Filming oral histories of trauma and conflict: three case studies

An OHS Festival Special Online Event

Ticket Information

Free to OHS members 

Free to Oral History Festival delegates

£4 to Non-members

This special online event, part of the OHS Oral History Festival, explores the challenges of using moving image to gather sensitive oral histories about war, conflict and trauma. Three case studies will discuss the practicalities of filming UK war veterans; the ethics of witnessing the war in Ukraine; and using archived oral histories to explore experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic for wider audiences. 

Programme: 

Martin Bisiker will discuss the challenges of videoing British war veterans for the Legasee Educational Trust. 

Alina Doboszewska and Krzysztof Krzyżanowski will talk about the ethical issues raised by the documentary film ‘And the War Came to Us’ (2021), which tells the story of the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war (2014-19), based on oral history interviews with the widows of fallen soldiers, as well as authentic material from the front line. 

Rosie Al-Mulla, Sarah Bromage and Stephen Bowman will discuss their experiences as first-time film makers using an oral history archive they created about the experiences of their staff and student community at the University of Stirling during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Their talk will touch on creative engagement with oral history archives and the ‘afterlife’ of a collection.  

Q&A. 

Essential pre-event viewing: attendees are strongly encouraged to view the following films prior to the event.

Legasee: https://www.legasee.org.uk/ clips 

– https://www.legasee.org.uk/veteran/harold-addie/

– https://www.legasee.org.uk/veteran/geoff-king/

– https://www.legasee.org.uk/veteran/tracy-burgess/

– https://www.legasee.org.uk/veteran/joanne-jukes/

‘And the war came to us’, Dobra Wola Foundation: https://youtu.be/ERn7pBczQhY (dubbed in English) 

‘An unusual period of unspecified length: a creative oral history of the Covid-19 Pandemic’, University of Stirling: https://ucldigitalpress.co.uk/BOOC/Article/3/148/  

Chair: 

Rob Perks is Secretary and Editor of the Oral History Society, and formerly Lead Oral History Curator and Director of National Life Stories at the British Library. 

Speakers: 

Martin Bisiker is the Founder of the charity the Legasee Educational Trust and a regional advisor for the Oral History Society. 

Alina Doboszewska from Jagiellonian University Krakow is President of the Dobra Wola Foundation in Krakow and a member of the Polish Oral History Association. 

Krzysztof Krzyżanowski is a film director. 

Rosie Al-Mulla is Assistant Archivist at the University of Stirling. 

Sarah Bromage is Head of University Collections at the University of Stirling. 

Stephen Bowman is a Lecturer in History at the University of Stirling. 

If you are interested in attending this event, please click here