The documentary representation of late modern warfare and the perceptual context of video-selfies

Simor, Kamilla (2021) The documentary representation of late modern warfare and the perceptual context of video-selfies. APERTÚRA, 17 (1). ISSN 1787-7245

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Abstract

The paper analyzes the visual and personalised implications of late modern warfare and its representation in documentary film. In the first half of my paper, I’m analyzing the cinematic representation of late modern war and its relationship to film and vision primarily from a media-historical perspective: what does the access to information mean in this context and what kind of media and mediatisation specificities has the war after the 2000s. In the second half of my study I’m focusing on the video-selfie-scenes of Nine Months of War (László Csuja, 2018) from a phenomenological and reception-theoretical perspective: what are the implications of the use of video-selfies in this documentary and what kind of new functions could this film add to these in warfare. I classify the functions of video-selfies into a three-tier typology of channel (making a video message to another person), identity affirmation and space of testimony. While at the beginning of the war the apparently superficial video-selfie-use characterizes the protagonist as a content producer and user, it then serves to identify with the military self-image and finally creates a specific, private space for the expression of traumatic experiences.

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