If Not Now

Digital or visual media


Daniels, J. 2024. If Not Now. Australia
CreatorsDaniels, J.
Description

My short essay film, If Not Now explores the assertion that in opposition to notions of waste, and dispersal, there is a grand circularity, of nothing ever, ever going away; that resistance to nationalism in the past may be a catalyst for resistance today. Following Michel Foucault’s argument that “Where there is power, there is resistance” and Stephen Muecke’s argument that resistance may not mean a constant ‘standing firm’; there may also be interruptions. The film is located in Brick Lane in London’s East End; home to successive immigrant communities, Huguenot weavers, Jews, Bengalis; today it is semi-gentrified with hipster clothes shops, street food, beigel bakeries, Indian restaurants and sari shops. My authorial self is represented as a political resister whose Lithuanian Jewish great-great grandmother died in Brick Lane and continues to haunt my present. Avery Gordon’s view of haunting is as a struggle against the reduction of individuals “to a sequence of instantaneous experiences that leave no trace”, or whose trace (as dust) is hated as irrational, superfluous and ‘overtaken’. In 1978 Bengali workers in Brick Lane, organised the first black strike in England in protest against racist attacks and murder; but the fascist National Front, continued to carry out marches and attacks. The police protected the National Front. In If Not Now I experiment with hybrid filmic strategies of realist archive footage and a fictionalised evocation of the past; witness voice-overs, slow-motion, long takes, stills and moving image, fragments of interrupted narrative, tactical argument and disconnected sound creates a poetic montage to bring the past into the present.

Date01 May 2024
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Video
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Anyone
KeywordsBrick Lane; essay film; history; political resistance
Place of publicationAustralia
Web address (URL)https://unlikely.net.au/issue-09/if-not-now-
Copyright holder© 2024, Jill Daniels
Publication process dates
Deposited09 Jul 2024
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https://repository.uel.ac.uk/item/8xv88

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If Not Now.mp4
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Related outputs

Archive Tales: Negotiating the Radical Personal Film Archive
Daniels, J. 2024. Archive Tales: Negotiating the Radical Personal Film Archive . Archives of Radical Cinema: Radical Film Network Conference 2024. Madrid, España 19 - 22 Jun 2024
Cinematic Aesthetics of Resistance: Reframing the Non-fiction Oppositional Film
Daniels, J. 2023. Cinematic Aesthetics of Resistance: Reframing the Non-fiction Oppositional Film. in: Rogers, C., Munro, K., Burke, L. and Gough-Brady, C. (ed.) Constructions of the Real: Intersections of Documentary-Based Film Practice and Theory Bristol Intellect Press. pp. 144-154
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Daniels, J. 2023. Resisters. Screenworks. 13 (1). https://doi.org/10.37186/swrks/13.1/10
Dwoskin and Me: Halting the Flow of Time
Daniels, J. 2022. Dwoskin and Me: Halting the Flow of Time. Jewish Film & New Media: An International Journal. 10 (1), pp. 141-159. https://doi.org/10.1353/jfn.2022.a914339
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Daniels, J. 2022. The way of the bricoleuse: experiments in documentary filmmaking. Studies in Documentary Film. 16 (2), pp. 127-139. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2048232
Resisters
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Breathing Still 2020
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Daniels, J. 2019. The Subjective Voice and Hybrid Documentary Filmmaking Strategies: A Case Study. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. 17, pp. 97-110. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.17.06
The Border Crossing: Experiments in the Cinematic Representation of Memory
Daniels, J. 2013. The Border Crossing: Experiments in the Cinematic Representation of Memory. in: Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited Cambridge Scholars. pp. 20-34
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Daniels, J. 2017. My Private Life II. Screenworks. 7.
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Blurred Boundaries: Remediation of Found Footage in Experimental Autobiographical Documentary Filmmaking
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Daniels, J. 2015. My Private Life II. The University of East London. https://doi.org/10.15123/DATA.146
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Daniels, J. 2014. The Border Crossing. The University of East London. https://doi.org/10.15123/DATA.17
not reconciled
Daniels, J. 2014. not reconciled. The University of East London. https://doi.org/10.15123/DATA.18
My Private Life
Daniels, J. 2014. My Private Life. University of East London. https://doi.org/10.15123/DATA.00000241
The Border Crossing: the Cinematic Representation of Memory in the Autobiographical Documentary
Daniels, J. 2012. The Border Crossing: the Cinematic Representation of Memory in the Autobiographical Documentary. in: Esin, Cigdem, Hawkins, Matthew, Salami, Iwa, Tamboukou, Maria, Townley, Lynn and Wells, Marianne (ed.) Crossing Conceptual Boundaries IV London University of East London, School of Law and Social Sciences. pp. 8-16