Documentary filmmaking as an ethical practice: looking for life stories

In this context statement, Documentary Filmmaking as an Ethical Practice: Looking for Life Stories, I look back over two decades of my own media practice and draw concrete lessons from the experiences I had, as I faced ethical dilemmas while working.

Conventional documentary too often falls into extractive practices, focussing on a subject’s pain and using trauma as plot points in the storytelling. Early on in my career, I was exposed to documentary protocols that separate ‘us’ (as makers) from ‘them’ (those documented) and that conceived of those being documented as characters in formulaic storylines, thereby denying them visibility, complexity, and agency. Over the last 15 years, I have endeavoured to work differently and build projects that were participant focused and collaborative in nature. Despite my best efforts, I have learned that even when we actively resist extractive models, power dynamics can manifest in subtle ways that are not always easily identified.

This paper offers insights on ethical documentary practice and builds on the work of feminists such as bell hooks (1994), Audre Lorde (1984), Patricia Hill Collins (2000) and Ursula Le Guin (1988) who theorised power and representation. It also draws from the scholarship and projects of practitioners such as Thalhofer (2017) and Cizek (2019), seeking to challenge traditional models of documentary filmmaking.