Jud Wellington | CUNY - Baruch College (original) (raw)
Papers by Jud Wellington
Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and History. Kristina Wirtz. ... more Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice,
Spectacle in the Making of Race and
History. Kristina Wirtz. Chicago, IL and
London: The University of Chicago Press,
2014. 329 pp.
Punk and Revolution: Seven More
Interpretations of Peruvian Reality.
Shane Greene. Durham, NC and London:
Duke University Press, 2016. 235 pp.
The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in
the Age of Expediency. Morgan James
Luker. Chicago, IL and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2016. 218 pp.
Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing
Gender in Dominican Music. Sydney
Hutchinson. Chicago, IL and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
279 pp
Ghosts of Our Forest. Produced by Daniel Roher, Isis Essery, and Lisa Trogisch. Written and direc... more Ghosts of Our Forest. Produced by Daniel Roher, Isis Essery, and Lisa Trogisch. Written and directed by Daniel Roher. Loud Roar Productions. In Luganda, Rutwa, and English with English subtitles. Digital, 63 mins. 2017. www. ghostsofourforest.com. Ghosts of Our Forest is a documentary-narrative film that follows the Batwa Music Club from Uganda as it prepares for its first show while telling the story of how the Batwa people were displaced from their homes. Daniel Roher, the writer and director, uses production effects like slow motion, reverberation, and the juxtaposition of archival and primary footage to foster sympathy for the extreme poverty, discrimination, and violence experienced by the Batwa ethnic group. Rehearsals with the Batwa Music Club and interviews with elders of the community demonstrate how the Batwa are concerned with issues such as their current living conditions, cultural preservation, and national and international awareness of their situation. Ghosts of Our Forest is a well-made, compelling film that engages the viewer with how questions of environmental conservationist paradigms can precipitate human rights abuses and processes of folklorization. The Batwa, along with other forest communities in central Africa, have been subjected to precarious social and political positions since the 1930s due to conservation efforts to protect the endangered mountain gorilla, which shares their forests. Early protection projects focused only on the gorillas, disregarding any impact that human communities may have on the animals' subsistence. By the 1960s hunting and gathering practices became illegal within the forests, and in 1991 the Mgahinga and Bwindi forests-the home of the Batwa-were declared national parks. The Batwa were violently removed from their homes by armed park rangers and forced to live in peripheral urban communities of Kisoro in the southwest of Uganda. One of the women in the documentary describes their liminal position: "We now live in a state of insecurity, in between two worlds. We don't know if we can go back to the forest and we don't belong to the community outside the forest as well. " Many Batwa live in makeshift shanties on the outskirts of town, facing harsh discrimination, extreme poverty, and legal
Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and History. Kristina Wirtz. ... more Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice,
Spectacle in the Making of Race and
History. Kristina Wirtz. Chicago, IL and
London: The University of Chicago Press,
2014. 329 pp.
Punk and Revolution: Seven More
Interpretations of Peruvian Reality.
Shane Greene. Durham, NC and London:
Duke University Press, 2016. 235 pp.
The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in
the Age of Expediency. Morgan James
Luker. Chicago, IL and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2016. 218 pp.
Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing
Gender in Dominican Music. Sydney
Hutchinson. Chicago, IL and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
279 pp
Ghosts of Our Forest. Produced by Daniel Roher, Isis Essery, and Lisa Trogisch. Written and direc... more Ghosts of Our Forest. Produced by Daniel Roher, Isis Essery, and Lisa Trogisch. Written and directed by Daniel Roher. Loud Roar Productions. In Luganda, Rutwa, and English with English subtitles. Digital, 63 mins. 2017. www. ghostsofourforest.com. Ghosts of Our Forest is a documentary-narrative film that follows the Batwa Music Club from Uganda as it prepares for its first show while telling the story of how the Batwa people were displaced from their homes. Daniel Roher, the writer and director, uses production effects like slow motion, reverberation, and the juxtaposition of archival and primary footage to foster sympathy for the extreme poverty, discrimination, and violence experienced by the Batwa ethnic group. Rehearsals with the Batwa Music Club and interviews with elders of the community demonstrate how the Batwa are concerned with issues such as their current living conditions, cultural preservation, and national and international awareness of their situation. Ghosts of Our Forest is a well-made, compelling film that engages the viewer with how questions of environmental conservationist paradigms can precipitate human rights abuses and processes of folklorization. The Batwa, along with other forest communities in central Africa, have been subjected to precarious social and political positions since the 1930s due to conservation efforts to protect the endangered mountain gorilla, which shares their forests. Early protection projects focused only on the gorillas, disregarding any impact that human communities may have on the animals' subsistence. By the 1960s hunting and gathering practices became illegal within the forests, and in 1991 the Mgahinga and Bwindi forests-the home of the Batwa-were declared national parks. The Batwa were violently removed from their homes by armed park rangers and forced to live in peripheral urban communities of Kisoro in the southwest of Uganda. One of the women in the documentary describes their liminal position: "We now live in a state of insecurity, in between two worlds. We don't know if we can go back to the forest and we don't belong to the community outside the forest as well. " Many Batwa live in makeshift shanties on the outskirts of town, facing harsh discrimination, extreme poverty, and legal