Memory, subjectivity and maternal histories in Un'Ora Sola Ti Vorrei (2005), Histoire d'un Secret (2003) and On the Border (2012)

This chapter explores how certain elisions occurred in the experimental biographical film which aimed precisely to highlight the processes of projection with which representing one’s own family – and especially one’s own mother – must inevitably be imbued. It focuses on Marianne Hirsch’s analysis of feminist authors’ difficulties in representing mother as a subject rather than an object, not least because of their own struggles for control over their own lives, bodies and ‘plots’. In both Un’Ora Sola Ti Vorrei and Histoire d’un secret, film-maker daughters investigate lives of their respective mothers, who both died young, Marazzi’s from suicide following mental illness and Otero’s from complications after a self-induced abortion. The chapter argues the original statement that accompanied the film that the multi-vocal narration is intended to suggest aspects of projection and encryption – that is, blurring of boundaries between the lives of mother, grandmother and daughter and the nostalgic desire for reunion and recognition of each by the other

The Universality of IHL – Surmounting the Last Bastion of the Pacific

In a special edition of the VUWLR on the 60th anniversary of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, it is timely to reflect on the achievements that have come about in the Pacific region, and why this is a cause for celebration. Nonetheless, there are other major international humanitarian law (IHL) instruments developed in the last 60 years which are yet to achieve universal ratification. In the Pacific, in particular, it is often difficult to demonstrate how IHL is relevant. This article addresses the challenges that the Pacific region poses in terms of IHL ratification and discusses how IHL instruments are indeed pertinent to the Pacific context, focusing on the three Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It concludes that in the Pacific these challenges should be seen as opportunities to address historical and current problems associated with war and that, by the next major anniversary, the Pacific might be, if not leading the way, at least not lagging behind

Characterising the role of GABA and its metabolism in the wheat pathogen Stagonospora nodorum

A reverse genetics approach was used to investigate the role of γ-aminobutyric acid metabolism in the wheat pathogenic fungus Stagonospora nodorum. The creation of mutants lacking Sdh1, the gene encoding succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase, resulted in strains that grew poorly on γ-aminobutyric acid as a nitrogen source. The sdh1 mutants were more susceptible to reactive oxygen stress but were less affected by increased growth temperatures. Pathogenicity assays revealed that the metabolism of γ-aminobutyric acid is required for complete pathogenicity. Growth assays of the wild-type and mutant strains showed that the inclusion of γ-aminobutyric acid as a supplement in minimal media (i.e., not as a nitrogen or carbon source) resulted in restricted growth but increased sporulation. The addition of glutamate, the precursor to GABA, had no effect on either growth or sporulation. The γ-aminobutyric acid effect on sporulation was found to be dose dependent and not restricted to Stagonospora nodorum with a similar effect observed in the dothideomycete Botryosphaeria sp. The positive effect on sporulation was assayed using isomers of γ-aminobutyric acid and other metabolites known to influence asexual development in Stagonospora nodorum but no effect was observed. These data demonstrate that γ-aminobutyric acid plays an important role in Stagonospora nodorum in responding to environmental stresses while also having a positive effect on asexual development.The work was supported by Australian Research Council and Grains Research and Development Corporation

Synthesis and applications of derivatives of 1,7-diazaspiro[5.5]undecane

Spiroaminals are an understudied class of heterocycle. Recently, the Barrett group reported a relatively mild approach to the most simple form of spiroaminal; 1,7-diazaspiro[5.5]undecane (I). This thesis consists of the development of novel synthetic methodologies towards the spiroaminal moiety. The first part of this thesis focuses on the synthesis of aliphatic derivatives of I through a variety of methods from the classic Barrett approach which utilises lactam II, through to de novo bidirectional approaches which utilise diphosphate V and a key Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons reaction with aldehyde VI. The second part of this thesis concentrates on the synthesis of tetrahydrospirobiquinolines and their derivatives. The methodology developed utilises simple conditions, withstands a range of functional groups, and allows many substrates to be accessed under mild conditions. These compounds showed higher aminal stability relative to their aliphatic counterparts and were further derivatised by bromination, alkylation and cross-coupling techniques, all proceeding with the retention of the aminal centre. The final part of this thesis details theattempts to complex these newly isolated compounds to a variety of elementsacross the periodictable, as well asinitial investigations into their biological activities.Open Acces

Unravelling family fictions: stories we tell, daughter rite and my life without me

This chapters compares Stories We Tell (2012) , a documentary by Canadian actor and director, Sarah Polley, with the feminist classic Daughter Rite by Michelle Citron (1979) in order to explore the ways in which it has become possible in recent women’s cinema to reimagine the mother and specifically to represent her desire. Stories We Tell redresses the marginalisation of the mother in the earlier film by attempting both to represent her desire – through the enacted home movies that reveal her mother Diane Polley’s extramarital affair – and to perform it in the making of the film by putting her dead mother’s wishes and ambitions for her family into motion. The mother’s legacy is imagined and enacted not as constraining, in the manner that Freudian and post-Freudian theory suggests, but as inspiring and enabling the creative potential of those she has left behind. Finally, the chapter explores how as an actor Polley also presents a reconceptualisation of the mother figure in My Life Without Me (Isabel Coixet [2003]), a radical reworking of the maternal melodrama

Ethics, politics and representation in 'Child of Mine', a television documentary on lesbian parenting

While many documentary productions involve difficult negotiations with contributors, these negotiations and interactions take on a different character when the filmmaker is implicated in more direct ways with the people being filmed either because, for instance, they are members of the same family, or in the example I will discuss here, because they come from the same community. The situation I explore in this article highlights the ways in which issues relating to consent and representation are sometimes determined by both filmmaker and subject having competing sets of obligations and motivations. Critics of documentary have examined conflicts between institutional constraints and political and aesthetic commitments in relation to various historical production contexts, notably the British Documentary Movement[2]. The program I discuss here, however, took place in a very unusual context as part of a lesbian and gay magazine series on a major UK television channel; as such it presented particular challenges regarding the ethics and politics of representation. The film in question was Child of Mine, a forty-minute documentary about lesbian parenting rights, which a production company called Fresh Films hired me to produce and direct for Channel Four Television in 1996

'Surely you are not claiming to be more homosexual than I?': Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde

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Creating the Entrepreneurship & Libraries Conference 2020: A Collaboration of Public, Special, and Academic Librarians, Vendors, and Economic Development Stakeholders

Despite the increasing importance to libraries of supporting entrepreneurship and economic development, professional development opportunities on those topics have been rare. Also rare are opportunities for public, special, and academic librarians plus other types of professionals to collaborate on major professional development events like a multi-day conference. The authors and a diverse planning group worked to challenge that status quo by creating the Entrepreneurship & Libraries Conference (ELC) 2020. After making a COVID-19-mandated pivot to an online format, this conference featured speakers, networking hours, a discussion room hour, and a pitch competition with cash prizes for libraries proposing economic development projects. This article describes how a diverse group of librarians and economic development stakeholders from across the United States and Canada worked together to define, develop, and lead the ELC 2020. The article concludes with assessment and recommendations

Documentary and the question of knowledge: Ruthless Times, Songs of Care

Ruthless Times: Songs of Care /Armotonta menoa – Hoivatyön laulujaan (Helke 2002) is an acclaimed musical documentary about the privatization of elderly care. I explore how the film was framed by the director Susanna Helke, in written articles and in an interview, as artistic research, and consider how this research engages with the question of knowledge production in terms of the director’s stated aims and reference points, particularly Bertolt Brecht and Jacques Rancière. I analyse to what extent, as Helke suggests, it can be seen as creating a “rupture”, in Rancière’s sense, in relation to previous documentary forms and languages. I argue that while the film faces some of the same issues that critical art often confronts in terms of spectator address, its process of working with its topic and its participants nonetheless embodies a progressive model of feminist witnessing. &nbsp

‘Independent Miss Craigie’: narration and the archive in a documentary biopic

This article explores the process of making a documentary about Jill Craigie which drew, in particular, on the collection of her papers at the Women's Library and on documents belonging to Craigie and her family. Independent Miss Craigie (2021) seeks to examine the scope and synergies of film-making and politics in a career which encompassed independent production, journalism, broadcasting, television and writing. Our documentary aims to evoke the tensions between Craigie's own (rather diverse) accounts of her career, the evidence of it in her papers and in the contemporary reception of her work. This article about the making of the film provides space to reflect on how archival materials can be used to construct a narrative of a woman director's career. In doing so, it highlights the inevitable gaps and elisions in archival sources and, indeed, in the interpretation of Craigie's films and come to some conclusions about Craigie's disparaging attitude to her own work in later life