Paper short abstract:

Based on the process of the documentary film project "Transition", we will explore how we can research and express lived-experiences of people who go through life transitions using smartphones.

Paper long abstract:

Many Japanese individuals fall victim to the disease of cancer, making it the most common cause of death in Japan. Mizuno's wife Mie was diagnosed with stomach cancer in May 2017, just before the delivery of their first child. Mie began to live with medical treatment immediately after childbirth. However, she passed away three months after her son's first birthday. Mizuno recorded himself and his family's life using his smartphone camera almost every day ever since he was informed of his partner's disease in May 2017. From June 2018, Mizuno started a collaborative research with Ohashi to understand the rapid changes of his family's life-world and together they made a documentary film using images generated with Mizuno's smartphone. In the beginning, Ohashi, as a visual ethnographer, had planned to do fieldwork by visiting the family's living environment. However, she decided to avoid exhausting Mie's limited time and strength by being present in their living environment for research purposes. Alternatively, Mizuno and Ohashi began to share diaries and visual data generated with smartphones on Google Drive and arranged to have weekly online interview sessions to collaboratively reflect on the data and to create a structure for their documentary film. The film was titled "Transition", and it was selected for the 32nd edition of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Based on the process of the documentary film project "Transition", we will explore how we can research and express lived-experiences of people who go through life transitions using smartphones.