Edinburgh Napier University

  The autoethnographic film endeavour raises questions familiar to most documentary filmmakers about the infinite possibilities of (self-)representation. It also allows a certain freedom in inscribing nuances and interiority to one’s own story. I Am aims to explore multiplicity: of character, history, identity and primarily, my “voice” as a filmmaker.

I Am is a re-worked extract from a documentary film that charts my personal journey of uncovering secret family history from a century ago in Scotland. The journey allows me to cinematically explore the multiplicity of my identity as a Pakistani woman: an agnostic Muslim who grew up in a liberal-conservative family brimming with religious, social, sexual and cultural contradictions.

My ‘voice’ as a filmmaker is ‘diverse’. I was born in Pakistan, and moved to Britain 25 years ago. After a period of exploring ‘identity’ in immigrant communities, with the hope of shedding insight into my own sense of belonging, my cinematic gaze has now overtly turned inwards. I am interested in marginal voices and stories but with an understanding that I cannot represent any form of diversity in Britain other than my very own. I Am refuses to define who I am, but instead raises questions that point to the impossibility of pinning down my identity.

In the footsteps of Minha, I acknowledge the imperialism of representation – and celebrate a “speaking nearby” rather than “speaking about” – so that “truth” lies “here” rather than “there” .
Minha deconstructs narrative tropes to destabilize and achieve an accumulative speaking “nearby”, emphasizing ethnic and linguistic plurality in the communities she explores. The textual “voice” is entirely dominant in her films. Conversely, I embrace here the challenge of staying within the creative confines of a traditional three-act structure of storytelling that includes elements of dramatic tension and revelation.

I Am uses my actual voice as a guiding, reflective and reflexive voice-over. It also embodies my visual ‘voice’ over two decades as a filmmaker, using archive footage I have shot for different film projects alongside personal archive.

The combination of voice-over and self-shot archive aspires to a “language of poetry”, as described by Pasolini, where the camera (and in this case, voice-over) embodies the author’s interiority and subjectivity.

My auteur subjectivity crosses and resists cultures, following a self-determining inner voice. I Am attempts to subvert notions of what constitutes a marginalised “voice”, so that “marginality”, and ultimately “diversity” defy containment, and instead embrace overlapping multiplicity.