The 15M process archives
Pedro Cabello del Moral, Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures
Faculty Advisor: Paul Julian Smith
NML Award: The Joshua Brown Visual Culture Award (March 2022)
My project for the New Media Lab consists of a digital companion to my dissertation, whose focus is contemporary Spanish nonfiction films. In line with current trends in digital humanities, the digital component of my dissertation expands the written text through contextual and mapping tools. Furthermore, the digital part will provide additional insights beyond the scope and timeframe of the dissertation. Unlike the written dissertation, the digital companion will be a continually evolving project encompassing new examples and political debates as they arise.
This digital companion features a catalog of film bits from interviews with filmmakers. These videos are thematically organized according to contemporary events and linked to movie excerpts from the authors’ works. The website will feature a visually attractive multifunctional blog with extra features that allow users to engage in complex ways. It will include a repository of videos organized primarily by themes, but which can be interactively reordered according to other search criteria. It will also incorporate a timeline tool with the possibility of linking pop-up videos, images and texts.
This website will be built in Omeka, as it is a suitable way of cataloguing videos and allowing searches using different criteria. The website would be bilingual EN/SP and will include a map of the Iberian Peninsula indicating the places of the interviews and events linked to the 15M process. Each dot on the map will display a pop-up window with info and links to videos.
The 15M Process Archives is in dialogue with the ideas and methodologies expressed in my dissertation, in which I analyze a corpus of contemporary Spanish films that document an array of social movements in the wake of the 15M (or Indignados) Movement (2011-). My research involves three main areas: 1) Documentaries about coalition-building in the 15M movement, 2) Nonfiction films on decolonial and feminist critiques within the housing rights movement, and 3) Audiovisual discourses around work precarity, precarious bodies, and disability rights. Each of these areas will be represented in the digital companion, which will explore further the relationships between them through its interactive features.