Kim Munro | RMIT University (original) (raw)

Papers by Kim Munro

The epistle has long associations with the essay film not only through the notable filmmakers who... more The epistle has long associations with the essay film not only through the notable filmmakers who have used the form, but also in how it addresses an audience. This tendency reflects the lineage of the development of the Montaignian literary essay from private letter to public audience. In this article I explore the use of the epistolary address, both formally within the text, and as part of the filmmaking process in the construction of a subjectivity that is always relational and contingent. Framed by a number of essayistic works that make use of the epistle – the filmed correspondences of José Luis Guerin, Jonas Mekas, Fernando Eimbcke and So Yong Kim (2009–11), Chantal Akerman's News from Home (1977) and Ross McElwee's The Photographic Memory (2012) – this article discusses the process of making my film, Closer Than They Appear (Munro, 2016). I also draw on theories of episto-lary transcendence of time and space (Naficy) and collective subjectivity (Braidotti). Through these films I propose the letter film to be a transformative process that shifts the filmmaker's subjectivity towards a more collective and relational position through the act of address.

On a cool afternoon in late March in Bristol, the biannual symposium i-Docs 2018 kicks off with t... more On a cool afternoon in late March in Bristol, the biannual symposium i-Docs 2018 kicks off with the three co-directors Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi and Mandy Rose riffing on the 'i's' or eyes or ayes of the 'i' in i-Docs. Collectively Aston, Gaudenzi and Rose suggest that opening up the original idea of interactive documentary into a space which also represents immersion, intervention, impact and innovation reflects the mutable, non-definable and open space that has become i-Docs. These keywords are expanded on as they allude to how the intersection of documentary and technology can find new ways to connect with audiences, imagine futures and further expand documentary's engagement with social, political, personal, global and local issues.

AS NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES CONTINUE TO PROLIFERATE, GIVING RISE TO UNPRECEDENTED FORUMS AND FRONTI... more AS NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES CONTINUE TO PROLIFERATE, GIVING RISE TO UNPRECEDENTED FORUMS AND FRONTIERS FOR NONFICTION FILMMAKING, WE HAVE BEGUN TO SEE THE RISE OF NOVEL FORMS SUCH AS THE ‘WEBDOC’ – DOCUMENTARIES THAT ARE ACCESSIBLE ONLINE, AND WITH HIGHLY INTERACTIVE AND PARTICIPATIVE COMPONENTS. KIM MUNRO EXAMINES THE CURRENT STATE AND FUTURE OF THE WEBDOC IN THE AUSTRALIAN SCREEN LANDSCAPE.

Much documentary making which follows in the Griersonian tradition is still predicated on the ong... more Much documentary making which follows in the Griersonian tradition is still predicated on the ongoing binary axis of the testimony of victim 1 and filmmaker as voice-giver. 2 In the production of documentary projects about social issues, an unspoken contract between maker and participant is established, where in return for the participation, the filmmakers make an artefact with will bear witness to their stories, experiences and trauma. However, often the pressure to provide convincing evidence through affective and persuasive means from testimony can burden the participant and the participatory relationship. The reliance on first-person accounts of people in crisis also presents the problem of sustained listening in both the filmmaking process as well as the finished film. New ecologies of documentary making have seen shifts in this traditional paradigm with movements towards participatory and collaborative filmmaking practices that include processes that diverge from producing conventional artefacts through heritage processes. This has been an attempt to recast power differentials, and allow for more open-ended and multivalent conceptions of knowledge, non-didactic meanings and multiple voices to be included. Often these projects exist in forms that include not only the linear but also the non or multi-linear, web-based, interactive or mobile. These forms allow for a more rhizomatic 3 spread through documentary spaces and destabilise traditional binary relationships more prevalent in documentary industries. According to Paula Rabinowitz, documentary's " purpose is to speak and confer value on the objects it speaks about " 4. This observation acknowledges Nichols's concept of " documentary voice " 5 and how it frames the world and speaks through the text in its address to the audience. In addition to the stylistic elements and aspects of authorship, documentary voice is also composed of the verbal participation, often through interviews. And through these interviews, valued is conferred on the world through articulated experience. This foregrounds the linguistic as the dominant mode of constructing knowledge. This article proposes a lateral shift in participatory documentary practice and theory that allows for a vital-materialist focus on the ecology of place, material and other non-linguistic modes of participation. I will discuss my documentary work-in-progress, The Park, which focuses on the sudden eviction of long-term residents at an outer suburban caravan park in Melbourne. These residents are predominantly elderly, disabled or unemployed and many have been living in the park for up to thirty years. The eviction of these residents has caused much trauma through displacement, significant loss of finances and illness and death. Drawing on JaneBennett's Vibrant Matter (2010), I claim that decentralising the role of first person accounts and situating the human voice among a range of other conceptualisations of participation through training the camera and microphone towards the other evidence of the documentary world can ease the burden of the affective labour of first-person accounts of trauma. This shift towards the material landscape and environment as participatory pro-filmic elements, which convey