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Paper short abstract

This paper explores narrative repair as a feminist and collaborative approach to ethnographic filmmaking. Drawing from participatory storytelling with Syrian Druze women in the Golan Heights, it examines how filmmaking negotiates memory, bridging political divisions through shared lived experiences.

Paper long abstract

This paper engages with feminist and decolonial critiques of ethnographic filmmaking to explore narrative repair - a collaborative method that foregrounds co-authorship in storytelling with politically marginalized communities. Based on participatory filmmaking with Syrian Druze women from the occupied Golan Heights, this project interrogates how filmmaking can serve as a site of shared meaning-making rather than external representation (Abu-Lughod 1991; Minh-ha 1989; Lebow 2012).

This research challenges the notion of neutrality in ethnographic filmmaking by embedding feminist methodologies that prioritize reciprocity, dialogic storytelling, and ethical collaboration (Pink 2021; MacDougall 1998). Working across geopolitical and national divides, it examines how oral history, memory, and co-authored narratives function as counter-memory, challenging dominant historical narratives (Portelli 1991; Frisch 1990). Rather than merely documenting experiences, the filmmaking process itself becomes a form of narrative repair - where shared lived experiences of motherhood, displacement, and loss create relational solidarities that transcend national affiliations.

This paper contributes to ongoing debates on collaborative visual ethnography, asking how participatory documentary practices can navigate ethical tensions between political engagement and co-authorship. In dialogue with feminist and multimodal anthropology, it argues for an ethnographic filmmaking approach that fosters reciprocal, rather than extractive, knowledge production - positioning storytelling as both an act of resistance and a means of repair.