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A Short Overview of the Genre
By Pat Aufderheide
First-person films—diaries, memoirs, home movies, therapeutic
records, travelogues—have been part of the audio-visual landscape
for decades. But it wasn't until the mid-1980s that the personal
essay film became accessible beyond the reaches of film schools
and art houses, and began to take a place in the programming diet
of television. It was a period of rapid expansion of accessible
video technology, and just as rapid cutting back of public resources
for independent and experimental use of the medium.
Films like "Sherman's
March" (McElwee, 1986), the record of a journey through
the South by a scion of privilege who has lost his sense of entitlement;
"Silverlake Life: The View
from Here" (Friedman, 1993), a diary of a gay couple facing
death from AIDS all became part of the cultural landscape "History
and Memory" (Tajiri, 1991), a wrenching meditation on the
consequences of suppressed family history; and "A
Healthy Baby Girl" (Helfand, 1996), a journal of one family's
coping with the tragedy and terror of cancer triggered by the commercial
drug DES, once commonly given to pregnant women—were seen
on broadcast and cable television, and incorporated into educational
curricula. By the 1990s, personal essay film was, effectively, a
genre in crating, programming, distribution and in funding cycles
of public television.
Personal essay documentaries were part of a trend in documentary
work overall toward a more intimate approach, even in explicitly
public affairs subject matter, with the goal of intervening in a
shared understanding of meaning. In this documentary genre, the
narrator takes clear ownership of the narration, at the same time
that the narrator is a character. They are frankly, inevitably personal.
They are not just about a person's beliefs and activities, however,
but about the construction of that person's identity, the way they
are in the world. In doing so, they become more than personal statements,
and act as public interventions.
This work emerged out of a broad and diverse set of social movements
in the 1960s and 1970s, which pressed for an expansion of civil
rights. These movements not only generated new social identities
but implicitly claimed the right to construct and design new social
identities. The film genre emerged at a time when those movements
had spent their first organizing energies, having profoundly altered
the landscape. These personal essays can thus be seen as taking
advantage of new possibilities of expression both to challenge the
status quo of representation, and to assert the right to social
action and expression.
A remarkable number of the makers of 1990s personal films developed
their skills over this dynamic period in which documentary was closely
tied to social movements, and shaped their expectations of documentary
then. Some filmmakers, such as Ross McElwee and Alan Berliner, were
veterans of the movement of independent art and avant-garde cinema,
which had a stance of opposing the rampant commercialism of the
postwar boom. But many more were people with a history of some direct
social activism, having sought out the tools of filmmaking at an
earlier moment as part of a social movement.
For instance, Emiko Omori ("Rabbit in the Moon", 1999)
had served as cinematographer on the Academy-nominated "The
Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter" (Field, 1980), about women
working during World War II; "La Ofrenda" (Portillo, 1998),
about celebration of the "Mexican Day of the Dead" across
cultural borders; "Hopi Songs of the Fourth World" (Ferrero,
1983), and others. She had worked with her mentor and hero, the
left French filmmaker Chris Marker, on his segment for a 13-part
European TV series on Greek culture (Rhodes, 1992.) Marlon Riggs
("Tongues Untied")
had made "Ethnic Notions" (1986), a highly controversial
film that examined the phenomenon of racist kitsch. Renée
Tajima-Peña had made several works on social issues, including
"Who Killed Vincent Chin?" (Tajima & Choy, 1989),
on the murder of a Chinese American who angry auto workers mistook
for a Japanese at a time of hostility to competing Japanese car
manufacturers.
Deborah Hoffman ("Complaints
of a Dutiful Daughter", 1994) was a veteran editor of left-wing
films such as the Oscar-winning "The Times of Harvey Milk"
(Epstein, 1984), for which she received a National Emmy; Marlon
Riggs' Peabody Award winning "Color Adjustment" (1991)
and Riggs's earlier "Ethnic Notions". Ellen Spiro had
developed video skills as an AIDS activist, co producing "Diana's
Hair Ego" (1990), about a cosmetologist who does AIDS education,
and "(In)Visible Women" (1991), about Latinas with AIDS.
Mindy Faber, whose "Delirium"
was one of several films she made dealing with womens roles, patriarchy,
and the power of mass media, worked in video production in a public
access station while a student at University of Kentucky. She became
associate director of Chicago-based Video DataBank, which distributes
experimental video, much of it socially engaged.
Lucy Massie Phenix ("Cancer in Two Voices", 1994; "Regret
to Inform", 1998) had begun work as a film editor on the
collectively produced "Winter Soldier" (Winterfilm Collective,
1972), an antiwar film produced by a group of left-wing war resisters
and Vietnam Veterans against the War, and went on to co-direct and
co-edit the gay rights film "Word Is Out" (1977) and to
edit the feminist history film "The Life and Times of Rosie
the Riveter" (Phenix, 1999). The distributors who delivered
much of this work to viewing publics on an educational platform—Women
Make Movies, California Newsreel, Cinema Guild, First Run Icarus,
Video DataBank, Frameline and others—often themselves began
as intensely political projects grounded in rights movements.
Personal essay films in the America of the '90s, then, evoked in
many different ways the transformation in relationships at every
level of society, a transformation driven by fundamental changes
in communications and transportation networks. They self-consciously
employed the categories of civil rights movements of the 1960s and
1970s. They also commonly recovered, publicized or even created
memories of a social group.
In developing the personal narrative documentary, a generation of
filmmakers who had been young in a time of revolutionary extremes
had documented its own quest for identity and social connection
in a world of constant transformation. It had created organizations
and institutions that could celebrate, encourage and promote new
voices of diversity, demanding autonomy. By the end of 1999, home
pages on the Internet had become new confessional and memory center
for architects of their own identity. Short movie sites featured,
along with scatological humor and senselessly violent cartoons,
personal essays. Advertisers and developers of audio-visual resources
on the web began to speak of the Aschizophrenic identities of the
multitasking user who adopted different personas for the different
aspects of his or her media-saturated life.
The personal narrative documentary will
continue to evolve, both in traditional and in new media. The social
forces that created the conditions for film and videomakers to use
their skills in this way have only been unleashed. The project of
sharing, exchanging, and interweaving each others stories has begun,
and awaits necessary nurturing. The rapid, semi-automatic commercialization
of personal voice strategies is eloquent testimony to widespread
hunger for authentic experience, connection and respect; but it
is also evidence of the forces that create that very hunger. The
work that has evolved up until now has been created with the help
of cultural subsidies from both private and public sources. It has
benefited from the existence of private and public institutions
that protect it and promote it. The voices that are launched into
public life with these documentaries are now part of the history
and memory of a globalizing capitalist culture. They offer a resource,
a legacy, a challenge for those who come next.
© 2001 Pat Aufderheide
Image: Still from Bontoc Eulogy
Source: http://legacy-project.org/film/display.html?ID=299
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