Interactive documentary as a living and embodying experience to represent reality: A practice-based case study

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2024.617

Keywords:

Interactive documentary, Representing, Reality, Location, Culture, Audience

Abstract

This article introduces an innovative approach to comprehending the portrayal of reality within interactive documentaries. Drawing upon my filmmaking expertise, I created the interactive documentary Eden Again to examine how this multimedia genre portrays our understanding of a location, cultures, and social bonds by representing the controversial stories of drying the Marshlands of Iraq. This study also aims to enhance audience involvement, influencing contemporary media culture. These insights stem from a practice-based case study and contribute to the ongoing discussion about the representation of reality. The results indicate that users/viewers generally held favourable perceptions and attitudes toward the positive impacts of interactive documentaries, anticipating a positive reflection on this location.

References

Aburghif, H. (2022). UAE: Cultural Representation and Re-Creating Emirates Environment in International Films and its Implications for Tourism. Journal of Arts, Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences, (82), 197-207. https://doi.org/10.33193/JALHSS.82.2022.713.

Aburghif, H. M. (2022). Ethics Reflexivity in Documentary Film (An i-doc as a model). Academic Journal of Research and Scientific Publishing| Vol, 4(41). https://doi.org/10.52132/Ajrsp.e.2022.41.2.

Aburghif, H. Interactive documentary as a living and embodying experience to represent reality: A practice-based case study. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 12(2), 30–65. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2024.617.

Ames, E. (2009). Herzog, landscape, and documentary. Cinema Journal, 48(2), 49-70. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.0.0080.

Aston, J., & Gaudenzi, S. (2012). Interactive documentary: setting the field. Studies in documentary film, 6(2), 125-139. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/sdf.6.2.125_1

Aufderheide, P. (2007), Documentary: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Berenguer, X. (2007). A decade of interactive media. El Disegno es el Medio Audiovisual.

Biggs, M. (2004). Practice-based research in the arts. University of Calgary Press.

Boyle, J. (2007). Cultural Environmentalism and Beyond. Law and Contemporary Problems, 70(2), 5–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27592177

Bruzzi, S. (2006). New documentary: A critical introduction. Routledge.

Çalışkan, Ö. (2023). Excursion among the Countries, Documentary, and Essay: Layered Narratives and Self-Representation in A Dog Called Money. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 11(2), 98–126. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2023.478.

Candy, L., Edmonds, E., & Cox, S. (2021). Theoretical and methodological frameworks for practice-based research. Academic Press.

Carl, D., Johnson, L., & Walker, P. (2007). Film tourism and destination marketing: New Zealand as Middle-earth. Journal of Tourism Research, 12(2), 50-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616680601092881.

Clift S. (2012). Creative arts as a public health resource: moving from practice-based research to evidence-based practice. Perspectives in Public Health.132(3):120-127. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757913912442269.

Cowie, E. (2011). Recording reality, desiring the real (Vol. 24). U of Minnesota Press.

Croy, W. G. (2010). Planning for Film Tourism: Active Destination Image Management. Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development, 7(1), 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790530903522598

Drummer, A. (2014). Unconventional story-weavers and their "Ecstatic Truth": An analysis of voice-overs in documentary film. (Thesis). University of Cape Town, Faculty of Humanities. Centre for Film and Media Studies. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12877

Erigha, M. (2015). Race, gender, Hollywood: Representation in cultural production and digital media's potential for change. Sociology compass, 9(1), 78-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12237.

Gandy, M. (1996). Visions of Darkness: the Representation of Nature in the Films of Werner Herzog. Ecumene, 3(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/147447409600300101.

Gaudenzi, S 2013, ‘The living documentary: from representing reality to co-creating reality in digital interactive documentary’ PhD thesis, University of London, London, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00007997.

Gifreu-Castells, A. (2018), "Exhibition and preservation of non-fiction interactive and transmedia forms

of expression", Collection and Curation, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 85-92. https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-08-2017-0037.

Gold, J.R., & Revill, G. (2004). Representing the Environment (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203645987.

Goodman, M. K., Littler, J., Brockington, D., & Boykoff, M. (2016). Spectacular environmentalisms: media, knowledge and the framing of ecological politics. Environmental Communication, 10(6), 677–688. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2016.1219489.

Guarasci, B. L. (2015). The National Park: Reviving Eden in Iraq’s Marshes. The Arab Studies Journal, 23(1), 128–153. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44744902.

Hall, S. (1989). Cultural identity and cinematic representation. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, (36), 68-81.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44111666.

Hall, S. (2020). The Work of Representation. In Prentki, T., & Abraham, N. (Eds.). The Applied Theatre Reader (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429355363.

Harper, G., & Rayner, J. (2010). Cinema and landscape: Film, nation and cultural geography. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Chicago, Intellect Books.

Helphand, K. I. (1986). Landscape films. Landscape Journal, 5(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.5.1.1.

Hondros, J. (2020). Interactive documentary as relational media: exploring an actor-network theory approach. Studies in Documentary

Film, 15(3), 256-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1815126.

Imran, R. (2023). For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira’s Accented Returns to Afghanistan. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 11(1), 115–169. Retrieved from https://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/cinej/article/view/463.

Kim, S., & Park, E. (2023). An Integrated Model of Social Impacts and Resident’s Perceptions: From a Film Tourism Destination. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 47(2), 395-421. https://doi.org/10.1177/10963480211011641.

Lulkowska, A. (2024). Filmmaking in Academia: Practice Research for Filmmakers. Taylor & Francis.

McRoberts, J. (2016). Negotiating Conflict: A Discussion of Interactive Documentary as Constructive Storytelling in Societies Emerging from Conflict. Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.31165/nk.2016.91.414.

Moeck, E. (2023). The Blair Witch Project: Metatextual Layers of Subverting the Female Gaze. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 11(1), 240–257. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2023.471.

Nash, K. (2011). Documentary-for-the-other: Relationships, ethics and (observational) documentary. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 26(3), 224-239. https://doi.org/10.1080/08900523.2011.581971.

Nash, K. (2012). Modes of interactivity: analysing the webdoc. Media, Culture & Society, 34(2), 195-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443711430758.

Nichols, B. (1991). Representing reality: Issues and concepts in documentary. Indiana University Press.

Nogueira, P. (2020). ‘Ways of affection: how interactive documentaries affect the interactor’s felt experience and performance’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1386/ncin_00004_1

Ogden, M. R. (2020). Interactive/Transmedia Documentary: convergence culture meets actuality storytelling. Interin, 25(1), 121-138.

Ogden, M.R. (2020). [Review of the book I-Docs: The Evolving Practices of Interactive Documentary ed. by Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi, and Mandy Rose]. Journal of Film and Video 72(1), 111-113. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/754235.

Price, M. L., & Ogden, M. R. (2019). Interactive/Transmedia Storytelling as Cultural Narrative: Stories of Family, Place and Identity. In TA Hayes, T. Edlmann, and L. Brown (Eds.) Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative (pp. 205-215). Brill.

Podara, A., Giomelakis, D., Nicolaou, C., Matsiola, M., & Kotsakis, R. (2021). Digital Storytelling in Cultural Heritage: Audience Engagement in the Interactive Documentary New Life. Sustainability, 13(3), 1193. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031193.

Prager, B. (2007). The cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic ecstasy and truth. Wallflower Press.

Smith, H., & Dean, R. T. (2009). Practice-led research, research-led practice in the creative arts. Edinburgh University Press.

Siriwardena, D. (2023). Framing the Subaltern: Humanitarian Violence in Liz Mermin’s documentary The Beauty Academy of Kabul. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 11(2), 200–224. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2023.549.

Timpany, C. (2009). Hypertext Functionality in Non-fiction books. In G. Siemens & C. Fulford (Eds.), Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2009--World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (pp. 4003-4012). Honolulu, HI, USA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Downloads

Published

2024-12-03

How to Cite

Aburghif, H. (2024). Interactive documentary as a living and embodying experience to represent reality: A practice-based case study. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 12(2), 30–65. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2024.617

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 2 (2024): Fall

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Hsham Aburghif

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.