Edinburgh Napier University

  “We had never heard of feminism”: older working class women on screen and in production.

How can media production techniques enhance the participation and representation of marginalized groups and communities? In this paper I will draw on my research and practice in participatory and community based documentary production to explore how production techniques and approaches to production can work to pro actively include those who often go unseen on our screens.

In this paper I will discuss my work with older women in the Govan area of Glasgow. I will challenge representations of older women in film and television, by examining the production process of You Play Your Part, a collaborative documentary production about campaigning women on Clydeside.

I will focus on two aspects of the production process and examine the ways in which they engage and contribute to representations of older women. The first is the use of screenings, as part of the research phase of development and as a means of distribution and ongoing engagement. Screenings are described as operating on a range of levels, such as by encouraging participation through social situations that provoke memory. They also create dialogic spaces for the contestation of those memories, as well as discussion and reflection.

The second production technique is a broader approach to production that recognizes and uses networks of relations in which the production process is embedded. My research emphasizes the networked and ongoing processes of community based media, and the ways in which these relations engage older women, as participants and audiences.