Redirected utopias: the politics of self-reflexive autobiographical documentary in Albertina Carri’s Los rubios and Ufuk Emiroglu’s Mon père, la révolution, et moi

Abstract

ABSTRACT Twenty-first century documentary production from around the world has used self-reflexivity to challenge assumptions about subjectivity and social positioning in ways that explicitly challenge the politics of filmmaking. Released in 2003 and 2013 respectively, Argentine director Albertina Carri’s Los rubios and Turkish filmmaker Ufuk Emiroglu’s Mon père, la révolution et moi incorporate fictions and fantasies into their autobiographical stories, telling their life stories through alternative narrative forms that deviate from existing social and aesthetic precepts. The two filmmakers seek to understand – and scrutinize – the utopian ideals of the revolutionary movements to which their fathers belonged in 1970s Argentina and Turkey, respectively. The directors use non-realist, non-linear approaches to telling their own life stories as a way of challenging what audiences think they know about their nations’ recent history. Situating these two films within their respective national film industries and within documentary practices around the globe, I show that their shared metonymic structures question the utopic aspects of their respective fathers’ revolutionary politics and the non-place of memory. As I argue in my comparative discussion, these films are ‘redirecting’ utopic autobiographical storytelling to challenge notions of cohesion in both the self and political pursuits.