The use of film‐making as a research method and film as publication currently sits rather awkwardly in the social sciences. While some disciplines situate film (and video) production within a visual sub‐discipline, this approach risks diminishing the non‐visual and ‘more than visual’ elements of film. Filmic publication has also been hampered by the assumption that it is less theoretical than text and incompatible with the peer and editorial review process of the journal article. Today, technological innovations have made the processes of production, editing and storage of films (as digital videos) easier and cheaper, and the Internet has opened up new platforms for dissemination. The ability of film to creatively cut across a diverse range of academic and non‐academic networks chimes with the general call to reach new audiences and engage more directly with policymakers and the communities we work among. This article looks at geography's uneven relationship with film and proposes that the online digitisation of the research and learning environment is challenging our reliance on text. The growing ubiquity of sound‐driven and image‐driven media calls for a rise in filmic literacy and the development of a digital filmic geography that is not only theoretically rigorous but also creative, collaborative and practice‐led.
Amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA) in magnetic resonance imaging scans have emerged as indicators of potentially serious side effects in clinical trials of therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. These anomalies include an edematous type (ARIA-E) that appears as hyperintense (bright) regions by T2-weighted MRI, and a type characterized by the deposition of hemosiderin (ARIA-H) that elicits a hypointense signal, especially in T2* and susceptibility-weighted imaging. ARIA in general has been linked to the presence of Aβ-type cerebral amyloid angiopathy, an accumulation of misfolded Aβ protein in the vascular wall that impairs the integrity of brain blood vessels. However, the pathobiology of ARIA remains poorly understood, in part due to the absence of an animal model of the disorder that would enable a contemporaneous analysis of tissue integrity in the affected region. Here we describe both ARIA-E and ARIA-H in an aged squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus), a nonhuman primate model of naturally occurring cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Histopathologic examination of the anomalous region revealed reactive astrocytosis and microgliosis, infiltration of systemic inflammatory/immune cells, damage to axons and myelin, and hemosiderin deposition. The disruption of axons in particular suggests that ARIA-E could have functional consequences for affected regions. The squirrel monkey model can be useful for studying the pathogenesis and long-term effects of ARIA, and for testing the safety and efficacy of emerging therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.
While cheaper technology, wider training availability and the online digital learning environment have broadened the opportunities for geographers to use film and video, it has also led to calls to improve the discipline's media literacy. This need is made even more urgent by the shift in qualitative research to practice-based methods targeted towards how we experience our lived environment. Other shifts in empirical and conceptual focus are also relevant, particularly interest in emotional beneath the surface geographies and calls for participation rather than observation encased in recent debates on the Anthropocene. The negative association of film with entertainment and marketeering has led to concerns about the suitability of film as a research output and has caused some scholars to restrict themselves to a stringent use of real-time 'video' in a primarily data-collection context. This paper adopts a practicebased approach in order to identify some of the complex qualities that a research film holds and contribute to the debate about its future as a form of academic research and publication. Reflecting on a recent film-based research project on heritage tourism in Syria and Jordan I argue that the potential to manipulate, distort or entertain should not be ignored or refuted. Rather the wide range of relationships between people, objects and landscape within the frame such as depth of field, mise-en-scene and between the frames via editing (montage) give film a complex viscerality and multi-sensorial power that can help us explore how we communicate our feelings and connect the experiential qualities of filmic research methods to final outputs.
The advent of digital has led to the proliferation of moving image data, signalling a shift not only in what we research, but in the way research is carried out and reported. The subsequent increase in interest in the use of digital film in the discipline is therefore not surprising, but critical reflections on the possibilities and limitations of the medium are lacking. In this special section of Area, I have drawn together a series of papers from practice‐led authors to reflect on the complexities, tensions and difficulties that are caught up with the potential of using film as research method and output. Here, I introduce the different papers and reflect on the legacy of analogue video and film in the humanities and social sciences. I argue that while they should not be ignored, the resulting geographical categorisations of film that were developed when the process was analogue – placing film either as a text that should be analysed and/or a visual research method – currently restrict our further understanding of this nascent form of knowledge production.
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