Willemien Sanders

Documentary Filmmaking and Ethics: Concepts, Responsibilities, and the Need for Empirical Research

In the discourse on documentary filmmaking and ethics, scholars focus on the filmmaker–filmed relationship and relate many concepts to morality in documentary filmmaking. They additionally mention circumstances that may be relevant and they identify insufficiently meaningful solutions to such moral issues. However, they fail to reflect on ethical theories and how these inform filmmakers’ ideas about the right thing to do. In this article I discuss the discourse and how it can serve to further develop the debate on the ethics of documentary filmmaking. I propose to include empirical data about filmmakers’ experiences and opinions to help us understand what ethics truly inform documentary filmmaking.

Production Studies and Documentary Participants: A Method

It was only after I finished my PhD thesis that I learned that my research related to production studies. Departing from the question of ethics in documentary filmmaking, I investigated both the perspective of filmmakers and participants on ethical issues in the documentary filmmaking practice, using quantitative and qualitative research methods respectively (Sanders, 2012). For the latter, I extensively interviewed four participants who had participated in documentary film projects. The analysis of the participants’ interview accounts resulted not just in an understanding of their take on ethical issues in documentary filmmaking, but also in an understanding of the complexity of their involvement in documentary film projects, which included contributing unsolicited content and the taking on of production responsibilities, such as arranging for locations and recruiting additional participants. Hence, I theorized them as co-creators, who contribute to their own representation in the resulting film. My research was firmly situated within documentary film studies and I refrained from including perspectives from media ethics and journalism ethics explicitly, arguing that the former is too general and the latter too specific. I also excluded discussion of other—more or less documentary—formats such as docu-soaps and reality TV. Instead, I approached documentary filmmaking as an artistic practice of its own.

Designing Access to Audiovisual Cultural Heritage: The Case of the Carrot

This paper presents the design of an application for engagement with audiovisual digital cultural heritage in the classroom, called the Carrot. The aim of this interactive tool is to make online cultural heritage accessible and understandable for students in different levels of education. In relation to this work we pose two research questions: Why do we need to develop tools for contextualization of audiovisual cultural heritage? And: How do we design and develop such tools? The preliminary answers to these questions come from our experiences in the design process, which deepened our understanding of a tool in the context of the classroom. We then relate this to the digital humanities project, EUscreenXL. Initial conclusions suggest that tools for contextualization of audiovisual cultural heritage can engage students with cultural heritage, develop digital media literacy, and support contemporary didactics. These tools need to be developed across platforms, using nonproprietary software and involving a multidisciplinary group of experts.