Politicizing a film practice

Abstract

This is a practice-based Ph. D. in filmmaking and concerns the generation of a radical film practice. It is situated in the field of no-budget experimental film and video making and deploys a combination of deconstruction and critical perspectives of cultural production in the construction of its modus operandi. The contribution to knowledge is in two parts. First the bringing together in a film practice established and various knowledges from other areas; contemporary and historical experimental film and video, observational documentary and amateur film practices, specifically Home Movies, in connection to established but various extant modes of reading that material. The second part of the contribution to knowledge relates to the methodology underpinning this amalgamation of knowledges. This is enacted through the tri-partite positioning of the researcher as 'researcher', 'familymaker' and 'filmmaker'. From within those positional framings the submission has sought to utilize a politicization of contextualisation. The second part of the submission's contribution to knowledge can then be formulated as the advocacy of a committed contextualisation that treats the investigator's position as valid and crucial material for interrogation. The outcome is a film practice that does not rely on sporadic funding and vacillating public recognition but rather an ongoing, organic and sustainable film practice that arises from and is nourished by the contexts it seeks to critically engage in. This translates formally into two DVDs and 39,153 words. There are four chapters or 'Screenings' which are self-reflexive and imaginative interrogations of DVD I Home Movies Summer 2005 (13 mins) which take the form of fictionalised conversations. Screening 1, a conversation between the researcher and a senior academician interrogates the film practice in the context of academic, practice based research and outlines the relationship between the artefact and the written text as related objects of thinking. Screening 2, a conversation between the researcher and members of his family, investigates notions of the familial drawing on some feminist perspectives that query notions of representation. Screening 3, a conversation between the researcher and Media and Cultural Studies staff at the researcher's home institution, crossexamines the film practice in relation to a theoretical formulation of political resistance. Screening 4, a conversation between the researcher and other filmmaker colleagues, scrutinises formulations from historical and contemporary film practices and charts filmic influences upon the filmmaking itself DVD 2 (28 mins) contains five experimental Home Movies that work to illustrate the filmmaking evolution towards the principal Home Movie on DVD 1

Date of Award	2008
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Plymouth