This is a PhD by practice, consisting of a documentary film, Village Tales, and an accompanying thesis; I locate my practice in the context of documentary and participatory filmmaking. In this research I want, as an experienced documentary filmmaker, to bring together the techniques of both ethnographic and participatory filmmaking, with approaches used in documentary production. The former with its emphasis on the voice of, in this case, rural women in India, and the latter with its concern to engage an audience through narrative and imagery. The research question is ‘to what extent can a combination of observational documentary techniques, video diaries and participatory filmmaking methods be used to explore the interior and everyday lives of women from another culture?’ The thesis covers the period of time from 2008 to 2014, which includes research, filmmaking, scripting, editing and screening the documentary to different audiences. The documentary explores what the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod (1991) calls ‘dailiness’; that is, films built around the exploration of relationships, feelings and experiences. Leslie Devereaux uses the term ‘sticking close to experience’ when describing this attention to everyday life (1995:72). My documentary is situated in the everyday because the women work primarily as housewives and mothers and the ‘everyday’ is an important site for the construction, maintenance and challenging of gender roles and power. More specifically, Village Tales is concerned with a regional government community initiative in rural India, set up to train local women as video reporters so they can make films about subjects important to them; these films are then screened to other villagers to raise community awareness. However, my documentary is also about some of these women’s daily lives as I asked four of them if they would turn their cameras on to their everyday lives and make video diaries about their own personal concerns. The exegesis charts the creative and intellectual terrain that the documentary project as a whole explores. It includes an historical account of participatory filmmaking in the developing world and the use of video diaries, by broadcast television in the UK. I ask that the accompanying DVD is watched after reading Chapters 1-3 of the thesis.

This research, which includes a thesis and a documentary film, focuses on the construction of a historical non-fiction film on anti-apartheid student protests at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 1957 to 1987. The restrictive censorship legislation at the time hampered the local distribution of the recorded footage and affected news reports on the nature of protests and protesters. The project sets out to situate these events within aspects of the historical and political context of the country, university, existing archive, individual and collective memory, the problematic of producing documentary films, the performative nature of protest action, the recording of testimonies and the production process. The research provides a framework for recording the interviews, collecting archival footage and photographs, and for constructing the narrative for the film. The thesis also considers the need for a “biographical” index for the construction process in order to rid the archive of subjective and political bias in an attempt to illuminate archiving processes such as the production of a historical documentary film. The project will show that although theoretical claims regarding the nature of truth in non-fiction filmmaking are fraught and open-ended, the collective memories of the participants, combined with relevant stock footage, can become a respectful collusion of voices.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-38). / by Karine Hrechdakian. / M.S.

My research explores the documentary encounter between the filmmaker and a familial subject who is also politically opposite to me, or what I term an 'extreme other'. The Thesis consists of a one-hour film and a forty thousand word critical and reflective work analyzing the ethical, aesthetic and political implications of this documentary encounter. The subject of my film is my cousin from the USA who used to work as a high school principal, but who over the past decade has adopted ethno-religious nationalist views—including the view that only white males should be allowed to vote in the USA. My aim was to create a representation of my politically 'far right' subject which would be, to use Mikhail Bakhtin's term, unfinalizable. My film and my writing both focus on navigating the possible obstacles to unfinalization, such as the fact that my views may be considered oppositional to my cousin's, my marginal authorial status as a national other, and the implications of theorist Michael Renov's designation of family film as domestic ethnography—a type of film which he writes is so highly intersubjective due to blood relations that the familial subject “refracts” (2004: xiii) the filmmaker and the film becomes an “autobiographical” self-portrait (ibid). I responded to my quandary of representing radical intersubjectivity between myself and a familial 'extreme other' by experimenting with narrative, thematic, and montage strategies deeply influenced by concepts from life-writing, documentary theory, literature, psychoanalysis and ethnography. Through the process of integrating critical exploration with filmmaking practice, I invented a form and style for the film to approach my goal of unfinalizing, while leaving traces of my ethical and aesthetic choices, and of my grappling with the problematic nature of representing opposing political views. Meanwhile I reflected on the ways in which intersubjectivity has been represented between filmmakers and 'extreme others' in existing documentaries, featuring both familial and non-familial subjects. Furthermore I reflected on the autobiographical and performative techniques of marginal authors. I began the film as a way of defending my cousin's liberty to criticize the US Government, in 2004 when the 'War on Terror' was rapidly shaping the zeitgeist. However, I soon found myself in opposition to his ethno-religious nationalist views (to use Manuel Castells' term). Given the radical intersubjectivity indicated by Renov's domestic ethnography, I brought critical concepts to bear on filmmaking practice in order to negotiate my goal of unfinalizing my cousin whilst maintaining my own political views which are radically different from his—and I did this while testing the degree to which this film about him was also about me. Furthermore, I carried out this research to find out how such a conceptual exploration could make an integral and visible impact on the film. I found that part of my motivation for articulating my cousin's criticisms against the US Government was indeed autobiographical—especially regarding my personal desire to escape what I perceived as the American stereotype in England. Meanwhile my reflections on existing documentary work showed me that other documentary makers were also personally invested in their encounters with 'extreme others'—even non-familial ones. Furthermore I developed the view that designating family films as 'domestic ethnography' can serve to obscure the political messages in such films by overemphasizing the importance of the domestic milieu. However, as the director and editor of U Know Them By Their Fruit, my persistent experimentation with autobiographicality eventually led me to further emphasize the public and political aspects of my film. I have contributed an original film built in the unfinalizing tradition of critical reflexivity, while problematising the power of authors to construct subjects. Moreover, I have based much of my filmmaking practice on an approach which considers what is unsaid, the potential we have for radical intersubjectivity. For lack of a better name I have termed this approach my 'spiritual' conceptual framework, and it is tailored for exploring and representing radical intersubjectivity in the documentary encounter. This conceptual framework includes Jean Rouch's ciné-trance, Levinas's I-Thou relation, and psychoanalytic theory of the doppelgänger device. Furthermore, I have tested Renov's designation of family film as domestic ethnography, and provided a critique based on the specific filmmaking circumstances of featuring a familial 'extreme other' subject, in a cross-national US/UK context, where the author is marginal. I have also provided an analysis of radical intersubectivity in non-familial film, based largely on my 'spiritual' conceptual framework. Finally, I took inspiration from performative techniques deployed by other marginalised authors, as well as non- or less marginal authors.

Akademisk avhandling--Uppsala, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 368-397. Filmogr. p. 398-404.

Thèse Uppsala : Univ., 2003.

This dissertation investigates how history is used in historical documentary films, and argues that the maker of such films constantly negotiates between cognitive, moral, and aesthetic demands. In support of this contention is discussed a number of historical documentaries by Swedish historian-filmmakers Olle Häger and Hans Villius. Other historical documentaries supply additional examples. The analyses take into account both the production process and the representations themselves. The history culture and the social field of history production together form the conceptual framework for the study, and one of the aims is to analyse the role of professional historians in public life. The analyses show that different considerations compete and work together in the case of all documentaries, and figure at all stages of pre-production, production, and post-production. But different considerations have particular influence at different stages in the production process and thus they are more or less important depending on where in the process the producer puts his emphasis on them. In the public service television setting, the tendency to make cognitive considerations is strong. For example, historical documentarists often engage historians as advisors, and work long and hard interpreting visual source materials such as photographs. The Häger and Villius case also indicates that the influence exerted on programmes by aesthetic considerations grows as the filmmaker learns about the medium. Among general conclusions are that it is not always important that the producer be a trained historian. What is crucial is that whoever is to succeed in making fine historical programmes must learn both history and filmmaking, must learn to balance the demands of content and form. Previously, researchers have suggested that historical documentaries function as entertainment, orientation, and restoration; this study adds the functions of interpretation and legitimisation. Finally, the study submits that typically historical documentaries attempt to convey cognitive and moral insights about the past.

This dissertation investigates how history is used in historical documentary films, and argues that the maker of such films constantly negotiates between cognitive, moral, and aesthetic demands. In support of this contention is discussed a number of historical documentaries by Swedish historian-filmmakers Olle Häger and Hans Villius. Other historical documentaries supply additional examples. The analyses take into account both the production process and the representations themselves. The history culture and the social field of history production together form the conceptual framework for the study, and one of the aims is to analyse the role of professional historians in public life. The analyses show that different considerations compete and work together in the case of all documentaries, and figure at all stages of pre-production, production, and post-production. But different considerations have particular influence at different stages in the production process and thus they are more or less important depending on where in the process the producer puts his emphasis on them. In the public service television setting, the tendency to make cognitive considerations is strong. For example, historical documentarists often engage historians as advisors, and work long and hard interpreting visual source materials such as photographs. The Häger and Villius case also indicates that the influence exerted on programmes by aesthetic considerations grows as the filmmaker learns about the medium. Among general conclusions are that it is not always important that the producer be a trained historian. What is crucial is that whoever is to succeed in making fine historical programmes must learn both history and filmmaking, must learn to balance the demands of content and form. Previously, researchers have suggested that historical documentaries function as entertainment, orientation, and restoration; this study adds the functions of interpretation and legitimisation. Finally, the study submits that typically historical documentaries attempt to convey cognitive and moral insights about the past.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2007. / Thesis research directed by: Comparative Literature. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

abstract: In this study, the researcher develops a documentary-driven methodology to understand the ways four women in the United States use their involvement in the belly dance phenomenon to shape their ongoing individual identity development. The filmmaking process itself and its efficacy as a process to promote self-understanding and identity growth among the participating belly dancers, are also investigated phenomenologically. Methodological steps taken in the documentary-driven methodology include: initial filmed interviews, co-produced filmed dance performances, editorial interviews to review footage with each dancer, documentary film production, dancer-led focus groups to screen the film, and exit interviews with each dancer. The project generates new understandings about the ways women use belly dance to shape their individual identities to include: finding community with other women in private women's spaces, embodying the music through the dance movements, and finding liberation from their everyday "selves" through costume and performance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2012