Periodic Reporting for period 2 - REEL BORDERS (Fiction Film and Borderlands)
Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2024-01-31
Borders are omnipresent in today’s debates about belonging, identity, migration and security. The nature of territorial borders transforms constantly as a result of globalization, neoliberalism and different kinds of bordering practices. Cultural artefacts – such as films – can provide a rich insight into how borders are constructed, experienced and challenged, but there is little systematic or large-scale research addressing the cultural dimensions of borders. More knowledge about these dimensions can help us to better understand the malleable character of borders, their historical contingencies and their various subjective meanings for different societal groups. The overall objectives of REEL BORDERS are to (1) map how film has been used to construct particular borders, by conducting film analyses; (2) analyse through interviews and content analyses why and how different actors, organizations and institutions use film to tell particular stories about borders; (3) understand border experiences of borderlanders through visual methods such as participatory filmmaking and cineforums. Ultimately REEL BORDERS seeks to develop a new theory on border imaginations that includes film as well as multiple subjective perspectives. The project’s participatory films will also enable public circulation and awareness regarding social issues in Europe’s border regions. REEL BORDERS focuses on three border regions around the borders of UK-Ireland, Spain-Morocco and Turkey-Syria.
Development of REEL BORDERS’ conceptual and methodological frameworks was achieved through an in-depth literature review (including one working paper on each border) and a series of workshops with invited experts. Significant attention was paid to ethical reflexivity in the context of participatory and visual methods. In terms of data collection we have so far developed three detailed databases with films and production details (partly open to the public via Letterboxd platform), conducted 50 expert interviews (including with filmmakers, film programmers, film archives), conducted 63 interviews with borderlanders (including migrants, activists), conducted 14 cineforum sessions and 2 three-month participatory filmmaking workshops with a total of 22 participants. Data collection on the UK-Ireland and Spain-Morocco border regions has been finalised while currently the data collection in the Turkish-Syrian border region is being started up. While the empirical and conceptual progress of the project are significant in their own right (with several forthcoming publications), we found that the project’s participatory and visual methods (filmmaking and cineforum) have a large potential for contribution beyond our specific field. We have hence put substantial effort in fine-tuning these methods, presenting them to different audiences and developing forthcoming publications devoted to them.
Our progress beyond the state of the art is so far mostly related to the empirical scope and scale of the qualitative, creative and participatory approaches to borderlanders' experiences and perspectives. Notably the participatory filmmaking workshops are a significant step for the literature as we are able to make more solid reflections on ethics, on filmmaking approaches and on the role of participatory distribution strategies. As for the borderlanders' experiences and perspectives we also develop a novel method, the cineforum approach, which will be an inspiring approach for social scientists that want to work with visual materials in qualitative research.