Intro

Here you will find many of my creative endeavors. Creating is part of my being, my motivation, and my identity. I try to find inspiration and art in all around me and seek to create it.

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Online Response 5 - Return to Homs and Slingshot Hip Hop

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Return to Homs  is a poignant and personal depiction of the Syrian conflict and civil war. Its main character is the renowned goalkeeper for the national soccer team, Abdul Basset Saroot. The film follows him from the beginning of the peaceful protests as he performs rallying songs to the breakout of civil war and his audacious leadership of a small band of rebels. He is charismatic and relatable, giving emotional and intimate insight into the war-torn area. Slingshot Hip Hop  is another stirring documentary that gives the viewers an insight into a political conflict, especially from a perspective uncommonly envisioned. The story deals with the birth of rap in Israeli occupied Palestinian communities. Two main groups, DAM and PR, give us a personal view of the precarious situation of Palestinians in sector ’48, Gaza, and the West Bank. The two groups (and others) use rap as a peaceful form of vocalizing their struggles and discontent, as well as rallying and infor...
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Online Response 3 - Exposing vs. Observing

The expository mode of documentary "assembles fragments of the historical world into a more rhetorical or narrative frame than an aesthetic or poetic one," (Nichols). It employs indexical images, poetic and affective associations, storytelling qualities, and rhetorical persuasiveness. These types of documentaries rely heavily on spoken dialogue to inform the audience. Editing focuses on the gathering of evidence or creating the greatest impact, therefore often spatial or temporal continuity is altered. On the other hand, observational mode seeks to have as limited involvement in the events as possible. The idea is that the filmmaker sets up the camera and lets fate tell the story. Both modes were enabled by advances in camera and sound technologies in the 1960’s. Equipment became lighter, less obtrusive and easier to transport. It allowed more freedom of movement therefore leading to less strict control over staging, arrangement, or composition, and in the expository documen...
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Online Response 4 - Participatory and Reflexive Documentary

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Enabled by the technological advancements of the 1960s, the participatory mode of documentary formed. It is nearly opposite of the observational documentary with the filmmaker directly interacting with the subject, conversing, collaborating, and sometimes confronting. The audience also is able to interact more with the subject. These films draw from an anthropological tradition but differ in their dedication to the rhetoric of a story rather than simply the social science research. Documentary tends to not sacrifice the narrative for the data. Often in participatory mode however, the narrative doesn’t occur until the filmmaker incites the story; potentially one they are already involved with, or perhaps one that they seek out to investigate.  The participatory mode can be exemplified by Ross McElwee’s documentary,  Time Indefinite  and Jean Rouch’s  Chronicle of a Summer . The story in both films would not have occurred if the filmmakers had not picked up their ...
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