'And Never the Twain Shall Meet': Ambiguity & the Empowered Eye in Post-Modern Documentary
Résumé
Cinema, particularly non-fiction film, is bound up by the lived experience, by the index, by the "actuality" of human existence. But cinema is also a powerful form of magic; it's a kinesthetic dance of movement, light, color and sonic vibrations that penetrates our bodies and can alter our perception to embed alternate forms of knowledge that can have a lasting impact on the viewer long after the ephemeral images on the screen have disappeared. How can we as artists, ethnographers, and filmmakers maximize the potential of cinematic magic and yet still deliver some deeper ideas? How can be effectively conjoin meaning, memory and affect? How can we empower a viewer as a collaborator in narrative construction and meaning making through the aesthetic use of ambiguity? And how might an ethnographically inflected project benefit from exploring these questions?