Annelies van Noortwijk and Vincent Ros

Documentary is for our contemporary culture what the novel was for the 19th century: the preferred form of realism. Its history may be described a continual re-evaluation of films potential to transmit factual information about the real world. In contemporary documentary practice, we witness a shift in focus from a modernist pre-occupation with factual, objective reality towards the embracement of more diverse, subjective perspectives on reality. Central to this development, we will argue, is a re-evaluation of the documentary subject and the blurring of boundaries between subject and filmmaker. This convergence of viewpoints has led to the emergence of the first person documentary; a category that, as will be understood, refers not only the autobiographical documentary and the filmic self-portrait, but includes all forms of documentary in which the roles of filmmaker and subject coincide.

By muddling traditional fiction and nonfiction distinctions, first person documentaries challenge definitions of documentary that depend on its function to document reality. The fact that a satisfactory solution to the theoretical problem of defining and categorizing first person documentary has yet to be found serves as a testament to the limitations of both text-oriented and context-orientated approaches as well as reception-oriented models of explanation. To overcome these limitations, a perspective is needed that reconciles both textual and contextual factors and their effects on the physical (both bodily and mental) activity of the viewer. A model of embodied cognitive poetics offers such a perspective, and in extension provides a solution to the current crisis in documentary definition and categorization, by accounting for the dynamic interplay between textual characteristics, social and contextual factors and the bodily and mental processes of a hypothetical viewer.

Within this framework documentary is best understood as a cognitive frame, a set of expectations that enables signification and influences evaluation. As these expectations are continually adjusted, evolving side-by-side with conventions, subjectivity, once an element to be avoided in documentary, can become part of a new documentary realism. Drawing on examples from Tarnation (2005), and Stories We Tell (2013), we will illustrate how in recent documentaries, the open acknowledgement of subjectivity is not only part of, but fundamental to the viewers sense of realism.

This paper places these ongoing developments in the broader perspective of the semiotic evolution of human culture and the arts as a specific instance of human cognition (Merlin Donald, Antonio Damasio, Barend van Heusden). From this perspective, we argue that the re-evaluation of the subject reassessed as an embodied, empowered and emotional beings in documentary is emblematic of a paradigm shift in contemporary culture that combines and harmonises modern and postmodern extremes – a shift we refer to as the metamodern turn .

Dr. Annelies van Noortwijk works as a senior lecturer for the department of Arts, Culture and Media studies at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). She teaches film studies, literature and art history & theory. Her research concentrates on contemporary documentary and journalism with a specific interest in questions of engagement, resistance and ethics and the penetration of the artistic discourse into non-traditional forms of art. She is currently working on a project on life-representation in contemporary documentary.

Vincent Ros graduated with honors from the International Research Master program Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) with a thesis on narrative complexity in film noir and contemporary cinema. He currently works as a research assistant and junior lecturer for the department of Arts, Culture and Media studies at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on the cognitive and hermeneutic dynamics of film interpretation and on questions of representation and authenticity in documentary.

Recent and forthcoming publications by Annelies van Noortwijk

»Ars Longa, Vita Brevis; The Importance Of Art In Human Life, A Proustian Interpretation Of Honigmann’s Forever«, Hariharan, Veena (ed) Widescreen Journal (Subaltern Media), nr. 4.1, December 2012, Documentary, Art and Performance.

»Heddy Honigmann’s Contemplations on Ars Vitae and the Metamodern turn« in Cine-Ethics. Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice and Spectatorship. Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey (eds.) Routledge. 111-124.

─ et. all. »Female screenwriting in the Netherlands.« in Women Screenwriting international Guide, Jule Selbo and Jill Nelmes (ed.), London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 489-511.

─ »Heddy Honigmann: filmmaking as a process of applying coherence and beauty to reality.« In Anna Backman Rogers & Boel Ulfsdotter, Female Authorship in Contemporary Documentary Media. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam press, 2016.

»The Orbit and Single Shot Cinema«, in Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever (ed.), The Film Archive as a Research Laboratory. Framing Film series by Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

»See me, Hear me, Touch me: Heal me. Dealing with Memory through Documentary in Metamodern Times« in Aline Caillet and Frédéric Pouillaude, Documentary art: aesthetic, political and ethical issues. Université de Rennes, 2016.

─ and Vincent Ros. »The Living Landscape of Jakarta in Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Documentary Triptych.« In David Forrest, Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner (ed.) Filmurbia! Screening the Suburbs . London/New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016.

─ and Jennifer O' Connell (2016): »The film festival as producer« in Aida Vallejo (ed.) Between Industry and Creativity: Institutes of Documentary Film and the Film Festival Circuit, Colombia University Press/Wallflower Press. 2016. 

─ and Jennifer O’Connell . »Resolving categorical confusion: An embodied cognitive poetics of firstperson documentary.« In Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer Documentary and the Cognitive Frame.

Recent and forthcoming publications by Vincent Ros

Ros, Vincent et all. »Women screenwriting in the Netherlands«. Women Screenwriters. An International Guide. Eds. Nelmes, J. and Jule Selbo. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 489-511.

Ros, Vincent and Miklos Kiss. »A Cognitive Approach to the Affect of Narrative Complexity in Film«. Publication forthcoming.

Ros, Vincent and Annelies van Noortwijk. »The Living Landscape of Jakarta in Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Documentary Triptych«. In David Forrest, Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner (eds.). Filmurbia! Screening the Suburbs London/New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. In press.

Kracauer, Siegfried. »Cultus van de verstrooiing: Over de filmhuizen van Berlijn.« Trans. Ros, V. Sleutelteksten film- en mediatheorie. Vol. 1. Eds. van den Oever, Annie, Frank Kessler and Steven Willemsen. In de Walvis. In press.

Harris, Andrew. »Aantekeningen over de Auteurtheorie in 1962.« Trans. Ros, V. Sleutelteksten film- en mediatheorie. Vol. 2. Eds. van den Oever, Annie, Frank Kessler and Steven Willemsen. In de Walvis. In press.