Edinburgh Napier University

  In ethnographic documentary traditions, the medium of film and video is used to communicate cultural knowledge and experiences (Gill, 2020). Jean Rouch advocated developing ‘an intimate understanding of the community’ in which the filmmaker works, spending ‘a long time in the field before beginning to shoot’ (Rouch, 1974). The results, though, can err more towards a thinking than a feeling orientation, lacking the emotional connection between viewer and subject which makes cinema so powerful.

The idea of a humanist documentary is not unfamiliar but less clearly defined. In a humanist model, I argue, the focus should be on the creation of empathy over and above the imparting of information. The core element of the production is the relationship of trust and respect between filmmaker and subject, with stylistic techniques, narrational choices and production planning designed to convey that relationship to the viewer and, therefore, increase emotional engagement and promote empathy.

The filmmaker, where appropriate, spends time with the participant in their community as the community’s guest, as per Roach, developing a relationship of trust prior to filming. Interviews are filmed handheld, with the filmmaker sitting close to the subject, the subject’s eyeline directed straight into the camera and, hence, at the viewer. A tight depth of field separates the subject from the background, further enhancing the sense of intimacy. Interviews are self-shot with found light and, wherever practical, no-one present bar subject and filmmaker.

The effect is very different to a more traditional mode of interview-based documentary, and serves to promote empathy and human connection, transmitted through the filmmaker to the viewer. In an era of increased alienation and social disconnection, in addition to increased far-right rhetoric and dehumanisation of the “other,” such an approach, I argue, can have significant benefits to viewer, filmmaker and subject.