Indexes, icons, and symbols. According to Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theory (1974), we can identify three basic types of signs: indexes, icons, and symbols. Indexes, such as photos, videos, and films, have a factual connection with their objects since they…
There came a point in The Beloved Ones, the film I made in 2007 for the UK Film Council, when it became clear that the indexical sound recorded in the field, in Uganda, was not going to be able to…
Theorists of film and photography, from Barthes to Benjamin, have often drawn our attention to photographic media as a way of accessing history. However, animated documentaries such as Places Other People Have Lived (Yilmaz, 2011), Learned by Heart (Rimminen and…
