Past event
Saints Talk: Dr Leshu Torchin Documentary Film (and other Media) in a Post-Truth World
Development is delighted to invite you to the next instalment in our Saints Talk series from Dr Leshu Torchin, ‘Documentary Film (and other Media) in a Post-Truth World' on Microsoft Teams.
In this talk, Dr Torchin will explore the challenges to nonfiction media with a focus on how the documentary industry is affected by and responds to these conditions.
How do we understand both the work and the responsibility of documentaries in an era characterised as “post-truth”? Although there's never been a time of pure truth, the current non-fiction media landscape is beset by numerous challenges: misinformation, conspiracy theories, inflammatory click-bait, deep fake and AI technologies, autocratic decrees that limit expression to combat dissent, and the waning authority of verifiable fact in the face of emotional appeals all affect public perception of our shared world and the media that represent it.
Leshu Torchin is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies. She is the author of Creating the Witness: Documenting Genocide on Film, Video, and the Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), and has published articles and chapters on documentary film and media for Film Quarterly, A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film, The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics. She is also the author of “Cultural Learnings of Borat Make Benefit for Glorious Study of Documentary” in Film and History as well as a follow up piece entitled “Deep Fake: Borat's Subsequent Return to America in a Post-Truth Era” for The Oxford Handbook on American Documentary.