Programme
Metalepsis in Black
Metalepsis in Black is a documentary-based filmic exploration of the student protests situated in & around the rising costs of education in South Africa. Please join us for the fourth event of Realising Utopia: Cinema & 1968 introduced by Dr. Dara Waldron (Limerick School of Art & Design).
“In 2015, protests erupted across South African universities. Nationwide, students gathered under the motto #FeesMustFall to demonstrate against rising tuition costs, and to issue a wider call for the decolonisation of the country’s higher education system. These are challenges that reverberate beyond the walls of the South African academy. They emerge in a Rainbow Nation that has failed to materialise for the youth of the country’s “born free” generation.” (Sarah Duncan & Finn Daniels-Yeomans)
In Metalepsis in Black (2016), Aryan Kaganof explores the protests & philosophy of the Fees Must Fall movement, and tracks responses to it from the State, and from within the academy. Shot predominantly in black & white, & refusing a linear structure, this is a nuanced & creative film that destabilises normative expectations of documentary form. Its fluid, unpredictable and sometimes unsettling style reflects the energy, complexity and anger of the Fallist movement, dramatising its efforts to produce something new from the old.
You can book your free ticket here.
About Dara Waldron:
Dara Waldron is a Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies with a particular focus on lens-based media (differing forms of moving image practices). Dara received a MA in Criticism and Theory from Exeter University in 1997, before completing a PhD in Film Studies at the University of Limerick in 2004. His PhD research focused on the relationship between real-life events which have been characterised under the umbrella concept of evil and fictional responses to these in moving image form.
This initial research led to the publication of the monograph Cinema and Evil: Moral Complexities and the “Dangerous” Film in 2013. Since then, Dara’s research has focused on the exploration of fiction and non-fiction, looking at various forms of documentary images which have been received critically as art objects. This has involved exploring the relationship between the ‘record’ and the ‘construct’ in the work of filmmakers/artists such as Ben Rivers, Gideon Koppel and Pat Collins; using the concept of the model in the praxis of filmmaker Robert Bresson and his methodological text Notes on Cinematography as a source of inquiry. Strands of this research has been (or to be) published in journals such as Studies in Documentary Film and the Nordic Journal of English Studies.
Dara has gained extensive experience supervising postgraduate research at MA and PhD level. He is currently supervising projects relating to participatory art, documentary historicism, and the life and work of Robert Bresson. He welcomes interest in any particular area of screen praxis.