Margherita Sprio | University of Westminster (original) (raw)
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Papers by Margherita Sprio
International Cinema and the Girl, 2016
Contemporary Iranian Cinema, and its specific use of children as nonprofessional actors in partic... more Contemporary Iranian Cinema, and its specific use of children as nonprofessional actors in particular, asks important questions that raise a specter from the past both in terms of cinematic history and in relation to the history of girlhood on screen. In an earlier essay, I looked at the way that reenactment was being utilized in contemporary Iranian cinema1 and I argued that this acting style was linked to the politics of performance known to us through Italian Neo Realism.2 In this essay I will look at Sib/The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998) in relation to the wider issues of reenactment and performance in cinema but more specifically at how girlhood is explored in the film. In addition to this, my argument will reconsider Laura Mulvey’s earlier writing about Iranian cinema, in which she states that “there is a politics of representation at stake, but also a politics of cultural specificity at a time of encroaching cultural homog-enization.”3 This chapter will examine how can these ideas engage with the performance of girlhood onscreen and how might an analysis into this assist an understanding of contemporary transnational modernity.
Third Text, 1991
... But in sub-titling the show 'New Asian Photography in Britain&am... more ... But in sub-titling the show 'New Asian Photography in Britain', the curator is perhaps both denying the historical project implicit in the work ... Sutapa Biswas describes her work as 'in progress', whilst Karimjee began her work in 1985 and defines it within the.context of a continuing ...
Performing Archives/ Archives of Performance is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, critical and ... more Performing Archives/ Archives of Performance is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, critical and creative anthology examining the relationship between changing conceptions of the archive and ontologies of performance. Theatre and performance theory have been greatly influenced by the work of Peggy Phelan and her understanding of the performance event as being inevitably ephemeral and unique: 'Performance cannot be saved [...] Performance's being [...] becomes itself through disappearance' (1993, p.146). This is the ontology of performance and it would appear to be diametrically opposed to everything we associate with the permanence and fixity of the archive and its related institutions (p.9). The editors of this anthology seek to address this dilemma, for they understand that performance needs preservation, that there is a 'continuous and pressing relevance of the archive for performance studies' (p.11). Gunhild Borggreen, a professor of visual culture, and Rune Gade, a professor of art history, both at the University of Copenhagen, intend the anthology to be a 'critical history of the field and a renewal of it' (p.29). Phelan's now classic 'ontology of performance' is a refrain which seems to haunt and provoke most of the analysis in this collection. Thus, the reader has a confident sense of the anthology's value as continuing and enlarging a debate and emerging tradition of The Kelvingrove Review Issue 13
The Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), 2015
Film has played a significant role in shaping the British-Italian community's sense of identi... more Film has played a significant role in shaping the British-Italian community's sense of identity in the context of post war Italian immigration into Britain. This thesis explores how (Southern Italian) cultural identity has been mediated by both historical and contemporary factors and the ways in which this identity has been shaped by the process of immigration. Nostalgia and myth have helped to shift notions of the self within the immigrant community; at the same time they have also acted as tools through which the notion of homeland and belonging could be experienced. How can cultural history be understood in relation to memory and how could this duality be negotiated in terms of understanding the construction of (Italian) cultural identity? The importance of both collective and individual memory has been made visible through ethnographic research that has involved a series of interviews with members of the Italian immigrant communities located both within London and the Home C...
research.ucreative.ac.uk
In the film Raining Stones (1993), Ken Loach explores the complex anxieties experienced by the va... more In the film Raining Stones (1993), Ken Loach explores the complex anxieties experienced by the various family members when the daughter of the family is being prepared for her First Holy Communion. The devout father of the family, Bob (played by the actor Bruce ...
Largely forgotten by audiences both at home and abroad, Carol White, the ‘Bardot of Battersea’ wa... more Largely forgotten by audiences both at home and abroad, Carol White, the ‘Bardot of Battersea’ was for a short period, one of the most well known actresses of her generation in the 1960s. Early film roles (Carry on Teacher, 1959 and Never Let Go, 1960) led to her debut in the television adaptation of Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction in 1965, directed by Ken Loach. This gave rise to her starring in her second of the iconic television Wednesday Plays, where she played the main lead in Cathy Come Home (1966) and then in the film Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967). This essay will explore how both her success in Britain and her subsequent attempts to work in Hollywood sowed the seeds of her ultimate demise at the age of forty-eight in 1991. Born in London in 1943, White’s life too often mirrored the roles that she went on to play in her television and film work and the naturalism that she gave to her performances came at a high price for a women whose vulnerabilities were central to her casting. The...
Feminist Review, 2004
Nearly all the chapters dealt with the issue of researcher reflexivity, some with varying degrees... more Nearly all the chapters dealt with the issue of researcher reflexivity, some with varying degrees of humour about and frustration with the racism and hierarchy of the academy. The frustration is useful to note for it pushes toward a structural analysis that is important for analyzing issues of reflexivity in feminist research, since reflexivity must mean more than self-referentiality. Another important contribution of the book is the discussion of institutional contexts of knowledge production, in the introductory chapter as well as the other essays. The editors are very self-conscious of this text as a theoretical intervention, a commodity, and a performance; on all these levels, this is a timely, critical project that raises important academic, political, and cultural questions.
Visual Culture in Britain, 2013
International Cinema and the Girl, 2016
Contemporary Iranian Cinema, and its specific use of children as nonprofessional actors in partic... more Contemporary Iranian Cinema, and its specific use of children as nonprofessional actors in particular, asks important questions that raise a specter from the past both in terms of cinematic history and in relation to the history of girlhood on screen. In an earlier essay, I looked at the way that reenactment was being utilized in contemporary Iranian cinema1 and I argued that this acting style was linked to the politics of performance known to us through Italian Neo Realism.2 In this essay I will look at Sib/The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998) in relation to the wider issues of reenactment and performance in cinema but more specifically at how girlhood is explored in the film. In addition to this, my argument will reconsider Laura Mulvey’s earlier writing about Iranian cinema, in which she states that “there is a politics of representation at stake, but also a politics of cultural specificity at a time of encroaching cultural homog-enization.”3 This chapter will examine how can these ideas engage with the performance of girlhood onscreen and how might an analysis into this assist an understanding of contemporary transnational modernity.
Third Text, 1991
... But in sub-titling the show 'New Asian Photography in Britain&am... more ... But in sub-titling the show 'New Asian Photography in Britain', the curator is perhaps both denying the historical project implicit in the work ... Sutapa Biswas describes her work as 'in progress', whilst Karimjee began her work in 1985 and defines it within the.context of a continuing ...
Performing Archives/ Archives of Performance is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, critical and ... more Performing Archives/ Archives of Performance is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, critical and creative anthology examining the relationship between changing conceptions of the archive and ontologies of performance. Theatre and performance theory have been greatly influenced by the work of Peggy Phelan and her understanding of the performance event as being inevitably ephemeral and unique: 'Performance cannot be saved [...] Performance's being [...] becomes itself through disappearance' (1993, p.146). This is the ontology of performance and it would appear to be diametrically opposed to everything we associate with the permanence and fixity of the archive and its related institutions (p.9). The editors of this anthology seek to address this dilemma, for they understand that performance needs preservation, that there is a 'continuous and pressing relevance of the archive for performance studies' (p.11). Gunhild Borggreen, a professor of visual culture, and Rune Gade, a professor of art history, both at the University of Copenhagen, intend the anthology to be a 'critical history of the field and a renewal of it' (p.29). Phelan's now classic 'ontology of performance' is a refrain which seems to haunt and provoke most of the analysis in this collection. Thus, the reader has a confident sense of the anthology's value as continuing and enlarging a debate and emerging tradition of The Kelvingrove Review Issue 13
The Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), 2015
Film has played a significant role in shaping the British-Italian community's sense of identi... more Film has played a significant role in shaping the British-Italian community's sense of identity in the context of post war Italian immigration into Britain. This thesis explores how (Southern Italian) cultural identity has been mediated by both historical and contemporary factors and the ways in which this identity has been shaped by the process of immigration. Nostalgia and myth have helped to shift notions of the self within the immigrant community; at the same time they have also acted as tools through which the notion of homeland and belonging could be experienced. How can cultural history be understood in relation to memory and how could this duality be negotiated in terms of understanding the construction of (Italian) cultural identity? The importance of both collective and individual memory has been made visible through ethnographic research that has involved a series of interviews with members of the Italian immigrant communities located both within London and the Home C...
research.ucreative.ac.uk
In the film Raining Stones (1993), Ken Loach explores the complex anxieties experienced by the va... more In the film Raining Stones (1993), Ken Loach explores the complex anxieties experienced by the various family members when the daughter of the family is being prepared for her First Holy Communion. The devout father of the family, Bob (played by the actor Bruce ...
Largely forgotten by audiences both at home and abroad, Carol White, the ‘Bardot of Battersea’ wa... more Largely forgotten by audiences both at home and abroad, Carol White, the ‘Bardot of Battersea’ was for a short period, one of the most well known actresses of her generation in the 1960s. Early film roles (Carry on Teacher, 1959 and Never Let Go, 1960) led to her debut in the television adaptation of Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction in 1965, directed by Ken Loach. This gave rise to her starring in her second of the iconic television Wednesday Plays, where she played the main lead in Cathy Come Home (1966) and then in the film Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967). This essay will explore how both her success in Britain and her subsequent attempts to work in Hollywood sowed the seeds of her ultimate demise at the age of forty-eight in 1991. Born in London in 1943, White’s life too often mirrored the roles that she went on to play in her television and film work and the naturalism that she gave to her performances came at a high price for a women whose vulnerabilities were central to her casting. The...
Feminist Review, 2004
Nearly all the chapters dealt with the issue of researcher reflexivity, some with varying degrees... more Nearly all the chapters dealt with the issue of researcher reflexivity, some with varying degrees of humour about and frustration with the racism and hierarchy of the academy. The frustration is useful to note for it pushes toward a structural analysis that is important for analyzing issues of reflexivity in feminist research, since reflexivity must mean more than self-referentiality. Another important contribution of the book is the discussion of institutional contexts of knowledge production, in the introductory chapter as well as the other essays. The editors are very self-conscious of this text as a theoretical intervention, a commodity, and a performance; on all these levels, this is a timely, critical project that raises important academic, political, and cultural questions.
Visual Culture in Britain, 2013