DocWest
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DocWest is the International Centre for Documentary and Experimental Film at The University of Westminster, London. Established in 2009, it hosts screenings, masterclasses, and conferences involving documentary practitioners. The centre is part of Westminster's Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM).[1]
DocWest's activities include teaching, film production and academic research, focusing on the historical development of documentary discourse as well as its relationship with art and politics. Key areas of study include Visual Anthropology and Human Rights, arts documentary, and the documentary archive. DocWest also explores emerging forms such as interactive and web-based documentaries.[citation needed]
DocWest offers theoretical and practice-based doctoral degrees covering a range of documentary contexts and traditions.
Notable projects include the 2013 film The Act of Killing, the Arts on Film Archive, and the book Killer Images.[2] The Act of Killing was directed by DocWest Professor Joram ten Brink and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer.[3] The film was nominated in 2014 for the Oscar's Best Documentary award. The Act of Killing was also named Film of the Year by the Guardian and the Sight and Sound Film Poll, and won 72 awards, including a European Film Award, a BAFTA, an Asia Pacific Screen Award, a Berlinale Audience Award, and the Guardian Film Award for Best Film.[4]
Filmmaker Errol Morris described The Act of Killing as a unique non-fiction film, comparing it to works by Buñuel, Herzog, and Hara.[5] Werner Herzog referred to the film as inventing "a new form of cinematic surrealism."[6]
The program explores and discusses the filmmaking methods developed by Joshua Oppenheimer during the making of both The Act of Killing and his 2014 documentary The Look of Silence. Both films use the methodology of 'self-staging and recursive reflexivity,' which invites the films' participants to stage themselves on camera and dramatize their own lives. Oppenheimer describes this filmmaker-participant relationship as partly inspired by the practices of ethnographer Jean Rouch.[7]
References
[edit]- ^ "Groups and centres | University of Westminster, London". www.westminster.ac.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2025.
- ^ Brink, Joram ten; Oppenheimer, Joshua (11 December 2012). Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence. ISBN 978-0-231-16335-4.
- ^ https://www.westminster.ac.uk/sites/default/public-files/general-documents/westminster-2020-strategy.pdf
- ^ "Oppenheimer, Joshua | University of Westminster". www.westminster.ac.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2025.
- ^ "REACTIONS | The Act of Killing". theactofkilling.com. Retrieved 15 March 2024.
- ^ "DocWest". Retrieved 3 September 2012.
- ^ "Documentary of the Imagination – CREAM". Retrieved 4 February 2025.