach AD from different perspectives, creating well-structured discourses of what AD represents for contemporary Spanish society, from medicalisation of AD to issues of personhood and citizenship. These three films are studied from an interdisciplinary perspective, in an effort to strengthen the links between ageing and dementia studies and cultural studies. Examining documentary film representations of AD from these perspectives enables semiotic analyses beyond the aesthetic perspectives of film studies, and the exploration of the articulation of knowledge and power in discourses about AD in contemporary Spain

Researching with, not on:using photography in researching street children in Accra, Ghana

What is discussed in this chapter is work-in-progress, an opportunity for reflection upon elements of an on-going research project examining the lives of street children in Accra, Ghana. Street children have received much research in recent years but our project is, we believe, distinctive in two respects. The first of these is that access to reliable data on the growing presence of children on the streets of African cities is often problematic. Available research is often diffuse and hard to access, it is more often than not driven by the short-term requirements of specific programmes and interventions and as a consequence can be lacking in depth, rigour and innovation. Without the means to provide a sufficiently self-conscious and critical engagement with accepted understandings of the lives of street children, consideration of the experience of street children in Africa continues to rely heavily on the more capacious and better disseminated research from the Americas (e.g., Mickelson, 2000). At the very least, Africa's specific experience of large population displacements, diversity of family forms, rapid urbanisation, vigorous structural adjustment and internal conflict raise important questions about the appropriateness of such ready generalisations. Judith Ennew (2003, p. 4) is clear that caution is needed in an uncritical endorsement of the “globalisation of the street child based on Latin American work”. She is equally mindful, however, that as far as Africa is concerned the absence of reliable evidence continues to hinder debate.

Comparison of subjective and objective methods to determine the retinal arterio-venous ratio using fundus photography

Purpose: To assess the inter and intra observer variability of subjective grading of the retinal arterio-venous ratio (AVR) using a visual grading and to compare the subjectively derived grades to an objective method using a semi-automated computer program. Methods: Following intraocular pressure and blood pressure measurements all subjects underwent dilated fundus photography. 86 monochromatic retinal images with the optic nerve head centred (52 healthy volunteers) were obtained using a Zeiss FF450+ fundus camera. Arterio-venous ratios (AVR), central retinal artery equivalent (CRAE) and central retinal vein equivalent (CRVE) were calculated on three separate occasions by one single observer semi-automatically using the software VesselMap (ImedosSystems, Jena, Germany). Following the automated grading, three examiners graded the AVR visually on three separate occasions in order to assess their agreement. Results: Reproducibility of the semi-automatic parameters was excellent (ICCs: 0.97 (CRAE); 0.985 (CRVE) and 0.952 (AVR)). However, visual grading of AVR showed inter grader differences as well as discrepancies between subjectively derived and objectively calculated AVR (all p < 0.000001). Conclusion: Grader education and experience leads to inter-grader differences but more importantly, subjective grading is not capable to pick up subtle differences across healthy individuals and does not represent true AVR when compared with an objective assessment method. Technology advancements mean we no longer rely on opthalmoscopic evaluation but can capture and store fundus images with retinal cameras, enabling us to measure vessel calibre more accurately compared to visual estimation; hence it should be integrated in optometric practise for improved accuracy and reliability of clinical assessments of retinal vessel calibres. © 2014 Spanish General Council of Optometry.