| dc.description.abstract | This PhD by Practice explores the nature, function, and possibilities of translating emotional worlds within authored documentary filmmaking. It looks at the similarities in roles between that of a documentary director and that of a translator and examines how cultural and philosophical theories of translation can provide a useful framework from which to think about issues of emotional intimacy, performance, ethics, authorship, and secrets within documentary filmmaking practice. I will explore how what occurs in the emotional space between myself as a filmmaker and those I am filming is visually expressed within the film and the processes and power dynamics this act of translation entails. My methodological approach to this research is twofold: through making The Water is Wide, which serves the overarching research question as a method of exploration, and through writing this critical reflection which explores how I approached the film project and what methods informed my thinking and creative practice.
The Water is Wide is a film about my relationship with a woman called Zelide Cowan, who has dementia and what happens after she unexpectedly dies, and I’m left to film with her husband, who became increasingly obstructive to the filmmaking process. I shall explore how my approach to making the film is autoethnographic and, using Steiner’s work on philosophical theories of translation, I will examine what happened between myself and those I was filming with. I shall discuss how a secret - and the performance of a secret - was translated into the narrative of my film and, using Goffman’s theory about the presentation of self, I examine the struggle that followed between myself and my contributors. | en_GB |
