The extreme subjectivity of Ross McElwee: home as docu-movie

Abstract

Ross McElwee's cinematic signature in his documentaries celebrates, but also problematizes, notions of subjectivity in his unique approach towards domestic ethnography. His autobiographical oeuvre crosses the cinematic terrain of the journey film, the personal diary film and the essay film, while using techniques from direct cinema and cinema verite, in addition to incorporating home movies and cinematic elements from amateur filmmaking, to create a singular work that embraces a hybridity that defies simple categorization. The topics of his films are autobiographical in nature – concerning his relationships to his family, friends, the South where he grew up and later left, and himself as a filmmaker making his documentaries. McElwee's films, however, are not just about himself. His auto-ethnographic stance also raises the issue of interiority as a valid form of knowledge within documentary filmmaking, how cinematic narrative strategies and chronological time determine the ‘text construction of the self’ and how the subject exists as a ruptured self – one that contains several types of ‘selves’ that McElwee simultaneously enacts as well as performs. Altogether, McElwee destabilizes formal considerations of subjectivity in documentary filmmaking in his experiential journeys through personal and historical space.