Chair: Dr Neville Bolt, Reader in Strategic Communications Education

Speaker: Elīna Lange-Ionatamišvili, Senior Expert, NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (COE) in Riga, Latvia 

For over a century, film has been a powerful medium for representing and constructing memory. Due to its aesthetic qualities, it is particularly influential in creating the effect of reality and presence, thus shaping viewers’ understanding of the past, present and future.

Film that speaks to traumatic events like war can be of particular interest because memories and meanings attached to these events by different groups are highly contested. Equally, it is of crucial importance for political elites to consolidate and enforce agreement that helps them retain positions of influence.

This presentation will outline the approaches used in constructing a documentary about the life of internally displaced persons in post-war Georgia and discuss the theoretical findings that are relevant to guiding the current PhD research which uses film as a proxy to explore the insufficiently researched, yet pivotal role of memory construction in national strategic communications.