Home as a Space of Resistance in European Film
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Addressing an increasingly globalised housing crisis, European filmmakers have turned their attention to the precarity of home, generating a vast mediascape of activist documentaries, essay and short films and features, a corpus that, similarly to the crisis it originates from, is better understood within a transnational framework. This talk will discuss selected examples from the wider project MEDIAHOMES. These films constitute a “precarious home” transnational genre expressing the politics of representation of those subjects who, marginalized across gender, race and class lines, experience the current housing crisis more severely. In particular, the talk will explore women’s crucial role in the production of “precarious home” films, to be also understood within the wider context of transnational housing activism. Bringing together film, media and urbanism, this talk will offer a comparative analysis of home as a space of representation, production and resistance.
This seminar will be given by Dr Anna Viola Sborgi, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Department of Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, Ireland. Her current project, MEDIAHOMES: Housing Precarity on Screen in Ireland, Portugal and the UK from the 2008 crisis to COVID-19, investigates transnational mediations of housing inequality in Europe, their production and circulation. She has recently published on housing and documentary, and film and architecture and she is currently co-editing a Special Issue of Alphavillle on The Home as a Space of Resistance. She co-chair the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), Urbanism/Geography/Architecture Scholarly Interest Group.
Dr Sborgi's presentation will be followed by short responses from Prof Paul Watt and Dr Janet McCabe. Prof Paul Watt is from Birkbeck's Department of Geography, whose research focuses on social housing, urban regeneration, gentrification, homelessness, housing activism, and the 2012 London Olympic Games. Dr Janet McCabe is from Birkbeck's Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, whose research focuses on contemporary television, gender politics and feminism, cultural memory and representations of the historical imagination in the media.
Sponsored by the BISR Urban Intersections Working Group and the ECREA Media, Cities and Space Section.
Contact name:
Scott Rodgers