Oral Histories

I sort of read (flicked through) this book after coming across it in Didsbury library. It got me thinking about how, or if, animation and drawing could be used in the process of collecting stories and in oral history interviews. Especially when there is a language difference.

The Oral History Reader
Edited by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge 2006
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oral-History-Reader-Routledge-Readers/dp/0415343038

Postscript:
I have been using this process a lot in my teaching. Drawing, diagrams, explanations in pencil. I'll post examples below.

Tower Bawher

Tower Bawher, by Theodore Ushev

I came across this incredible film by Theodore Ushev and couldn't believe I had never seen it before. The director described the process of making it as being like being in a trance, which is just how it feels to watch it. A kind of outpouring of visual memory.

Theodore Ushev:
https://vimeo.com/ushev
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Ushev

The National Film Board of Canada
https://www.nfb.ca/film/tower_bawher

Sites of Collective Memory

Four films commissioned by Animate Projects
http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_project/group_commissions/sites_of_collective_memory

I have been checking out the latest commissions by Animate projects, and really like this piece by Jordan Baseman. I was particularly struck by his editing of the original material. The original transcript is an interesting read in itself, link below.

Little Boy, by Jordan Baseman
http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/20141/little_boy

Transcript of interview used in the film
http://www.scribd.com/doc/232888202/Little-Boy-Transcript?secret_password=ohMGiCkD7zuvBXyED0nG

Jordan Baseman
http://www.jordanbaseman.co.uk/

The Heritage of Ages

Ukrainian painting of the 14th-18th centuries in museum collections of Lviv. (published in 1990).

I found this beautiful book for sale in one of the Ukrainian churches in Manchester. It's packed full of illustrations, but I particularly liked these. The patterns on the clothes reminded me of the old cartoons where the characters move but the patterns inside them don't.

Top: Circle of the late-15th-century master of the "Praying with Tier" from Daliova.St. Nicholas with Two Scenes from His Life. Late 15th–early 16th c. c. dvyzhen (Lisko, now Poland).

Above: Senkovych Fedir. St. Basil the Great. 1620s. Lviv

 
The story of One Crime, by Fyodor Khitruk (1966)