Pursuit of Faith: “Navigating Ethics and Self-Referential Documentary”

Abstract

This Master’s Project sets out to explore the history of my Irish Catholic, French Canadian, family; using archive materials from my grandmother (super 8mm home films, scanned photographs) and more recent interviews between my grandparents (in person and via Zoom) and functions relationally, a pas de deux between a self (me) and a familial other (my grandparents) rather than an outright self-examination. Given the profound importance of healthy family dynamics in the life of the filmmaker (me), the paper includes the explorations of ethics, and four common principles; “consent, do no harm, protect the vulnerable, and honor viewers' trust” as guiding benchmarks in my own process. My goal through this project is to explore my family experience in all its complexity and place it into present day context and constraints of coronavirus, while examining other films (and literature about films) to inform the choices I make; ethically, structurally and stylistically for this autobiographical documentary. In keeping with this ambition, the essay formulates an ethics, a way, to think about the nature of autobiographical film in its possible relation to memory, the elusive ‘truth’ and understanding family religion and culture. Primarily analytical, the paper presents the ethics of my autobiographical documentary film by looking at a variety of self representations in film and literature and domestic ethnographic research. Like all autobiographical works, in writing, painting or film, my master’s project is a journey towards self understanding, and admittedly, self construction. The analytical paper focuses on my documentary, the ethical issues that arise while conducting domestic ethnography (the careful description and explication of culture) and the editing choices I drew from first person documentaries to connect those who came before us to those who come after us. Sarah Polley’s ‘Stories We Tell’ largely serves to inform me on storytelling and defining ‘truth’ whereas Alan Berliner’s ‘Nobody’s Business’ serves as a framework on editing choices. Berliner has a lot to inform about the underbelly of Kodachrome versions of family life; he reveals the importance to capture the surface rather than the depth of family life, beyond the filmed holidays, birthdays and anniversaries to fully grasp that only after this smooth facade and promenade of well-behaved children orchestrated for the occasion is where the ‘truest’ family dynamic lies. The paper both brings to the surface ethical issues in the life of a documentarian, and examines these ethical issues in the context of others autobiographical documentaries. Written to reflect the power of memory, intergenerational history and the healing power of stories, the film spotlights self-relations and self-growth, embodies the interconnections among self, other and the world, and awakens one’s own humanity in the process of sharing, telling and the process of filmmaking.