Left-wing melancholies

With the recent passing of the world's "best-known unknown filmmaker," Chris Marker, it is axiomatic that left-wing melancholy now includes the ongoing loss of previously lost causes – a paradox that suggests the true address of all lost causes worth defending is a strange confluence of past and futural states, as one state. This double loss as gain is also the primary mark of the "landscape" of pessimistic optimism that also denotes the foremost position to occupy today in the battles associated with capitalist End Times (Slavoj Žižek's term). Cultural ecology is no longer what it once was – that is to say, a strange amalgam of vernacular essences perpetrated in the rather forlorn 1970s and/or the insistent and incessant production of difference. Instead, cultural ecology invokes spectral civil war – arguably the very state of things today – and the return of "the dead" in the persistence of forms of high-formalist and high-conceptualist works of art and architecture. This paper examines the late works of the late Chris Marker, including the very short videos he uploaded to You Tube under the pseudonym "Kosinki" from 2007 to 2011, an event contiguous with his return to exhibiting very-still photography from 2006 to 2011. Marker's simultaneous returns to still photography and the short film-essay are both magnificent gestures toward the austerities required of present-day media to effect the necessary "return" to what is always present in one form or another anyway – the non-place between world and world-to-come.

A beautiful day

Short film screening.

Red rattler

A short dance film created and performed by Dianne Reid in response to the red train site and the 2013 performance season of Dance Interrogations in the red train.

PLT practitioners : soldiers For “vocationalism”, or double agents?

This presentation extends on some previous work around my PhD research.
I question ways in which social structures are inscribed into legal education practices, and conversely, whether practices can modify those structures. I argue PLT practitioners are not simply soldiers for a “vocationalist” strategy. Instead, I re-imagine PLT practitioners as “double agents” or “resistance fighters”, lamplighters in a still emergent professional trajectory. It is a trajectory catalysed by the 1970s introduction of institutional PLT; just a baby really, in the context of English common law.

In Bourdieu’s terms it is possible, by revisiting past struggles in Australian legal education, to conceptualise institutional PLT as the product of judicial, professional, and academic struggles to produce a vocationalised, non-academic, and critique-free sub-field within the juridical field. Those struggles succeeded, to some extent, in the extra-individual dimension of structures, regulation, and institutions, to collectively inculcate preferred dispositions within individuals about legal education and professional identity.

That account, however, ignores the potential for agency and alterity – the ways in which individuals might appropriate, in Certeau’s terms, the resources of the legal field to explore new professional trajectories. For some, these trajectories involve struggles to enrich, and add texture to, legal education. Drawing on interviews with PLT practitioners, I identify multi-vocal and multi-perspectival themes, including notions of social justice, equality, professional ethics, personal improvement, and indeed, interest in scholarship of teaching and learning.

It is in this sense I re-imagine PLT practitioners as “double agents”, operating betwixt and between dominant domains in law. In my view, PLT practitioners can participate in conceptualising and developing emergent approaches in legal education, and to theorise “practice” as lawyers and educators. Scholarship of teaching and learning has its part to play in this. It provides a means, as lawyers and as educators, to discover information, to reflect, critique, communicate, and conceptualise, insights about “practice” and practices.

Communicating history A-historically

A paper delivered in tandem with the short film Threshold (Dirk De Bruyn, 20 minutes, 2014), which documents the history and childhood remembrances of the Geelong Waterfront using photographic material gleaned from the Geelong Heritage Centre, the Victorian State Library, the National Film and Sound Archive and Auckland War Memorial Museum alongside Google Maps.

As mulheres choradeiras: literatura e cinema

Este trabalho tem como objetivo a compreensão e estudo de cultura da Amazônia, visando a produzir conhecimento qualificado sobre Literatura e Cinema na Amazônia e suas relações com estratégias artísticas para interpretá-las. Para atingir este objetivo, utilizo o conto „As Mulheres Choradeiras‟, de Fábio Castro, e o curta homônimo, de Jorane Castro, permitindo assim um estudo focado em material de análise específico voltado para os costumes, as crenças, o mito, a hibridização e as traduções interculturais que se desenham nessa obra. O objetivo dessa pesquisa é estudar o conto e o curtametragem, enfatizando assim a diferença de linguagens por ele apresentadas e mostrar a leitura universal que se pode fazer a partir de cada uma dessas expressões artísticas. Essa pesquisa pretende apresentar leituras universais de um conto paraense com temática voltada para a realidade amazônica e ressaltar o estudo dos mitos e da oralidade que envolve a criação do conto de Fábio Castro e sua propagação. Os mitos e a oralidade possibilitam uma (re)construção e desenvolvimento de conhecimentos que permeiam a atividade da leitura (conhecimentos artístico, cultural, social, filosófico e histórico) além de enriquecer e (re)afirmar a identidade latino-americana. Por isso, esse trabalho tem o intuito de relacionar a história do conto a outras leituras, tais quais sua aproximação e semelhança aos mitos, oralidade e outras literaturas em geral. Entende-se, portanto, que todos estes elementos constituem uma literatura rica e de grande importância para o mundo, e não apenas para a região onde foi produzida.

Tolerância

The screenplay for the short film Tolerance is a project whose goal is to generate discussion about intolerance, which falls on the minority cultures in contemporary society. Even preserving their Brazilianness, through the art direction, it can cross borders as it does not have dialogues, and addresses current realities that underlie different cultures, even the most liberal and democratic. This project can achieve the interests of various groups, making it an excellent tool for generating discussion and debate in all social and educational levels

Bendito: a narrativa em fluxos transmídia

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Imagens, sensações e afetos: as personagens gays nos curtas-metragens brasileiros exibidos no Festival Mix Brasil de Cultura da Diversidade

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Mother-Child Spiritual Discourse: A Mixed Methods Study

Parents and children, starting at very young ages, discuss religious and spiritual issues¿where we come from, what happens to us after we die, is there a God, and so on. Unfortunately, few studies have analyzed the content and structure of parent-child conversation about religion and spirituality (Boyatzis & Janicki, 2003; Dollahite & Thatcher, 2009), and most studies have relied on self-report with no direct observation. The current study examined mother-child (M-C) spiritual discourse to learn about its content, structure, and frequency through a survey inventory in combination with direct video observation using a novel structured task. We also analyzed how mothers¿ religiosity along several major dimensions related to their communication behaviors within both methods. Mothers (N = 39, M age = 40) of children aged 3-12 completed a survey packet on M-C spiritual discourse and standard measures of mothers¿ religious fundamentalism, intrinsic religiosity, sanctification of parenting (how much the mother saw herself as doing God¿s work as a parent), and a new measure of parental openness to children¿s spirituality. Then, in a structured task in our lab, mothers (N = 33) and children (M age = 7.33) watched a short film or read a short book that explored death in an age-appropriate manner and then engaged in a videotaped conversation about the movie or book and their religious or spiritual beliefs. Frequency of M-C spiritual discourse was positively related to mothers¿ religious fundamentalism (r = .71, p = .00), intrinsic religiosity (r = .77, p = .00), and sanctification of parenting (r = .79, p = .00), but, surprisingly, was inversely related to mothers¿ v openness to child¿s spirituality (r = -.52, p = .00). Survey data showed that the two most common topics discussed were God (once a week) and religion as it relates to moral issues (once a week). According to mothers their children¿s most common method of initiating spiritual discourse was to repeat what he or she has heard parents or family say about religious issues (M = 2.97; once a week); mothers¿ most common method was to describe their own religious/spiritual beliefs (M = 2.92). Spiritual discourse most commonly occurred either at bedtime or mealtime as reported by 26% of mothers, with the most common triggers reported as daily routine/random thoughts (once a week) and observations of nature (once a week). Mothers¿ most important goals for spiritual discourse were to let their children know that they love them (M = 3.72; very important) and to help them become a good and moral person (M = 3.67; very important). A regression model showed that significant variance in frequency of mother-child spiritual discourse (R2 = .84, p = .00) was predicted by the mothers¿ importance of goals during discourse (ß = 0.46, p = .00), frequency that the mother¿s spirituality was deepened through spiritual discourse (ß = 0.39, p = .00), and the mother¿s fundamentalism (ß = 0.20, p = .05). In a separate regression, the mother¿s comfort in the structured task (ß = 0.70, p = .00), and the number of open-ended questions she asked (ß = -0.26, p = .03) predicted the reciprocity between mother and child (R2 = .62, p = .00). In addition, the mother¿s age (ß = 0.22, p = .059) and comfort during the task (ß = 0.73, p = .00) predicted the child¿s engagement within the structured task. Other findings and theoretical and methodological implications will be discussed.

Unsafe abortion: A neglected crisis in women's health

Women around the world risk their lives to end unwanted pregnancies. Created in 2003 and recently converted to a digital format, this short film highlights the toll that unsafe abortion takes on women and the comprehensive approach that Ipas takes to saving women's lives by improving access to safe abortion and contraception. Since this film was made, deaths from unsafe abortion have thankfully decreased to approximately 47,000 each year. However, the estimated number of unsafe abortions has risen to more than 21 million annually, largely due to the increase in population. We have a long way to go before the scourge of unsafe abortion is eliminated.

Introducción a Blender

El mundo de la animación 3D está en plena actualidad en este momento. Salas de cine, programas de televisión y la publicidad nos muestran constantemente personajes y objetos animados creados por ordenador. Son muchos los programas que pueden usarse para la realización de animación en 3D. En este proyecto vamos a centrarnos en Blender. Blender es un programa de animación y modelado que se puede obtener de manera gratuita por internet. Se trata de un programa de software libre, por lo que constantemente está siendo modificado gracias a la aportación de usuarios anónimos por internet. El objetivo de este proyecto es la creación de un corto de animación de un minuto de duración con Blender, para lo cual serán necesarias una serie de pautas iniciales sobre cómo funciona Blender y sus posibilidades. La primera parte de este proyecto es una guía básica sobre Blender y sus características. Capítulo a capítulo se irán describiendo la interfaz del programa y la creación de objetos (modelado, asignación de materiales y texturas) para luego aprender a animarlos y a visualizarlos como imágenes o video. La segunda parte se centra en el corto MOL. Creado a partir de los conocimientos adquiridos en la guía anterior, añadiendo en algunos casos, nuevas propiedades necesarias para su elaboración. Se describirán cada uno de los elementos y su creación. Esta guía pretende ser un referente para aquel que quiera introducirse en el mundo de la animación 3D con Blender. The world of 3D animation is a trending topic nowadays. Cinema, television and advertising constantly show us characters and animated objects created with computer graphics. There are many programs that can be used to perform 3D animations. In this project we will focus on Blender. Blender is a modeling and animation program that is available for free online. Blender is an open source program, so it is constantly being modified and improved by anonymous online users. The objective of this project is to create a one-minute animation short with Blender, for which we will require an initial set of guidelines on how Blender works and its possibilities. The first part of this project is a basic guide and will only cover basic features of Blender. In each chapter we will describe the interface and how to create objects (modeling, assigning materials and textures) and then we will learn to animate these objects and to display them as images or video. The second part focuses on the short film MOL. Created from the knowledge gained in the previous guide adding, in same cases, new properties necessary for its creation. We will describe each of the elements involved in the making of. This guide is intended to be a referent guide for anyone who wants to enter the world of 3D animation with Blender.

Text categorization methods for automatic estimation of verbal intelligence

In this paper we investigate whether conventional text categorization methods may suffice to infer different verbal intelligence levels. This research goal relies on the hypothesis that the vocabulary that speakers make use of reflects their verbal intelligence levels. Automatic verbal intelligence estimation of users in a spoken language dialog system may be useful when defining an optimal dialog strategy by improving its adaptation capabilities. The work is based on a corpus containing descriptions (i.e. monologs) of a short film by test persons yielding different educational backgrounds and the verbal intelligence scores of the speakers. First, a one-way analysis of variance was performed to compare the monologs with the film transcription and to demonstrate that there are differences in the vocabulary used by the test persons yielding different verbal intelligence levels. Then, for the classification task, the monologs were represented as feature vectors using the classical TF–IDF weighting scheme. The Naive Bayes, k-nearest neighbors and Rocchio classifiers were tested. In this paper we describe and compare these classification approaches, define the optimal classification parameters and discuss the classification results obtained.