Abstract
Kirakira Hospital 243 kms from Honiara is an observational ethnographic documentary which captures the daily happens in a hospital on the remote island of Kirakira, which is 243 kms from Honiara, the capital Solomon Islands, and 2,137 kms from my home on the Gold Coast. The documentary was shot over five-days in September 2014. The narrative strives to tell the story of the highly committed, caring, and supportive hospital staff as they provided medical care to a broad range of patients presenting with a complex array of medical conditions. However, due to an ethical crisis regarding the possible exploitation of the human subjects I ceased production of the film during post-production. In 2022 I renewed post-production on the film after having engaged with more recent scholarly works that presented the relationship between the observational filmmaker and human subjects in a more nuanced and complex light. The concept that the observational filmmaker is in a mutually agreed relationship with their human subjects, where they co-share space and time in a live and interactive process, rather than a detached voyeuristic witness, offers a more humanistic collaborative engagement, and deals with many of the ethical challenges faced by observational documentarians in the past. Thus, the camera’s presence is not detached, nor is it placed in an optimal position for the visual aesthetics where the human subject is adjusted and manipulated to maximise those visual aesthetics. Space is actively shared between the human subjects and the filmmaker, such that the negotiation of that space, in a constantly flowing mutually respectful manner in long-take real time, becomes a tangible part of the filmmaking process and imbues the film with the active participatory presence of the human subjects and filmmaker in partnership.
Original language | English |
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Pages | 49-49 |
Number of pages | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 29 Jun 2023 |
Event | Sightlines Conference - University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia Duration: 29 Jun 2023 → 30 Jun 2023 https://www.aspera.org.au/sightlines-conference |
Conference
Conference | Sightlines Conference |
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Country/Territory | Australia |
City | Adelaide |
Period | 29/06/23 → 30/06/23 |
Internet address |