Exploring documentary from the filmmaker’s perspective: a relational approach to locating a meeting place of practice and theory

Through the lens of a documentary practitioner, this creative practice PhD explores the documentary film as a relational form in which the relationships between the filmmaker, the filmed subject and the intended audience define and form the work. These relationships include connections with non-human elements such as the camera, and even the materiality of the images that the camera generates. This relational approach to documentary shifts authorial control away from a single person, such as a director, and acknowledges active forms of participation with the myriad of people, things and experiences involved in the act of creating a documentary. The PhD produces new knowledge at the intersection of practice and theory. It uses a creative practice methodology to investigate both the act of making and the examination of what has been made. The thesis is comprised of three experimental films, six 'digital papers' (short essay films) and six written essays. These works interrogate the relationships found within a documentary narrative, on a location shoot, while editing, and when attempting to connect a documentary with an audience. Within this body of work, I compare my own practice-based experiences with those of nine other documentary filmmakers, whom I recorded in a series of interviews. A key finding of this research is the metaphorical 'meeting place'. It is where the relationships that led to the creation of the documentary film, and that are reflected in the artefact of the film, connect. As a filmmaker, locating this meeting place is vital to the work's successful completion.