2017 | 12 | 1968 in the Media

On March 20, 2017 EUscreen and the FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission organized a joint seminar about ‘1968 in the Media’. The Media Studies Seminar was devoted to the media coverage of different political and social events that took place in 1968 across the globe. The day was split in four panel sessions with different perspectives: Politics of Representation chaired by Lisa Kerrigan (British Film Institute), Researching 1968: Stories, Perspectives and Sources chaired by Dana Mustata (University of Groningen), Filming 1968 chaired by Andy O’Dwyer (University of Luxembourg) and Curating Histories chaired by Liam Wylie (RTÉ Archives). In this short, special issue, we present a selection of invited papers on the topic of '1968 in the Media’.
Co-edited by the FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Article
    Meinhof, Shigenobu, Kennedy: Revolution and Assassination in 1968
    O’Sullivan, Shane (2017-05-01)
    This article reflects on audiovisual representations of the events of 1968 and its aftermath in three national contexts through two archive-driven historical documentaries I have produced exploring this period: RFK Must Die (2008) and Children of the Revolution (2010). RFK Must Die investigates the assassination of Bobby Kennedy through both witness testimony and the hours of network footage available from the crime scene. Children of the Revolution charts the audiovisual historiographies of two female revolutionaries from the 1968 student movements in Germany and Japan to become leaders of the Baader Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army. Both women were journalists who used film to fight a propaganda battle against state broadcasters, through collaborations with independent filmmakers or demanding screen time through the television commissioning process. By choosing to frame their stories ‘through the eyes of their daughters,’ who are also journalists, the making of the film became a struggle for editorial control with key contributors and a round of complex negotiations to secure access to archive materials on such a highly-politicized and hotly-contested subject.
  • Article
    Northern Ireland’s 1968 at The Ulster Museum
    Reynolds, Chris (2017-05-01)
    In the dominant and increasingly prevalent transnational narrative of 1968, the case of Northern Ireland has been marginalised. As well as explaining how such an erroneous absence is to be understood, this article, through the example of an ongoing project at Belfast’s Ulster Museum, will argue that the current post-Troubles context provides fertile terrain for a recalibration of how this period is remembered from both within and without. It is concluded that such a project offers potentially valuable lessons for handling the difficult question of the past in Northern Ireland and beyond.
  • Article
    The Role of Commercial Radio Stations in the Media Vacuum of Mai 68 in Paris
    Legay, Richard (2017-05-01)
    Commercial radio stations RTL and Europe n°1 played an important role during the events of May 1968 in Paris by maintaining the news coverage of the protests, the riots and the strikes. By analyzing the entanglements of the various audiovisual media and surviving audio material,this article defends the idea that a vacuum created by the crisis that affected the French public broadcasting agency is one of the main reasons that brought the commercial radio stations at the centre of the events.