A presentation of nonfiction and documentary filmmaking as a space for formal experimentation and creative interpretation of the world.
Constructions of the Real gathers a wide range of writing from nonfiction and documentary filmmakers from around the world who undertake theoretically informed practice and think through making. The filmmakers and writers featured here explore the rich space between the academy and industry, and they reflect on, interrogate, and explicate their filmmaking practices in relation to questions of form, content, and process. Engaging with current debates about the role of creative scholarship, the contributors make a powerful claim for nonfiction filmmaking as a knowledge-making practice for revealing, critiquing, and interpreting the world.
List of Figures Foreword Judith Aston and Stefano Odorico Thinking through Making in Non-Fiction Film Christine Rogers, Kim Munro, Liz Burke and Catherine Gough-Brady PART 1: THIS LENS MY EYE: FIRST PERSON, ETHNOGRAPHIC AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FILMMAKING Christine Rogers 1. The Enigma of Film – ‘Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary’ Jeni Thornley 2. Psychogeographical Choreography: On Filming Hand-Held Masha Vlasova 3. Remaking Absurd Pictures Rebecca Ora/rora 4. Creating/Recreating Memory: Cultural Menstruation Rituals through the Making of the Hybrid Documentary Big Girl Sheersha Perera 5. Phantom Limbs and Failed Messages: A Phenomenological Provocation of First Person Film Joanna Callaghan 6. Korimako and Macrocarpa Trees: Exploring Māori Experiences of Place through a Lens Christine Rogers PART 2: CONTESTED PLACES: FROM COLONIZATION TO CO-CREATION Kim Munro 7. Interrogating Power and Unsettling Relations to Place in Documentary Elizabeth Miller and Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz 8. Acclimations: Speculations on Making Documentary in the Climate Emergency Kim Munro 9. In Search of Ambiguity Philip Cartelli 10. Can Sound Be Used to Challenge the Colonial Legacies of Silent Archival Film? Robert Hardcastle 11. Fraught Narratives, Archival Traces: Documentary Experiments in Carceral History Alexander Johnston PART 3: THE EXPANDED ESSAY FILM: THINKING WITH IMAGES AND SOUNDS Liz Burke 12. Cinematic Aesthetics of Resistance: Reframing the Non-fiction Oppositional Film Jill Daniels 13. Flaunting Artifice: Restaging History as Critical Fabulation in The Deathless Woman Roz Mortimer 14. Tracing Yugoslavia: The Use of Narrative Time and Narrative Space to Re-Vision a Disappeared lieux de memoire (Memory-Site) Mila Turajlic 15. The Creative Ti(d)es of Sea-Changes: Musings on the Making of an Eco-Avant-Doc Gerda Cammaer 16. Weaving Fragments Together: Narrative and the Korsakow-Based Film Liz Burke 17. The Expanded Essay Film: The Researcher-Filmmaker as a Topographical Thinker Elisabeth Brun PART 4: NOTICING THE FRAME AND THE FORM Catherine Gough-Brady 18. Refugee Filmmaking: Finding Agency through the Lens Kaveh Abbasian 19. Passeio Público: The Life of Images and the Irresistible Fascination of Archival Film Andréa França and Nicholas Andueza 20. #PrecarityStory: Academic Casualization and Feminist Filmmaking Lorena Cervera and Isabel Seguí 21. Exploring Viewer Positioning and Attention Cues in a Cinematic Virtual Reality Documentary: A Creative Research Project Kath Dooley 22. Not Another Moment of Your Salvation: Documentary, Art Practice and Their Empathic Misadventures Minou Norouzi 23. Three Questions: A Practitioner’s Approach to the Documentary Form Catherine Gough-Brady Notes on Contributors
Christine Rogers is a Pākehā/Ngāi Tahu filmmaker, scholar and textile artist whose work explores belonging and identity. Kim Munro is a documentary maker and lecturer in digital media at the University of South Australia. Liz Burke is a filmmaker and documentary producer who teaches producing at Swinburne University of Technology. Catherine Gough-Brady is an award-winning documentary producer and director who explores the relational nature of filmmaking in her research.
