Close Up: A creative-critical intervention in analysing the female voice in documentary film directorial practice

该项目将调查社会行动主义对女性生活的影响，并探讨女性的反叛如何培养勇气和变革。它将分析妇女的行动主义如何超越她们的事业，进入她们的个人生活。这项以实践为主导的研究将包括制作一部纪录片，其中将介绍两组女性活动家：1984-5年矿工罢工中的女性叛乱分子，特别是抗议团体“妇女反对关闭矿井”和当前反对社会不公正的运动“黑人的命也重要”。这两个由女性领导的组织都公开表达了对变革的渴望。他们的原因引起了意见分歧，在媒体上占据了一个有争议的位置。我的项目将研究女性激进主义的意外和不可预测的后果，这种经历对矿工妻子生活的影响，并调查异议如何影响现在活跃在“黑人的命也是命”运动中的女性。这些经历有什么共同之处？这些活动人士（过去和现在的）在多大程度上认为自己在经验上、政治上，特别是作为女性，有共同点？为什么参与抗议能让女性重新评估自己的角色和愿望，并采取行动，以实现自己在活动人士背景内外的潜力？同样重要的是，要考虑社交媒体的存在和技术的发展如何改变了女性抗议活动的组织。关于矿工罢工的文献很多，Bell (2009), Milne (2014), Paterson (2014) （et al.）。媒体对游行、放飞警戒线和与警方冲突的报道都牢牢地集中在男性身上。照片中没有女性的身影并不明显，因为女性出现在学校和社区中心，为参加罢工的男性组织施粥所和食物。但是妇女也站在纠察线上。一位活动人士事后评价说，警方不知道如何对付我们。如果矿工越过黄线，哪怕只是跨出一英尺，他们都可能因非法侵入而被解雇。但我们不能被解雇，因为我们不为煤矿工作。我们造成了很大的破坏，我们唱歌”（Brenda Proctor, 2014）。在罢工之前，许多矿工的妻子都是家庭主妇和母亲。罢工结束后，一些人成为了政治家，获得了大学学位，还有一些人成为了终身活动家。这些女性已经从厨房搬到纠察线，进入了新的职业：“我的视野开阔了。我没必要维持我的婚姻。我上了大学，找到了新生的力量”（贝蒂·库克，2016）。与激进主义和叛乱有关的话语通常有一个男性化的框架，坚定地将男性置于革命图景的前景。当女性大声疾呼地要求变革时，例如1968年的福特缝纫机械师罢工，1970年左右的妇女解放运动，以及1981年的格林汉姆普通妇女和平营（对妇女反对关闭矿井产生了影响），这些运动都被定位为辅助或不同的框架。他们需要恢复研究将他们带到前台，或者将他们置于与行动主义的背景关系中，这种行动主义被认为是更广泛的，本身就是一种性别假设。比班·基德隆2013年在《卫报》上发表的一篇关于格林汉姆共同抗议的文章支持了这一点；“30多年来，我坐在黄门拍摄警察的高压手段和媒体对一个群体的莫名其妙的偏见，这个群体的主要罪行似乎是没有男人……“这个研究项目的目的是让人们重新关注米德兰兹地区的女性。”

This project will investigate the impact that social activism has on women's lives and explore how insurgency in women fosters courage and transformation. It will analyse how womens' activism extends beyond their cause and into their individual lives. This practice-led research will include the production of a documentary film which will feature two groups of female activists: women insurgents in the 1984-5 miners' strike, specifically the the protest group 'Women Against Pit Closures' and a current movement against social injustice, 'Black Lives Matter'. Both female-led organisations have been openly militant in their desire for change. Their causes have divided opinion and occupied a controversial position in the media. My project will examine the unintended and unpredicted consequences of women's activism, the impact that this experience has had on the lives of miners' wives and investigate how dissent is affecting women active in the Black Lives Matter movement now. What do these experiences have in common? To what extentd do the activists (past and present) perceive themselves to share common ground, experientially, politically and, specifically, as women? Why does involvement in protest empower women to re-evaluate their role and aspirations and to take action in order to realise their potential, in and outside an activist context? It is important too to consider the ways in which the presence of social media and developments in technology have altered the organisation of protest for women.Much has been documented about the miner's strike Bell (2009), Milne (2014), Paterson (2014) (et al.). Media coverage of marches, flying pickets and clashes with the police was firmly focussed on men. The absence of women from the picture was not immediately obvious insofar as women were shown in schools and community centres, organising soup kitchens and food for their striking men. But women were on the picket lines too. One activist assesses with hindsight, 'The police didn't know how to deal with us. If miners crossed the yellow line, even put one foot over, they could be done for trespassing and were sacked. But we couldn't be sacked because we didn't work for the colliery. We caused a lot of havoc, and we sang' (Brenda Proctor, 2014). Prior to the strike many of the miner's wives were housewives and mothers. Once the strike ended, some became politicians, gained university degrees and some remained life-long activists. The women had moved from the kitchen, to the picket lines and into new careers: 'My horizons were broadened. I didn't have to stay in my marriage. I went to college and found new born strength' (Betty Cook, 2016).The discourse relating to activism and insurgency usually has a masculine frame, firmly placing men in the foreground of the revolutionary picture. When women have been vociferous in their charge for change e.g. the Ford sewing machinists' strike (1968), the Women's Liberation Movement from around 1970- and the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, (1981) (which was an influence on Women Against Pit Closures), such movements have been positioned outside the frame as auxiliary or different. They have required recovery research to bring them into the foreground, or to situate them in contextual relation to activism that is discerned to be broader, itself a gendered assumption. Beeban Kidron's article in the Guardian in 2013 about the Greenham Common protest supports this; 'In 30-plus years since I sat at the yellow gate filming the heavy hand of the police and the inexplicable prejudice of the media against a group, whose major crime seemed to be the absence of men...'This research project intends to refocus the image with the spotlight on women in the Midlands region.