This dissertation provides possibilities of how documentaries can use games as media to produce critique, and particularly how procedural rhetoric can be used in order to achieve that goal. The research consisted of an analysis of case studies that originated a procedural rhetoric typology to produce critique; and the creation of a documentary game, Deixa-me Falar!. Its playtesting results proved the communicational effectiveness of this type of documentary genre in a context of social critique. This investigation can be useful for filmmakers and game designers who want to experiment the documentary game genre or how games can be used in critical and/or non-fictional environments.

Abstract The objective of this artistic research has been to reflect on the conditions forfilmmakers in Sweden and identify expectations, contradictions and subjectpositions available for myself within this discursive field. As a point of departure,I use three letters of rejection that I have received during my two years as astudent at the Stockholm University of the Arts. The first rejection centers what experiences can be imagined for me, as animmigrant filmmaker. It juxtaposes experiences made in Iran and Sweden asopposite and impossible to combine. The second rejection is in relation to contentand story-telling, which raises questions about translation as a dimension of filmproduction. In this section, I argue that while it is my intention to make experiencesof hyper-absurdity in Iran penetrable for an audience in Sweden, too muchconcern over the audience may deteriorate the artistic process. The third rejectionconstructs myself and my fellow director as immigrant others, scrutinizing ourability to make a film in Swedish, about Swedish subjects. In this section, Iexplore the meaning of diaspora and how it shapes the conditions of filmproduction. The artistic research is summarized in the final section where I suggest anumber of strategies forward in order to move away from the taken-for-grantedrole of immigrant filmmaker(s). Key concepts: documentary film, diaspora, translation

This thesis explores how the documentary film The Apology (as a medium) and its filmmaker (as a carrier group) functions as connection points between cultural trauma and transitional justice reparations driving social change. Earlier approaches to bringing justice to comfort women have been based on legal frameworks which this thesis considers restrictive and instead examines justice and reparations from a victim-centred perspective. To dig for details about how the protagonists' and the filmmaker understand justice, this thesis conducted a narrative analysis of the documentary film The Apology and an interview with the film director. Connecting theories from cultural trauma and transitional justice, the findings show a lack of higher levels of participation of the comfort women in designing and implementing justice and reparation programmes. The documentary produced new master narratives that facilitated the comfort women’s identity shift from passive receivers to active seekers of justice and reparations. This thesis concludes that carrier groups are humane agents with the ability to create powerful influencing narratives to support collective identity shaping, awareness raising, and push for social change and government actions. Finally, an effective public apology must be victim-centred and truthful. Otherwise, it risks remaining as a nice-looking political gesture to deceive the public.

This paper explores the use of documentary-style video to support and explore Troubling Design in the field of the gender biased health care system. Women have been neglected within the health care system for centuries and their physical concerns are often not taken seriously by a respective doctor. This research project aims to co-design a film with women suffering from endometriosis. This approach is a way to produce evidence of women’s experiences and contrasts it to the evidence within research and the health care system to explore the connection and potential of documentary film for co-designing practices within the field of Troubling Design. At the same time, the documentary film is a story-telling tool to represent these women's neglected voices and communicate their narratives to the public. It attempts to highlight the advantages of the medium film within complex settings, such as the health care system. Thereby, it translates different ways of knowing about endometriosis to varying stakeholders involved while suggesting possibilities for an improved handling of the disease within the medical encounter. The study represents how qualitative research can inform the creation of a documentary film that reflects specific users’ experiences and solutions for their health care situation while offering the option for a more ethical approach to research at the intersection of filmmaking.

This research is an attempt to define ”presentness” in documentary film. Presentness is a term I have borrowed from performance studies where it describes a feeling when actors are unusually present. I use it here to describe moments of intense focus, uncertainty, a connection or an unexpectedness between the people I film, and myself. Considering myself  a ”social actor”, I apply Goffman’s work on performance in everyday life to help me understand the performances taking place in front of and behind the camera. As method, I have created ”retroscripts”, transcripts of recordings I made for a film where I talk to my friends about growing up in a multicultural society. I analyse these encounters, trying to understand when and why moments can lead to a feeling of presentness.  Diary entries contribute a biographical element, charting my own interest and awareness of my performance as a filmmaker. This practise-based research develops previous discussions on performance by using the transcripts to place theory in the real world of filmmaking. It connects conversations on identity by Hall, which are closely related to the subject matter of the recordings themselves, with performance theory as developed by Fischer-Lichte. It approaches theory as a way of interpreting what takes place and as a practical tool for becoming a better filmmaker. The research engages with the work of other filmmakers with an interest in performance (Asquith, McAllister), through their films and theoretical contributions. Documentary filmmakers are split in their attitudes towards performance. Some try to get beneath the ’mask’, others examine the mask itself to see what it tells us about the image we project of ourselves. Inspired by Goffman, I focus on the cracks in between, when the mask comes on or off, believing these moments to contain a spark of now and a potential for presentness. I draw parallels with different acting techniques and propose that filmmakers can benefit from learning from the preparation of actors.  While acknowledging that presentness in film is a subjective experience and its perception by an audience is dependent on context, my research suggests a better understanding of the performance of a filmmaker can help her create the conditions for presentness to occur in the creation of filmic material.

This thesis investigates temporal dimensions of reenactment in experimental filmmaking, with a particular focus on the prominent use of this practice in the cinema of Portuguese director Pedro Costa. The research analyzes the non-professional actors’ performances in Costa’s films and broadly explores the implications of cinematic in-person reenactment, a term coined by Ivone Margulies. More specifically, the analysis sets out to challenge the predominant discourse of documentary reenactment by bringing closer attention to the intricate expression and materiality of cinematic temporality in these films, an approach that is also informed by Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the crystal-image. This concept, I argue, enriches our understanding of temporality in relation to reenactment, and ultimately also the impact Costa’s images have in providing us with a more attentive acknowledgment of the cinematic screen event. The aesthetics activated in these works exemplify what I call aesthetics of ambiguity. Contributing to the scholarly debate on reenactment within cinema studies, this work offers new perspectives on the phenomenon from the conceptual, aesthetic, and phenomenological examples of these films. The aesthetics of Costa exemplifies the temporal ambiguity that manifests itself in instances of in-person reenactments. I argue that this aesthetics challenge – and possibly also enrich - the predominant discourse of cinematic reenactment, by loosening its traditional connection to documentary filmmaking and examining it beyond categories of the real and the fictional.

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The work presented aims to show the complexity, causes, and challenges of being stateless in the Dominican Republic through the medium of documentaries. This thesis will also uncoverpossibilities of resistance and coalitional engagement. To do so, I align myself with a decolonial feminist approach, which is a way of searching for alternative ways of being, doing, sensing, knowing, and loving for resistance, change, and a different future. This approach opens the possibility to understand statelessness within the triad of modernity/coloniality/decoloniality and to move beyond the Eurocentric inventions of human rights, the concept of citizenship, and the figure of the 'citizen'. Decolonial feminism also grapples with the problem of victimization and gives us a possibility to see stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent both as an oppressed and resistant community. In a phenomenological sense, the documentaries Stateless by Michèle Stephenson (2020) and Our Lives in Transit by Sofia Olins (2015), are used in this thesis to explain and explore the lived conditions of being stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. I am conscious that film studies and particularly documentary filmmaking are colonized spaces and tools of modernity to spread the white / Anglo male gaze through the films' very impact on our senses and perception. For this reason, the work presented delinks from traditional methodologies which are often taken for granted in social sciences and migration studies. I aim to achieve this goal by practicing decolonial feminism as a theory and methodological guide for this thesis. Consequently, this thesis is a bridge-making process and an exploration of methodologies to grasp the complex reality in the Dominican Republic by practicing this work as a researcher, an audience, and a resister. Through the inspiring work of black feminists, decolonial and Caribbean scholars, but most importantly the lived experiences and voices of stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent, I intend to argue statelessness as amodern form of genocide to explain its root causes and persistence. Then, I will support this argument by bridging the links between statelessness and the coloniality of gender. Lastly, the different "world"-traveling experiences of directors Michèle Stephenson and Sofia Olins will deepen the discussion around possibilities of resistance to ongoing modes of subjugation through decolonial feminism.

In recent years has been a rapidly growing increase in the popularity of extreme sports. Whilst the root of the exact reasons that extreme sports have grown so dras;cally as an industry is not en;rely clear, there are many theories and sugges;ons which can create a narra;ve to the evolu;on of the sports. Not only have the sports become more popular, but the varie;es of the sports and the varie;es of the par;cipants have also increased, crea;ng more diversity and the evolu;on of a extreme sports culture. This has coincided, inten;onally or un-inten;onally, with the glamorisa;on and commodifica;on of extreme sports lifestyles and the technological advancements of the twenty-first century. In line with the above, the purpose of this study, and the photographic project which accompanies it, is to examine; • What are the factors that contribute to the popularity of extreme sports • Who takes part in extreme sports • Why do people take part • What is the future for extreme sports and it’s par;cipants The photographic project comprises of four photographs of each par;cipants, two of which are portraits and two of which are supplied by the par;cipants themselves. The inten;on of the photographs is to give insight into both who the par;cipants are as individuals and as athletes and how they view themselves within these roles. Interviews were also conducted alongside which are referenced throughout the paper. The paper combines the research and theories of other scholars, against the findings of my own study and how the photographic project represents this, to try and draw answers to the above state ques;ons. The results were varied and did not offer full answers but rather sugges;ons into where more research could be done to further this study and future studies. Most notably; Extreme sports and femininity, Extreme sports and diversity, Extreme sports and classism and Extreme sports and environmentalism.

Historically, Muslim female bodies have been a key focus of attention in colonial and patriarchal discursive practices. This colonial and patriarchal desire to control Muslim women's bodies ± and, by extension, their voice ± is rooted in Orientalism. Today, Orientalist modes of representation are sustained via consumer culture as well as the ways in which Muslim women are represented in mainstream media, cinema, and popular culture. Arguably, the need to control Muslim women's bodies is none more evident than in the polemic over the hijab and veil, which are banned in countries such as France and enforced in states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not only is this banishment and enforcement of the hijab inherently a sexist (and racist) policy that deprives Muslim women of autonomy, but this need to control Muslim women's bodies may also be linked to the fear of female sexuality. This paper seeks to analyse the policing of the Muslim female body and dress through representations in the mainstream media, television, and cinema. In addition, this paper argues that this fascination with the Muslim female body as well as her voice and dress are rooted in Orientalist traditions, which are still perpetuated today. Lastly, referring to my own documentary ± An-Nisaa (Women) ± as a case study, I attempt to demonstrate how the film resists Orientalist tropes and traditions.