Frames / Sava Saheli Singh and Farhad Pakdel
The invasive surveillance apparatus we find embedded in almost all aspects of our technologically mediated lives collects and analyzes personal information which is then used by organizations to produce various outcomes that are often out of our control. Surveillance is not simply good or bad, helpful or harmful, but it is never neutral, and it is increasingly at the core of larger systems of control. Screening Surveillance is a short film series on speculative surveillance created by sava saheli singh that aims to raise awareness about how large organizations use data and how these practices affect life chances and choices. We need to consider these implications, and critically examine the logics and practices within big data systems that underpin, enable, and accelerate surveillance. The films were produced with support from and in collaboration with the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University, and the eQuality Project and the AI+Society Initiative at the University of Ottawa. Intended as public education resources to spark discussion and extend understandings of surveillance, trust, and privacy in the digital age, each film focuses on a different aspect of big data surveillance and the tensions that manifest when the human is interpreted by the machine. In Frames, a smart city tracks and analyzes a woman walking through the city. Things she does are interpreted and logged by the city system, but are they drawing an accurate picture of the woman? Frames was written by Madeline Ashby, produced by Farhad Pakdel and sava saheli singh, and directed by Farhad Pakdel. (Content warning for mental health, self-harm, surveillance.)
Bios: Dr. sava saheli singh is an academic, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary public scholar working at the nexus of media, surveillance, speculative futures, and intersectional marginality. She is currently a Research Fellow of Surveillance, Society, and Technology with the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at uOttawa. sava created the multi award winning Screening Surveillance – a speculative surveillance short film series. The films have been screened at film festivals, international conferences, workshops, global public events and in classrooms across the world. Farhad Pakdel is a Montreal-based filmmaker whose work explores identity (de)construction, liminality, absence, place, and memory. He holds an MFA in Film from York University in Toronto and an MA in Cinema from the University of Art in Tehran, where he experimented with film form and taught film courses for many years. Farhad is a member of Iran’s National Elites Foundation. He has directed, written, and produced several short films that have screened internationally.
