Ethics Reflexivity in Documentary Film (An i-doc as a model)

Abstract

This article highlights the ethics of documentary filmmaking. It focuses on filmmakers' task to consider these ethics based on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in exploring the dilemmas of representation in documentaries adopted by Nash (2011), who notes that stories and ethics always go hand in hand. Determining the ethics of regulating documentary filmmaking is not easy and has been controversial over time. It is possible to define the ethics of a filmmaker academically. However, in practice, the matter is different as conditions and reality are imposed on the filmmaker, which makes his experience and expertise different from the ethics of theoretical filmmaking. This paper aims to show how an increasing number of academic scholars and filmmakers' industry stakeholders working for one goal can help improve the arguments on documentary filmmaking ethics to capitalise in the subsequent films. The method is to review published reports and articles on the ethics in documentary film and reflexivity, further including observed data about the experiences of others to help understand the ethics that guide documentary filmmaking, including my experience as a filmmaker in producing the interactive documentary Eden Again (2017) as a model. The problem discussed in this paper relates to what kills the documentary: the conflict between professional ethics and ideological biases. Some agendas negate professionalism and credibility by promoting or seeking to serve particular interests that push those behind the film to hide the truth instead of being completely open to exploring the participants' matters and following filmmaking's ethics. Documentary filmmakers are recommended that if they have ideological biases and solid feelings or preconceived ideas, set them aside and ethically interact with the facts they encounter while working on a documentary.