The space between the filmmaker and the subject – the ethical encounter

Abstract

ABSTRACTThrough the extended analysis of my documentary film ABC Colombia (86 min. [2007]), the article discusses the premises of my way of seeing – a filmmaking practice conceived as a cognitive and relational process – and explores the space between the filmmaker and the subject, looking in particular at the centrality of the camera, as a catalyst and a conduit. Addressing notions of proximity and the encounter between the filmmaker and the subject, the article critically engages with a notion central to my practice, that of the ethical encounter – the face-to-face with the film subject – addressed through an engagement with Emmanuel Levinas’ phenomenology of the other and the perspective of moral philosophy. What lessons can be learnt for the construction of the subject in documentary filmmaking? The article also retraces man’s relationship with the camera from its inception via Rouch’s seminal text ‘Camera and Man,’ further articulating the camera’s crucial role within a certain tradition of participatory and self-reflexive ethnographic filmmaking, which has been very influential to my film practice.