UNCOVERING MEMORY, filming in South Africa, Germany and Bosnia/Herzegovnia

355pp., colour illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2023

Artistic researcher, filmmaker and writer Tanja Sakota uses paired themes of memory and forgetting, segregation and migration, perpetrators and victims, as she travels through South Africa, Germany, Poland and Bosnia/Herzegovina. Using a camera and short film techniques, she hosts workshops focused on interacting and engaging with remembering through different memory sites.

"This book presents a very important contribution to the field of film as research and the role of film in memory, remembering and history. Its importance lies in its structure and voice, which embody the subjective traits of autoethnography and personal practice, while seamlessly integrating the experiences of others through examples and stories from workshops and students’ experiences. It also offers useful and understandable models for others to follow if they wish to adopt this method with students or academics in researching memory. " Diane Charleson, Senior Lecturer in Media Production, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

"Uncovering Memory is a deeply fascinating piece of work – at once deconstructive, transgressive and creative, invoking the local, regional and the global in storytelling. It traverses geographies, spaces and discourses. It swims and swings in multiple levels of nuance as it explores and extends narratives in multiple mediums – for instance, film and documentary. It explores as much as it recuperates memory. It valorises self-reflexivity and lateral thinking. It is a true work of transdisciplinary practice and theorisation." Professor Tawana Kupe, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, University of Pretoria

Tanya Dakota is a senior lecturer at the Wits School of Arts Film and Television Division, University of the Witwatersrand.