Smartphone filmmaking for queer Australian documentary

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article draws on my experience creating the film What's With Your Nails? (2018), a film about queerness, normality, slowness, and painting fingernails, and which embraces the affordances of smartphone filmmaking for queer documentary production in Australia. Documentary practices in this field are notable for a ‘privileging of authenticity’ through a subjective perspective, and there has been a history of queer filmmakers utilising accessible production technologies. The utilisation of hyper-accessible smartphone technologies presents an opportunity for queer activist filmmakers to make work that alters what we think of empowerment and self-identity by being different to mainstream media. In this article, I observe these concepts at play in notable historical contributions to queer Australian documentary, before discussing the creation of my own film, which was created in response to mainstream representations during and after the successful Australian Marriage Equality Postal Survey in 2017. As such, I argue that mobile media devices are ideal, hyper-accessible tools that can be used to interrogate subjectivities, generate material unlike that seen in mainstream media, and contribute to a growing history of queer documentary in Australia that changes the way we think about representation.