{"title":"Redirected utopias: the politics of self-reflexive autobiographical documentary in Albertina Carri’s Los rubios and Ufuk Emiroglu’s Mon père, la révolution, et moi","authors":"Stephanie M. Pridgeon","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2021.1877392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1877392","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Twenty-first century documentary production from around the world has used self-reflexivity to challenge assumptions about subjectivity and social positioning in ways that explicitly challenge the politics of filmmaking. Released in 2003 and 2013 respectively, Argentine director Albertina Carri’s Los rubios and Turkish filmmaker Ufuk Emiroglu’s Mon père, la révolution et moi incorporate fictions and fantasies into their autobiographical stories, telling their life stories through alternative narrative forms that deviate from existing social and aesthetic precepts. The two filmmakers seek to understand – and scrutinize – the utopian ideals of the revolutionary movements to which their fathers belonged in 1970s Argentina and Turkey, respectively. The directors use non-realist, non-linear approaches to telling their own life stories as a way of challenging what audiences think they know about their nations’ recent history. Situating these two films within their respective national film industries and within documentary practices around the globe, I show that their shared metonymic structures question the utopic aspects of their respective fathers’ revolutionary politics and the non-place of memory. As I argue in my comparative discussion, these films are ‘redirecting’ utopic autobiographical storytelling to challenge notions of cohesion in both the self and political pursuits.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"16 1","pages":"68 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2021.1877392","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42763122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Based on actual facts”: Documentary Inscription in Fiction Films","authors":"P. Carrera","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1854072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1854072","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyzes the discursive functions of the expression ‘based on actual facts’, or related utterances such as ‘based on real events’, ‘based on a true story’, ‘inspired by a true story’, etc., through which documentary rhetoric is inscribed in fiction films. It is concluded that one of these functions is to substract fictional stories from textual and ideological criticism by means of a supposed closeness to ‘factuality’, creating a simulacrum of discursive transparency. Through the formula ‘based on real facts’, and similar ones, reality is identified with a specific form of representation, i.e. with a particular rhetoric. This is produced through a double movement: on the one hand, it is assumed that documentary film is or should be a faithful reflection of a reality that precedes it, and that it is, as a discourse, subordinated to and at the service of that supposed pre-discursive reality; on the other hand, once this candid perspective on documentary narrative has been assumed, the fictional discourse that is said to be ‘based on actual facts’ endorses with the truth-effect of documentary narratives (‘factual truth’) the discourse on values that is characteristic of fiction.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1854072","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42107944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spaces of engagement – critical aesthetic practice, audience experience and the documentary-like work","authors":"B. Frankham","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1854071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1854071","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Aesthetic choices and the experiences they create are fundamental to how documentary works establish their credentials and address their audiences.This paper focuses on the overlap between documentary and video art practice to explore the rhetorical possibilities of aesthetic experience. Applying a critical aesthetic practice, evident within artistic contexts, has the potential to encourage greater diversity in the stories that are told in documentaries, how they are told and how they might be heard. Through examination of the two-channel video installation, Disorient by Fiona Tan, the paper analyses how aesthetic choices operate as elements of a rhetorical strategy where the work is realised as an experience in itself, existing in the space of encounter between art object and spectator. I argue that the critical aesthetic practice evident in Disorient produces a circumstance where the audience encounters the rhetorical moves as much through the direct experience of the work as they do through puzzling over the indexical references that Tan raises and combines. As a two-channel video projection that is at a one-step remove from the form of cinematic documentary, Disorient is instructive in what may be possible when these strategies are applied to an artistically inclined, expanded documentary practice.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"16 1","pages":"1 - 17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1854071","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43621378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Seven types of collaboration","authors":"D. MacDougall","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1854150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1854150","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although there exists a significant tradition of films made by one person, collaboration has long been a common practice in documentary film production, with new forms of co-creation emerging with the advent of digital media. This poses the problem of how we should interpret films that combine different skills and different creative visions. What is the place of authorship in such a work? Drawing on a range of examples, including some from the author’s own films, this article describes seven types of collaboration in traditional documentary film practice: Dispersed Collaboration, Co-Authorship, Creative Assistance, Subject Collaboration, Sponsorship, Complicity, and Symbiosis. In addition to these, the collaboration of the viewer is crucial to the final realisation of a film. Also discussed in this article are ethnographic filmmaking, relationships among collaborators, and the personal relations between filmmakers and their subjects.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"16 1","pages":"18 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1854150","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47969666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The function of narrative in interactive documentary","authors":"J. Reeder","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1815124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815124","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Interactive documentary theory has oversimplified concepts of narrative in order to accentuate the contrast between traditional documentary and interactive documentary. In doing so, there is a risk of imagining the interactive documentary as an impermeable and incomprehensible artefact, resistant to hermeneutic examination. This paper will show that by approaching the question of narrative coherence as a phenomenological proposition, a theory of narrative can be developed which is able to account for interactive documentary traits which are not shared with traditional documentaries. In order to reimagine the role of narrative in interactive documentary, the philosophical approach of Paul Ricoeur will be adapted and extended. Ricoeur’s combination of phenomenology and hermeneutics encourages a nuanced and philosophically rigorous approach to narrative, which helps us expand on the role of narrative in interactive documentary.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"220 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815124","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43254727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"More-than-human sonic engagements in documentary film and phonography","authors":"Adam Diller","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1815125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815125","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Reconceiving relations with the more-than-human is a central concern of scholarship in the Anthropocene. In documentary film, entanglements with the more-than-human are expressed through cinematic relationships with subjects such as bees, freeways, Antarctic science, abandoned military bunkers, and emergency firefighting operations. Several recent documentary films use their soundtracks to anchor these engagements. This paper examines the construction of these soundtracks through a comparison between documentary film and phonography. Phonography – broadly defined as creative practices of recording, editing, and listening to sonic environments – foregrounds the material/cultural processes of all sound recording by attending to specific uses of microphones and studio editing techniques. I situate these sonic practices in relation to the foundational poles of soundscape and objet sonore established by R. Murray Schafer and Pierre Schaeffer, work by contemporary practitioners, and recent theorizations in sound studies. Interweaving an account of recent documentary soundtracks with theories and practices of phonography highlights the conceptual implications of specific sound recording techniques and attends to the ethics of sound recording practices. These sonic practices pose new questions about the work performed through documentary film soundtracks’ engagements with the more-than-human.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"238 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815125","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44161011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interactive documentary as relational media: exploring an actor-network theory approach","authors":"John Hondros","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1815126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815126","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a framework for understanding interactive documentary. It examines Adrian Miles’s work in this area, where he uses ANT as a way of conceptualising interactive documentary as socio-technical media assemblages and consequently to question the relationship between human and non-human agency as understood within the field. After introducing ANT and reviewing Miles’s position, the paper engages in a detailed discussion of ANT’s key concepts in the context of specific interactive documentaries showing how these concepts operate and examining the insights they provide. This discussion supports and extends Miles’s position while also broadening and deepening interactive documentary’s engagement with ANT through a more detailed and systematic engagement with its concepts than has been attempted previously. The paper concludes by raising issues concerning the adaption of ANT’s concepts to the field, including the question of whether they offer a complete theoretical framework for understanding interactive documentary and by suggesting future lines of enquiry to address these issues.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"256 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815126","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44687114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The autobiographical documentary: archive and montage to represent the self","authors":"Vladimir Rosas, R. Dittus","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1815123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815123","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay aims to examine how archival material is repurposed within autobiographical documentaries in order to reconstruct the documentarian filmmaker’s self in relation to their family. It is plausible for the filmmaker to explore their own identity by reexamining their family history, especially with interviews and observational devices; however, domestic media plays a particular role in creating a supporting discourse that finds new meanings from the confrontation of statements and images. By analyzing three examples of autobiographical documentaries, namely Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003), 51 Birch Street (Doug Black, 2005) and The Marina Experiment (Marina Lutz, 2009), we will explore how the re-contextualization of personal images works as a narrative strategy to unveil identity contestations in American autobiographical filmmaking.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"203 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815123","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44235372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Voices from the Valley: an unfinished agenda","authors":"S. Venkatesan, R. James","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1782808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1782808","url":null,"abstract":"Since the end of British occupation in India in 1947, the political status of Jammu and Kashmir 1 not only continues as a contentious domestic issue but also remains a major source of geopolitical ...","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"267 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1782808","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45514747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Feminist counter-cinema and decolonial countervisuality: subversions of audiovisual archives in Un’ora sola ti vorrei (2002) and Pays Barbare (2013)","authors":"Orianna Calderón-Sandoval, A. Sanchez-Espinosa","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1782807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1782807","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article we analyse the Italian compilation films Un’ora sola ti vorrei (Alina Marazzi, 2002) and Pays Barbare (Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, 2013) as examples, respectively, of feminist counter-cinema and decolonial countervisuality working with and against audiovisual archives. By means of a close-reading of the two films from an intersectional feminist perspective, we discuss: on the one hand, the ways in which Marazzi contests the rigid gender performativity of home movies, by restituting her mother’s memory and exposing her sense of discomfort; on the other hand, the strategies employed by Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi in their dismantling of the sexism and racism of the colonial archive, while also warning about the fascist past haunting the present.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"187 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1782807","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41431323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}