A Shot from the Inside of Things: The Case of “Purple Sea” by Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed
Ewa Fiuk
ewa.fiuk@ispan.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-8510
Abstract
In 2015, visual artist Amel Alzakout fled from Syria to Germany across the Mediterranean Sea. Half an hour after departure, the boat, carrying 315 people, sank. The survivors spent four hours in the water, and Alzakout, equipped with a small waterproof camera (which she had previously clipped to her wrist), recorded what was happening under the surface. These recordings were used to make the documentary film titled Purple Sea (2020). This article is an attempt to capture its uniqueness, also against the backdrop of other documentaries with similar themes, which manifests itself mainly in the gaze it presents. This gaze could be described as non-anthropocentric and non-Europocentric. Analysing the document in this context, the author suggests that it should be read as an image which is the effect of a particular approach to reality, which she calls an approach from the inside of things.
Keywords:
documentary film, video footage, war in Syria, Mediterranean Sea, migration, new materialismReferences
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Authors
Ewa Fiukewa.fiuk@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-8510
Film scholar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw); film writer and contributor to many magazines, periodicals and books; translator and interpreter working in Polish and German; editor of Kwartalnik Filmowy. Author of the books Inicjacje, tożsamość, pamięć. Kino niemieckie na przełomie wieków [Initiations, Identity, Memory: German Cinema at the Turn of Centuries] (2012) and Obrazo-światy, dźwięko-przestrzenie. Kino Toma Tykwera [Worlds of Images, Dimensions of Sounds: Cinematic Work of Tom Tykwer] (2016).
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