A Bit of History

From mediaartiststudio

[edit] EXPERIMENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Biographical film developed as a genre in the 1960’s and 70’s. Since the late 1960’s, there has been a sizable quantity of biographical films and videos. This growth was spurred by the popularity of television documentaries about celebrities (Lavasseur). Typically, the documentary celebrates the subject’s accomplishments in a chronological structure using photographs, film footage and voice-overs. Despite the initial linear approach, biographical film allowed for newly evolving formats that combined the characteristics of two or more genres or subgenres, such as autobiography, self-biography, and mockumentaries. Thus, autobiography developed as a technique that was in constant flux. In her book, Experimental Ethnography, Catherine Russell writes, “this ethnographic mode of self representation is pervasive in what has become widely a new autobiography in film and video” (276). A hybrid of techniques and merging of subgenres characterizes the new autobiography.

[edit] TRAITS OF THE GENRE

A prominent theme in contemporary personal cinema is the staging of an encounter with a filmmaker’s parent or grandparents who embody a particular cultural history of displacement or tradition. Along with personal family encounters, auto ethnographic filmmakers commonly use the first person voice over to make their testimonials unambiguously subjective. The autobiographical filmmaker, in essence, has three voices as the seer, seen, and speaker. These voices generate richness and diversity in autobiographical filmmaking. The first person voice over usually implies a “testimonial mode as the authorial subjects offer themselves” (Russell, 276). The testimonial confessional character of auto ethnography often assumes a site of authenticity, originating in the filmmakers experience (279). Yet, there are fake diaries and mockumentaries that demonstrate the unreliability of the form such as Orson Welles’ F is for Fake and Woody Allen’s Zelig. Much of the new autobiography emanates from queer culture, from film and video makers whose personal histories unfold within a specifically public sphere. It is also produced by many for whom ethnicity or race casts their own history as an allegory for community or culture. The Themes of displacement, immigration, exile and transnational are prominent prominent in experimental autobiographies (278).

Some prominent experimental autobiographical filmmakers:

Marlon Riggs
Su Friedrich
Tony Buba
Jonas Mekas
George Kuchar
Sadie Benning
Chris Marker