The Sociological Cinema, (“designed to help sociology instructors incorporate videos into their classes”)
has recently recommended one of Dr Kip Jones’ (HSC and the Media
School) earliest stabs at visualizing research data via audio/visual
production. Produced in his bedsit and in a friend’s studio in
Leicester, Jones used photographs on loan from the National Trust
and dialogue retrieved in his PhD research on informal care to produce
this short A/V work on an antiquated PC, using an inexpensive camera to
film it.
The Sociological Cinema suggests that ‘I Can Remember the Night’ ‘could
be useful in a class on cognitive sociology, highlighting how cognitive
processes, such as memory, are shaped by socio-cultural events, such as
divorce. In addition to using the clip as a way to interrogate
biography and narrative as sociological methods of research, the clip
could also be a nice launching pad from which to introduce an assignment
where students create their own videos, using their own biographical
narratives as a window through which to explore larger sociological
phenomena, much in the way C.W. Mills suggested’.
Sociological Cinema page
Sociological Cinema page
The video itself is available
on Vimeo and portrays “Polly”, a 65 year old woman from the Midlands in
the UK, who recalls the time as a child when her parents sat her down
and asked her which of them she wanted to be with. Her story,
re-narrated by three players, represents how this traumatic event became
an enduring memory throughout the various stages of her life.
Jones, K. (2006) “Informal Care as Relationship: the Case of the Magnificent Seven” Journal of Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing, 13: 214-220.
Jones, K. (2005) “The Art of Collaborative Storytelling: arts-based representations of narrative contexts”.
Invited paper for: International Sociological Association Research
Committee on Biography and Society RC38 Newsletter, October 2005.
Other audio/video productions are also freely available on the column on the right or on Jones’ Vimeo pages.
