Join us by making a gift today. Creative discussion of emerging nonfiction storytelling. Some rights reserved. The Co-Creation Studio researches and incubates alternatives to a singular authorial vision in nonfiction media. Sign in. Archives Series Donate About Subscribe. StoryShift: Exploring Accountable Storytelling. Immerse Creative discussion of emerging nonfiction storytelling.
Thanks to Jessica Clark. Film Documentary Cocreation Racism Diversity. Immerse Follow. More From Medium. Cinema was in direct conversation with justice and independence movements. Grounded in theory of change frameworks articulated by political philosophers like Franz Fanon, the documentary form, they found, could serve as more than a mouthpiece for imperialism; it could become a liberatory art form.
Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino offered a prescient critique of the s film industry in their seminal essay, "Towards a Third Cinema" :. Until recently, film had been synonymous with spectacle or entertainment: in a word, it was one more consumer good. At best, films succeeded in bearing witness to the decay of bourgeois values and testifying to social injustice. As a rule, films only dealt with effect, never with cause; it was cinema of mystification or anti-historicism.
It was surplus-value cinema. Caught up in these conditions, films, the most valuable tool of communication of our times, were destined to satisfy only the ideological and economic interests of the owners of the film industry, the lords of the world film market, the great majority of whom were from the United States.
These collectives were training grounds for politically progressive filmmakers railing cinematically against a cultural hegemony and money-minded Hollywood; and they laid the ideological foundation and professional pipeline for leadership within today's documentary film spaces.
But here's the thing: in spite of the many ways that the documentary industry has been radically transformed over the last century, as well as the emergence of a modern, liberal-minded film culture, documentary filmmakers continue to be a homogenous community. A quarter are financially able to invest thousands of dollars from their own resources into their production budgets. Despite the fact that the majority of these filmmakers draw their artistic motivation from making a positive impact on social issues, their personal lives are leagues away from the individuals and communities typically featured on camera.
Filmmakers of color, however, experience a vastly different industry from their white peers. They enter the field with fewer financial resources, take years longer to complete films, and confront systemic and cultural barriers throughout their careers.
In response, new pathway development programs have been launched in the last decade to remediate these systemic barriers and increase the representation of filmmakers of color, including initiatives by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Firelight Media, YouthFX and other entities. The success of these artist development programs have resulted in a new class of filmmakers and professionals whose lives, unlike their whiter, older and wealthier peers, more often resemble the lived experience and material conditions of most documentary film subjects.
Indeed, if a filmmaker's life is in closer proximity to Nanook than Flaherty, that positionality fundamentally informs how the filmmaker identifies, interprets and shapes the stories they tell.
To be fair, members of this new guard often find stories in the same communities their white counterparts do. However, they are more likely to have been raised by these communities, or affected personally by the imbalances of power their films explore, mitigating the inclination for filmmaking as intellectual exercise, devoid of personal accountability, that too often occurs otherwise.
It stands to reason then, that this new class of documentarians would demand greater representation of filmmakers who can tell stories from within their communities not as curious observers, but as invested storytellers. This new class has sounded the call for a reimagining of the nonfiction filmmaking ethos, built on values of accountability, consent and respect for the agency of documented communities; and of a trust-based relationship between director and protagonist.
Bearing the weight of a form rooted in Eurocentric ideology, this new class aims to take back nonfiction and use it as a vehicle for both personal expression, and as a tool to strengthen movements, build solidarity across disenfranchised communities, affirm the experiences and history of people in their communities, heal from trauma, and inspire joy and political action.
Not unlike the filmmakers of the Third Cinema, this new class has its eye on liberation—from patriarchy, classism, nationalism, racism and capitalist exploitation. Clearly, testifying to social injustice should not be the purview of a select few. Social movements need impassioned witnesses, as well as activist artists. Problems arise when filmmakers eager to explore an issue or who witness injustice forge ahead with little to no introspection about their own internal biases; have no personal relationship to the documented community, no trauma-informed practice to support the protagonist; fail to attempt to put contemporary conditions into historical context to disabuse notions of pathological behaviors; and suffer no consequence for the spiritual or material damage wrought by white savior, noble savage or perfect victim tropes.
Narrative justice demands that those closest to the problem define that problem. This necessarily means a rearrangement of who stands behind the camera, but also requires tools to advance responsible, accountable filmmaking no matter the filmmaker. So, how to free documentary filmmaking from the negative impact of systems so deeply embedded in the culture from which the stories told are culled? Perhaps the answers lie in an intentional, consistent commitment to equity and accountability in storytelling in every sector of the documentary industry, from filmmakers to funders.
Perhaps it's a defense of the idea that documentary film should be for everyone as best represented by public media's mandate to present free, accessible, high-quality work from diverse makers.
Perhaps it's an embedded requirement in funding applications that crew in decision-making roles must be representative of the communities being documented; that filmmakers must be proactive in their pursuit of diverse production staff; that filmmakers interrogate the biases that shape their understanding of the story. In addition, while still providing necessary direction, there was not always a very scripted outline.
She is developing a practice to ensure that the people she interviews, including her own parents, have agency and are respected in understanding the impact of her film.
It takes time. It takes slowing down. It takes a whole different way of thinking. As a strategist for Story Shift at Wilmington, North Carolina-based Working Films, Bullock Brown also works to create an initiative and framework tool for accountable storytelling.
She is part of an ethics and accountability working group intent on introducing a larger framework for values-based filmmaking. One of the possible ways that the industry can incorporate non-extractive forms of documentary is to value the filmmaking process beyond the deliverables. This includes longer timelines so that communities who are telling their stories can be more involved and collaborate in the process of forming a narrative. It requires space for introspection and time to properly assess difficult questions of hierarchy and accountability.
It includes a funding landscape that incentivizes and rewards films that prioritize mutual benefits and symbiosis for the team and communities involved. If documentary filmmaking begins to value the people involved as much as it values the final film product, then the long-term effects of relationship-building and reciprocity will ultimately lead to a more long-lasting story and sustainable society. Yi Chen is a journalist and graduate of Wellesley College.
She was also a Documentary Magazine Editorial Fellow. We have revised our fact-checking process to ensure that pronouns are properly respected.
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