Dear Screen-L participants:


I wanted to let you know about our first consortium project to protect the
commons. I hope you'll participate and spread the word!


+++


Writing Our Future: The Inauguration, Alternate Inauguration Ball, and
Protests <http://filmint.nu/?p=20109>


January 19th to the 21st will bring Trump's inauguration, a Peace Ball
(with Angela Davis and Solange), and street protests, including the
Inauguration Day Freedom Protest on Freedom Plaza, DC, the Bridge Together
in Golden Gate Park, and the 200,000 Women's March. How can we quickly
document and analyze these unfolding events in a way that might deepen and
complicate the coverage we’ll see in the media? Salon recently published a
piece suggesting that alternate forms of expression will not be covered
(protests against the Supreme Court's intervention in the Florida recount
and George Bush's inauguration got little attention from the media). We now
have more robust forms of social media. But can we quickly contribute in a
focused and concerted way?


Please submit 100 to 800 words on the inaugural and/or protest events to
the *Film International* blog page below. If you'd like more anonymity for
this first run, feel free to email [log in to unmask] *Film
International* will also post a redacted blog of curated pieces during and
after the events. We'd like these pieces at journalistic speed, but more
reflective pieces submitted later will be accepted too. Facebook is now
collaborating with journalists; hopefully they'll draw on this kind of work
by scholars and engaged laypeople too.


http://filmint.nu/?p=20109


There are many events to write about and questions to ask; we'd like to
cover as much as possible. Do the Rockettes (and even the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir?) resemble or depart from Sigmund Kracauer's Mass Ornament and the
Tiller Girls? Might someone write about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or
Talladega's marching band for those who'd like more background? Are there
resistant moments in any of the official inauguration events? How might
Angela Davis's and Solange's previous political work relate to her
presentation at the Ball? How might earlier media events, like the NRA's
illegal Trump ad in Arlington Cemetery, resonate with the staging at the
monument on the 20th? What about fake news? Or the celebrities who are
performing and those refusing to perform? The conversations, speeches,
music, signs, sounds, and expressions of the rallies on the street from so
many places across the country? The media coverage unfolding in real time
(and are our consortium blogs – below). How the *Washington Post*'s
coverage reflect bias, and what does it leave out?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/01/11/
so-have-trump-inauguration-planners-just-given-up-on-
trying-to-get-celebrities/?utm_term=.009f3fbe0daa


We're hoping for a civil space, respectful of many points of view. Our aim
is to produce work that can provide analysis and inform (and may be helpful
for mainstream and independent media). Links to good media coverage,
documentary, or mashups would be appreciated as well as more sustained
analysis. An initial request: might someone mash up the *WashPo* clip with
a different soundtrack, perhaps with commentary?


This project is part of a consortium approach to support fellow scholars
who want to quickly disseminate, publish and then get academic credit for
work devoted to protecting the commons. (This is a first run so it may not
be absolutely smooth - we're currently finessing FI's pics.) Our
contributors may want to turn next to other venues committed to quickly
reviewing and publishing work devoted to protecting the commons including *Film
International* in print, *Film Criticism*, Aca-Media, In Focus (*Cinema
Journal*), and the REFRAME network. Some sites can publish nearly
instantaneously; some surprisingly quickly with documentation in the
academic databases; and others can post video and/or audio work. A scholar
might choose one or two of these venues. She might, for example, write a
responsive piece that tracks breaking news and appears within a few days on
the Film International blog, and then a followup (perhaps collaborative)
that's published through *Film Criticism* online, Aca-Media, or*Film
International*'s print journal (so that the work is picked up in the
academic databases). She might try a new mode like a video- or audio-essay
via Aca-media or the REFRAME network.


We plan to acknowledge contributors' work at the Collective Action in 2017:
Responding to Hate, Disenfranchisement, and the Loss of the Commons panel
at Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, Chicago, March 22.


Peace in the struggle for a wonderful 2017, and for an engaged, informed
civil society –


Carol Vernallis, Matthew Sorrento, Daniel Lindvall, Catherine Grant, Dana
Gorzelany-Mostak, and James Deaville

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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org