Film practice as interdisciplinary research: a case study

ABSTRACT

Referring primarily to my own doctoral practice-as-research project as a case study, this chapter explores cinematic practice as a mode of interdisciplinary research. The project traces the journey of the Kladovo transport, a large group of Jewish refugees from central Europe, who attempted to flee Nazi persecutions in 1939 via the river Danube. The majority of the passengers never got further than Serbia, where their journey fatally ended in 1941/1942. This failed escape attempt is charged with striking relationships to time, like the long periods of stasis that the Kladovo transport spent on the Danube waters. While drawing from large an interdisciplinary field, including history, Holocaust geographies and archaeology, I explore this journey as a multi-temporal event, with the camera as my main research tool. In this chapter, I will take a closer look at some of the elements of the interdisciplinary encounters as they appeared in my study.

KEYWORDS:

• Practice-as-research
• Holocaust geographies
• interdisciplinary research

Acknowledgements

Material for this chapter draws largely from my practice-as-research doctoral project ‘The River Danube as a Holocaust Landscape: Journey of the Kladovo transport’, conducted at the University of Bristol. I owe my gratitude to a great number of people (fully listed in the written component of my thesis) whose help was instrumental in my research, including the production of the film Two Emperors and a Queen. I am very grateful to the History Department at the University of Bristol for awarding me the DEAS scholarship. I extend my gratitude especially to my supervisors, Angela Piccini and Tim Cole, but also to my colleagues and all the staff at the Department of Film and Television and the Department of History. The Department of Film and Television also provided technical support for the production of my film for which I am very thankful. I am also extremely grateful to the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, Centre for visual communications Kvadrat, as well as a number of individuals who participated in different capacities in the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Vesna Lukic is a Lecturer in Film Production (Documentary) at Middlesex University. Her latest film Two Emperors and a Queen (2018) deals with a Holocaust narrative on the failed escape journey of the Kladovo transport.

Notes

1 Film is available online: http://screenworks.org.uk/archive/volume-9-1/two-emperors-and-a-queen