Paper short abstract:

The paper examines a meaning-centered approach to ethnographic filmmaking through a documentary about a transgender man and his family. Participatory storytelling navigates subjectivity and power, bridging the personal and political to foster audience engagement through universal themes.

Paper long abstract:

When I began developing my documentary feature film A Happy Man, which explores the intimate story of a Czech transgender man, Marvin, his Slovak husband, and their children living in Sweden, the global discourse on transgender rights was intensifying. At the time, the topic remained marginal in Slovakia, where the film was produced, the first documentary to address it. The situation was about to change rapidly throughout filmmaking. Due to this, I recognized the possible socio-political implications of the film and felt a dual responsibility to the protagonists and the broader LGBTQ+ community.

As a cis-gender woman and mother in a long-term heterosexual relationship, I primarily occupied an "outsider" position in the filmmaking process despite its fluid boundaries (Bourke, 2014; McDougall & Henderson-Brooks, 2021). To address this, I engaged Marvin in a participatory filmmaking process to authentically convey the specific values and meanings embedded in his story.

By focusing on partnership, family, and intimate relationships as central to self-identity, we intentionally 'depoliticized' the topic (Dohotariu et al., 2024), prioritizing universal themes over explicit political messaging. This reflexive decision aimed to foster socio-political impact by engaging with the film's audience and encouraging them to empathize with Marvin's lived experiences.

This paper proposes a meaning-centered approach to ethnographic filmmaking grounded in participatory collaboration and reflexivity. By navigating the dynamics of subjectivity and power (Guzman & Hong, 2022), this approach bridges the personal and political, fostering deeper audience connections and contributing to broader socio-political conversations.