Taking a look at ‘first person films’. We watched Jonathan Caouette’s personal documentary, Tarnation. This is an example of an autobiographical first person film which explores his relationship with his mother and his growing up. This is an example of “Domestic ethnography” according to Michael Renov. His essay about first person films explains that these types of film were not seen as genuine forms of documentary because the subject making the film could not be relied upon to present the ‘truth’ or historical facts because they don’t have an external perspective, even though autobiography in literature has not faced this same criticism. But then on the other hand this subjectivity doesn’t mean first person films don’t present an accurate understanding of their subject.
“The documentary tradition has long traded in that currency of the real, using it to build and sustain arguments or induce agency. But autobiography, even when constructed of indexical parts, remains an agnostic in the house of certainty.” (Renov, M. 2008)
This is from one of Michel de Montaigne’s essays:
“I take the first subject that chance offers. They are all equally good to me. And I never plan to develop them completely. For I do not see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise to show it to us …Each particle, each occupation, of a man betrays him and reveals him just as well as any other.”
Renov writes that the autobiographical film can take several different forms or ‘modalities’. The different methods or approaches the filmmaker takes can in itself ‘inscribe’ the subject into the work, which means their creative practice behind the film becomes part of their personality in the film.
“Here I have in mind the essay film, the electronic essay, the diary film, the video confession, the epistolary mode, domestic ethnography, the personal Web page, and the blog. In each instance, varying possibilities for the expression of subjectivity and the telling of life stories arise.” (Renov, M. 2008)
This means a blog and an essay film can be a form of domestic ethnography, so for this assignment I choose to do a video essay and I will use this blog to work out my content each week.
