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Accepted Paper:
Form Participation to Collaboration: Fictional Storytelling in (Applied) Ethnographic Filmmaking
Martin Gruber
(University of Bremen)
Paper short abstract:
In my presentation I discuss how protagonists may use fictional elements to destabilize conventional roles and hierarchies in Ethnographic Filmmaking and within their wider social worlds.
Paper long abstract:
Inspired by the films of Jean Rouch, I have been experimenting with fictional elements in the documentaries I produced within different research and development projects. In this presentation I will discuss how the protagonists used the ambiguous space between fiction and realist documentary storytelling to challenge conventional roles and hierarchies within the filming team and beyond.
Based on improvisation and play, ethnofictional filmmaking may serve as an alternative to complement more conventional methods of ethnographic filmmaking and research (Sjöberg 2009). During my own filmmaking, I realised that fictional improvisations also change the dynamics within the filming team considerably. The participants of film workshops I organized, used a range of tactics in order to negotiate and enhance their position, both within the social arena constituted by the filmmaking, and within their wider social worlds. Explicit or implicit references to imagined futures thereby played an important role.