Participatory spaces. Negotiating cooperation and conflict in documentary projects

Abstract

In my thesis I evaluate the efficaciousness of the academic discussion on the ethics of documentary filmmaking, in which scholars have presupposed and ethically evaluated a certain documentary practice. I aim to assess whether this interpretation also reflects contemporary author documentary filmmaking, which allows for documentary as a personal artistic expression. What might such a contemporary practice look like and what does it mean for the discussion of ethics? With a focus on the filmmaker-participant relationship, a participant characterized as vulnerable, ignorant on documentary filmmaking, and as having nothing to gain, the research question focused on which moral issues filmmakers and participants encounter in the everyday practice of making documentary films, strategies they choose to deal with such issues, and the extent to which the context in which this happens is relevant. I complemented the scholarly discourse by interviewing seventeen Dutch author documentary filmmakers, who mainly had strategies to add.I used these findings to design a survey in order to measure filmmakers’ experiences with such moral issues and strategies, and their contexts. Based on the analysis of 158 valid questionnaires, dominating were filmmakers’ efforts to cooperate with the participant with the interests of the film in mind, while relying on their professional position and abilities to get what they needed for the film. Conflict surfaced in various forms and can be regarded as a relevant part of the experience, as a majority of filmmakers indicated experiencing it, though to limited extents. Contextual variables could only predict small differences between filmmakers.I also interviewed four Dutch documentary participants about their experiences. I analysed their accounts by investigating what was most salient in them, and by analysing how they talked about their experiences. These case studies indicated a similar result: cooperation, communication, and trust dominate the experience, and conflict, in various forms, plays an important supporting role. All respondents at some point disagreed with the filmmaker, and all tried to affect the project and safeguard their interests. In addition, the participants’ accounts pointed to a variety of positive and negative consequences of participating in a documentary project.Through these results, a practice surfaces in which the participant is actively involved in and committed to the project; in which conflict is dispersed, local, and a recurrent but non-decisive element of the filmmaker-participant relationship; and in which communication, trust, and commitment act as a safety-net for conflict.These results merit a paradigm-shift. The discussion on an ethics of documentary filmmaking must include a participant as partial co-creator; communication as a vehicle to carry filmmaker and participant co-creatorship; and conflict as a means to negotiate and safeguard their respective interests. In this practice, ethical questions concern not in the first place the need for the filmmaker to protect the participant from harm ensuing from her representation in a documentary film, but rather the negotiation of partial co-creatorship and of the respective interests of filmmaker and participant in the process of making a mutually desired compelling film.