The brutal truth is that the history of documentary filmmaking is rooted explicitly in cultural, racial, gender and class-based colonialism. For decades upon decades, Western filmmakers – almost exclusively white men – traveled to other countries and cultures to extract resources (footage), which they would exploit (edit) for the benefit of their home culture (theaters, film festivals, PBS, etc.). This flow of power, and along with it the control over these stories, historically traveled in one direction—from those without it to those with it.
Navigating the River: The Hidden Colonialism of Documentary
By Edwin Martinez
In June 2023 I was invited to speak to the topic of “decolonising the narrative” at Sheffield DocFest’s Alternate Realities Summit. I gave my presentation the title Space Invaders: Post-colonial Alternate Realities – reflecting on the dialectic of how physical space has been invaded (colonised) with the help of documentary filmmakers and how anti-colonialist storytellers can invade virtual space to transform non-fiction storytelling. What follows is an adaptation of that presentation.
Despite the good intentions of most modern documentary filmmakers, the fact remains that the medium originated in the shape of films casting an anthropological gaze upon indigenous communities. Soviet film took a detour in the 1920s, but in the West documentary film held to its purpose to dehumanise the colonised in service of the colonisers’ mission to exploit and extract.
The cast in a documentary are more often than not referred to as “subjects”. Such language reveals a problematic power relationship that is at the heart of conventional documentary filmmaking. The practice was and largely continues to be extractive. On completion of a mainstream documentary, the “subjects” are left behind in pursuit of more privileged, and lucrative, audiences elsewhere. Even when so called “Impact’ campaigns are attached to distribution strategies, without the participation and empowerment of those whose stories are being told, documentary in its traditional mode is by its very nature disempowering.
These principles hold true for “subjects” from working class and poor communities in the Global North too. Blindly operating such a framework and process without challenging it can only lead to the empowered viewer exploiting and extracting from the disempowered viewed.
Third Cinema
The first movement to break from these conventions arrived in October 1969 when Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino published an article-come-manifesto in Transcontinental magazine entitled “Toward a Third Cinema“. Third Cinema sought to depart from what Solanas and Getino called “First Cinema”. They defined First Cinema as the cinema of Hollywood, corporate-produced movies, designed above all to entertain (and thereby make a profit). “Second Cinema” was the label given to the arthouse and sometimes experimental work of auteur led cinema.
Third Cinema would focus on portraying the realities of marginalized communities and challenging dominant power structures. This would be achieved not just through dedicating itself to specific subject matter of social realism, but through the methodology – the approach to making and distributing the films. Subjects became participants and co-authors, and the narrative structured in such a way as to, rather than deliver resolution, stimulate discourse and action.
Third Cinema and the movements it spawned such as the UK’s Workshop Movement (which advocated for a platform for grass roots production that would become Channel 4 television) ushered in an approach to filmmaking that is still unfortunately rare. We see semblances of these approaches in films such as More Earth Will Fall, which I co-produced with filmmakers Sam Liebmann and Lee McKarkiel who shot the film in collaboration and in partnership with the local community of its setting. The process began with conducting workshops with the local community who went on to shoot alongside and often in the absence of the professional crew. After premiering in that community, the film was distributed via screenings in local cine-clubs and community groups. These were often accompanied by filmmaking workshops to produce new content responding to the film’s themes from new local perspectives.
Third cinema ushered in a radical departure from a process that was at once extractive, disempowring and exploitative, the very definition of colonialism, to one that attempts to redress the prevailing power (im)balance. However, to fully recast the power relationships at the core of “first cinema”, the very language of western cinema must also be addressed.
Indigenous storytelling
Just as Western notions of time are not universal, the deterministic nature of Western linear narratives, where plot point A leads to plot point B and a sequence of events determine a resolved ending, is alien to many indigenous peoples. If a community’s story is told using a form or sturcture that speaks exclusively to those outside of that community, isn’t this practice by definition extractive? There are many story structures from indigenous cultures and from contemporary cultural theory, including but not limited to Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory and Kishōtenketsu, the East Asian four act structure which, unlike the Western three act structure, isn’t propelled by conflict.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Songlines map stories to space without the need to have a beginning and an ending because they happen continuously in circles and patterns. No matter where you start, eventually you will hear the whole story; and where the story begins depends on the perspective and context of the storyteller.
We can draw upon these forms and structures when crafting stories to be told via a new medium that lends itself to interactivity, non-linearity, spatial navigation and immersion. So can XR and immersive media present opportunities for immersive storytelling, that can decolonise documentary?
In 2010, while mentoring at an XR/interactive media development lab for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, I was approached by the participants who found the mentors’ presentation of interactive and non-linear storytelling as new innovations absurd. Participation, interaction and non-linearity are of course inherent to the storytelling traditions of many first nation peoples. We needed to decolonise our pedagogy, so we restructured the lab to be delivered using a more collaborative peer-to-peer learning methodology. The following is a survey of work that takes an anti-colonial approach, made by or in collaboration with indigenous creatives, some of which emerged from that lab.
Case 1: Virtual Songlines
Brett Leavy, Bilbie XR Labs 2015
Aboriginal Songlines are not just the topic of Brett Leavy’s work in Virtual Songlines, they inform the narrative structure and user experience.
Unmistakably an expression of music and art, Songlines are also a form of navigation combined with oral storytelling. Songlines (also sometimes referred to as dreamtracks) narrate the route of numerous paths through the land, these paths have been orally transferred from one generation on to another. It is said that the paths have come to the Aboriginal people through dreaming or higher states of consciousness and creator-beings. The path of each creator-being is re-enacted through dance and sung lyrics and even includes landmarks (like rock-formations, waterfalls, trees).
The land that has been named Australia consists of more than 500 nations. Leavy has worked and continues to work with hundreds of Aboriginal custodians/elders to create immersive audio visual representations of pre-colonial lands, navigating through space and subject matter (stories), across country, via Songlines.
Case 2: Welcome to Country
Tyson Mowarin, Weerianna Street Media, 2012
When crossing boundaries into new nations or countries, indigenous peoples are mindful that they must know where they are so that they can learn and follow the rules of this place, pay attention to what is happening here so that they can take care of themselves and others. To that end, upon entering a nation all must receive Welcome to Country, an oral tradition where an elder welcomes visitors and prepares them.
Tyson Mowarin began development of the mobile app, Welcome to Country at the aforementioned lab, launching his company Weerianna Street Media with the app’s release.
Like Virtual Songlines, journeying through space and time is the mode of storytelling here, but with Welcome to Country users are traversing physical space. The app uses GPS to notify the user that they are crossing nation boundaries and serves up a Welcome to Country video narrated by an elder of the nation. This video remains available to the user as long as they remain in that nation/country.
So far Mowarin has worked with elders from around 50 of the more than 500 nations that make up Australia, to include their Welcome stories in the app. There is variation in style and, dare I say it, production value, across these stories, but for me, that reinforces the sense of authenticity and integrity in the work. These people are not the “subjects” of a documentary, but the authority on land into which the user has entered and deference to that authority is required by this work.
Mowarin shares the same mission as Leavy, to resurface, preserve and share knowledge of Aboriginal peoples in order to ensure the healthy survival of the indigenous peoples of Australia.
Case 3: Munduruku: The Fight to Defend the Heart of the Amazon
The Feelies, Alchemy VR and Greenpeace, 2017
Munduruku: The Fight to Defend the Heart of the Amazon is a multisensory VR-led experience created by The Feelies, Alchemy VR and Greenpeace. When it premiered in 2017 in Sao Paulo, it took the realisation of immersive/XR projects to a new level by combining a 360 VR film and binaural sound with additional sensory triggers, including scents, vibrations, humidity, touch and temperature changes. It later took the Alternate Realities Audience Prize at Sheffield DocFest in June of that year.
The purpose of the project was “to try to remove the invisibility of Indigenous People that is brought by large industrial projects such as hydroelectric dam building. The message we want to leave people with, that we want them to tell after seeing this film, is that the Munduruku have the right to exist here, with their river according to their culture and their way of life” – Pete Speller, Greenpeace
The installation was a component of a larger campaign by the Munduruku people, supported by Greenpeace, to raise awareness of the pressure facing the indigenous people in the Tapajós River basin, threatened by large-scale industrial projects, such as the development of huge hydroelectric dams that would flood villages and huge swathes of land.
Due to its deserved acclaim for the production values and deep consideration of experience design, engendering a quite profound immersive experience, Munduruku… has become what many consider to be an exemplar of XR in service of indigenous rights. From their account, it does seem as though the authors treated the Munduruku people with respect and consulted with them during the production process. However, it really does feel as though authorship lay largely with the consortium of Western voices behind this production.
Much is made of the importance of experience design in effectively locating the viewer in the Amazon rain forest with the Munduruku. The Feelies’ experience designer, Charles Michel, talks of traveling to the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil to train the local crew of sensory technicians in how to engage with visitors to foster trust, as well as conduct the sensory experience. The description of this process has left me wondering if working with a crew of Munduruku invigilators and “sensory technicians” was considered. There may well have been too many practical obstacles to achieving this, but I can’t help feeling that collaborating with the Munduruku on a deeper participatory level to design the experience and bring audiences into contact with Munduruku people (thereby removing the power dynamic of viewer and viewed), might have made for a very different experience.
As it stands, I think it’s a bold claim to suggest the piece allows “viewers to experience first-hand the life of the Munduruku people”. I felt that at best I was positioned as an ally. However, that in and of itself, is of value, especially in the context of the work’s stated aim, which was to gain support from people outside of Tapajós River basin (mainly in Cities) for what was ultimately a successful, anti-colonial campaign.
Case 4: How to Tell a True Immigrant Story
MDOCS Storytellers Institute with community members of Saratoga Spring, 2018
How to Tell a True Immigrant Story is a 360˚ film that immerses viewers in the daily experience of seasonal migrants whose labour contributes to the tourism and agricultural economies of Saratoga Springs, NY. It draws its title from Tim O’Brien’s essay How to Tell a True War Story from the The Things They Carried, which interrogated war reporting from the journalistic point of view – patriotic vs anti-war propaganda – contrasting stories told directly by soldiers with those told by war correspondents.
Worlds were generated by the collaborating community members engaging in workshops to recreate spaces that represented both their lived and imagined experiences, which were then captured by 360˚ cameras.
The clip below is an interview scene from How to… in which Karen Gomez, a non-actor, community activist, photographer and teacher, performs the role of interviewee. She is met with scripted questions delivered by Matt Bagley who plays a well-meaning, white male interrogator for ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement). The mis-en-scene included the recording technologies to highlight the space’s constructedness.
In the spherical space of 360 film, with the ability to determine their POV, the viewer can experience these two subjectivities and positions of power that not only represent aspects of social relations in Saratoga Springs, but also implicate documentary filmmaking – the power relationship between the interviewer and interviewee and invoke the viewer’s own presence in this space: The viewer as (inter)viewer; the viewer as (inter)viewed.
↑ 360 video. Click and drag to pan on desktop or visit Youtube to play on a mobile device and headset.
The interrogation is subverted by the interviewee – or “subject”. While each interview question appears as benign information-gathering, the interviewee resists the data collection and launches into more meditative often poetic contemplation. When asked to speak her name for the record, she responds, “people call me by different names…”. This response refuses the (inter)viewer’s desire for the convenience of naming and asserts identities beyond the instrumentalised: “I am mother, I am son, I am river”.
Towards decolonisation
How to Tell a True Immigrant Story plays like a demonstration of many of the themes of this article. The ICE interrogator or journo-filmmaker of conventional documentary, the approach is subverted by responses that conform to different and more empowering modes of storytelling for the (inter)viewed. The technology of the medium immerses the viewer in that process, that conflict, while enabling them to witness to the transfer of power.
Conversely I’ve experienced much work that simply transfers the modes and framework of “first cinema” into virtual space. Documentaries that, in exchange for the discomfort of wearing a headset, invite us to passively cast our gaze onto an objectified cast playing out a story placed selectively by a singular auteur onto a linear narrative arc.
I’ve even come across a title in which the filmmaker(s) secreted a 360 camera in a communal space and recorded its occupants going about their daily lives, routines and rituals unaware that they were being filmed! Such actions are rationalised through the problematic arguments around observational documentary supposedly achieving ‘authenticity’ and that illusive notion of ‘objectivity‘.
There’s been much debate around the idea of XR (VR in particular) as the “ultimate empathy machine“. Munduruku… chases that dream (without naming it as such) and, to some extent, achieves it because it creates a space to be navigated and experienced, not a linear story in which the viewer is cast as the main character and “walks in their shoes”. However, I believe that the strongest case for XR in the world of documentary filmmaking lies more in the opportunity it presents to subvert documentary’s problematic form rather than enhance it through contrived notions such as that of the “ultimate empathy machine”.
XR offers the facility for stories to be told immersively without the imposition of traditional Western film language and power relationships. Through the meda of XR and immersive, there is the possibility for less empowered communities to tell their stories their way. To fully realise that potential, however, the traditional auteur filmmaker would have to relinquish (at least some) power. This is something that the craft of filmmaking doesn’t often encourage, but to some of the diverse range of interdisciplinary creatives embracing immersive media, the participatory practice of sharing power is familiar territory.