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

该项目将调查社会激进主义对妇女生活的影响，并探索妇女中的叛乱如何培养勇气和变革。它将分析女性的激进主义如何超越她们的事业，延伸到她们的个人生活中。这项以实践为主导的研究将包括制作一部纪录片，其中将有两组女性活动家：1984-2005年矿工罢工中的女性叛乱分子，特别是矿工罢工抗议组织“妇女反对关闭矿坑”和目前反对社会不公正的运动“黑人的命也是命”。这两个由女性领导的组织都公开表达了对变革的渴望。他们的事业引起了舆论的分歧，并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想不到和不可预测的后果，这种经历对矿工妻子的生活产生的影响，并调查异议如何影响现在活跃在黑人生活也是运动中的女性。这些经历有什么共同之处？活动家(过去和现在)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？为什么参与抗议活动使妇女能够重新评估她们的角色和抱负，并采取行动，以实现她们的潜力，无论是在活动家的背景下还是在活动家的背景下？同样重要的是要考虑到社交媒体的存在和技术的发展如何改变了为妇女举行抗议的组织。关于矿工罢工钟声(2009)、米尔恩(2014)、帕特森(2014)(等人)的许多文献都有记载。媒体对游行、挥舞纠察队和与警方发生冲突的报道坚定地集中在男性身上。照片中没有女性的情况并不明显，因为女性出现在学校和社区中心，为罢工的男性组织施舍厨房和食物。但女性也在纠察线上。一位活动人士事后评估说，警察不知道如何处理我们。如果矿工越过黄线，甚至超过一只脚，他们可能会因为非法侵入而被解雇。但我们不能因为我们不为煤矿工作而被解雇。我们造成了很大的破坏，我们唱了起来。(Brenda Proctor，2014)罢工前，这位矿工的许多妻子都是家庭主妇和母亲。罢工结束后，一些人成为了政客，获得了大学学位，一些人仍然是终身活动家。这些女性已经从厨房搬到了纠察线上，进入了新的职业领域：“我的视野开阔了。我不必再停留在我的婚姻里了。我上了大学，找到了新生的力量。”(贝蒂·库克，2016)。关于激进主义和叛乱的论述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台。当妇女大声疾呼要求变革时，如福特缝纫机械师罢工(1968年)、1970年前后的妇女解放运动--以及格林汉姆共同妇女和平营(1981年)(对妇女反对关闭维修站产生了影响)，这些运动被定位为辅助或不同的运动。他们需要复苏研究来将他们带到前台，或者将他们置于与激进主义的背景关系中，后者被认为是更广泛的，而激进主义本身就是一种性别假设。2013年，Beeban Kidron在《卫报》上发表了一篇关于Greenham Common抗议活动的文章，这篇文章支持了这一观点。他说，30多年前，我坐在黄门前拍摄警察的高压手段和媒体对一个组织的莫名其妙的偏见，他们的主要罪行似乎是没有男性……这项研究项目旨在重新聚焦这一形象，将聚光灯集中在米德兰兹地区的女性身上。

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.