Events

Film and Television Studies is delighted to be co-hosting Dr. Shota Ogawa, a cutting-edge film scholar in the documentary arts in East Asia.

Dr. Ogawa is an Associate Professor in Screen Studies (Graduate School of Humanities) at Nagoya University, Japan. His work focusses on the history of imperial and postimperial Japanophone cinema. His present research explores the contested model of “the witness” in contemporary documentary arts practices and theories in East Asia.

Dr. Ogawa’s expertise spans three interrelated fields of inquiry: (a.) archival film history; (b.) Japanese cinema with an emphasis on postcolonial filmmaking; and (c.) imperial/post-imperial documentary cinema. His current research draws on these three areas to examine the contested figure of the witness in contemporary documentary arts in East Asia, with special attention to practices that destabilize the androcentric “testimony apparatus” (Bhaskar and Sarkar 2010) in favour of its recalibration around the archival, the nonhuman, and the forensic witness.

Ogawa’s investment in cinematic documentation and interdisciplinary coverage of human rights trials and social activism will be of special interest to those invested in how global documentary practice can contribute to contemporary interdisciplinary debate on who and what should count as a witness, and how this witnessing matters to the social and political challenges of the world today.