QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS
Aims & Objectives
• To research
alternatives to the empirical and factually based classic
documentary narrative's approach to story telling.
• To examine how such alternatives can reveal
different aspects of human experience not generally
revealed by these classic approaches; in particular, to
explore the relationship between fact and mysticism.
• To identify practical ingredients which could form
the basis for cinematic practitioners to further evolve
non-empirical approaches to making documentary films.
• To create practice based work – a documentary
film – which reveals, illustrates and exemplifies the
findings.
• To explore African modes of story-telling, in
particular modes in which reality and mysticism blend.
• To create a documentary practice outcome, whose form
and approach can shed new light on the plight of aspects of
African life.
• To write and publish a refereed article based on
research findings.
Research Question or
Problem
There are aspects of human
experience that are not adequately dealt with, or revealed,
through classic documentary narrative paradigms. These are
questions which can only be adequately explored through
practice and through this practice the intention is to
explore the following questions:-
First research question: How can one employ a practical
approach to cinematic documentary narrative which goes
beyond the dominant paradigm exemplified by elements such
as cause and effect, conflict and resolution, and
psychologically explicable situations, character
motivations and narrative motivations, to reveal qualities
of spirituality and transcendence without reducing these
elements to fit a paradigm that ultimately contradicts the
very nature of these transcendental and spiritual
qualities?
Second research question: How far can visual imagery,
colours, shapes, objects, camera angles and sound be used
to bring to life the essence of predominantly oral African
story-telling traditions to reveal non-materialistic
perspectives on life and living? Such African traditions
often freely, and equally, mix what we in the developed
world think of as separate incongruous elements, such as
reality, fact, superstition, myth, fantasy, spiritual
reality. While certain genres within fiction may bring
together some of these elements in an agreed fictional
paradigm, how can one bring such elements together within a
paradigm of fact?
Third research question: By focusing the subject matter of
the documentary practice output on the changing
relationship of local people in the Akim Abuakwa region of
Ghana – known for its abundant gold, yet still
materially poverty-stricken – how can one create a
documentary narrative about such a relationship seamlessly
and equally incorporating such elements as fact and
fiction, reality and fantasy, the material and the
spiritual, hope and despair and bring to life a living
metaphor, without reducing the form to social realism?
Research Context
What defines the documentary
genre is also at the root of its limitations; an
epistemology which ties it to the factual or empirical
experience of life. While in early British documentary,
there were some attempts to discover the poetry of
documentary (Humphrey Jennings, for example) much of
contemporary documentary is confined to a perspective on
life in which the factual is primarily what can empirically
be observed, then supported by the psychologically
explicable. Social realism, observational documentary and
interview-based documentary are examples of variations of a
genre which broadly lives within the same classical
paradigm of cause and effect, conflict and resolution.
There are a number of, usually, non-UK examples of
documentary which have attempted to break away from this
paradigm: the late Jean Rouch, for example, whose work in
Africa – in fact in Ghana – shows how the
documentary has the potential to go beyond the material
surface of the world to reveal a spiritual dimension; or
Dvortsevoy, whose work Bread Day or In The Dark sees him
move away from any notion of cause and effect, conflict and
resolution in order to reveal a dimension of life which
social realism cannot adequately reveal or portray.
Arguably, British documentary is in decline, in terms of
the breadth and depth of what is produced. The commercial
climate of contemporary television, the traditional funder
of much important documentary work of the past, has seen an
increased dependence on formulas which reinforce the need
for drama, conflict and explicable cause and effect in most
documentaries. The HE context provides one of very few
contexts within which the exploring filmmaker can seek to
expand and develop the language of film.
RESEARCH PROCESS
There were three stages to
this project: first, research into existing stories, myths,
legends and artifacts in the Akim Abuakwa region of Ghana
which revolve around gold, people’s relationship to
gold, the cultural relationship to gold, and the economic
and political relationship to gold, documented on camera
and, most importantly, told by ordinary Ghanaians; second,
an analysis and interpretation of these stories, by the
filmmaker, and the subsequent creation of a documentary
story building on the outcomes of this analysis; and third,
a number of screenings of the finished documentary,
accompanied by seminars, reflections of which will be the
basis for a refereed article on the research outcomes.
The research was carried out during the month of January
2006, followed by a more specific 2 week shooting period
during early April 2006. The whole research process was, in
a sense, a process of direct discovery based on personal
encounters.
RESEARCH OUTCOMES
The primary outcome, as
mentioned, is the film Heart of Gold. The findings, in
relation to the research questions, should spring directly
from the film. I shall briefly outline some key themes that
emerged, then sketch briefly how I have sought to work with
these in the film, bearing in mind my research questions.
• Divinity, and divine purpose, are at the heart of
every story and experience conveyed. It is tempting to look
at this from the scientific dogma of the developed world as
a psychological or cultural phenomenon, with little basis
in fact. However, to the traditional Akan, divine purpose
is a fact with plenty of evidence to support it.
• Everything has a spirit directly connected to the
divine; matter, plant and sentient beings alike. There is
no distinction, no divisions, and the spirit that lives in
gold is as important as that which lives in a human. As an
extension of this, spirit can take many forms and even
transform itself – a central feature of
story-telling.
• Given the facts of divine purpose and the spiritual
presence in everything, the relationship with nature is one
of respect, caution and humility. The actions of nature and
the actions of the divine are one and the same,
consequently nothing is coincidence and the interaction
between the human and all aspects of nature are aspects of
spiritual interaction. For example, fortune and misfortune
are not random events, but often divine intervention. What
for us in the developed world may be called superstition,
is for the Akan an intricate connection of interacting
forces.
• While some stories one could describe as legend or
myth – in other words, they are stories that have
been handed down through generations – other stories
relate to direct personal experience. In both cases, no
distinction is made between what we in the developed world
may consider fact and fiction, reality and fantasy or real
and unreal. Listeners of the story consider everything to
be fact.
• Stories were usually wrapped in the context of a
moral and a blessing. This, I discovered, is important; for
a story is not merely told to entertain, but to educate,
enlighten, forewarn, encourage or to reflect
philosophically. Every story has a clear purpose, of which
the story-teller is well aware, and that purpose is
connected to the divine.
• Usually stories involve many elements of nature and
are not just confined to human interactions. It is tempting
to look at this as a representational issue of metaphors,
but for the Akan, where everything, including matter, has a
spirit and a will.
Fact and Fiction
Rather than bring together
– by accentuation – two distinct genres, in
Heart of Gold I have sought to dissolve the notion of fact
and fiction. Everyone in the film is themselves and know
each other in real life, as they do in the film. I have
seamlessly interwoven footage that I have constructed with
footage that I have observed; footage of interviews have
been incorporated into sequences I have partially
constructed; improvised sequences where participants
interact around stories they told me; recreations of
impressions and stories constructed; and natural phenomena
have been assimilated with actuality and constructed
sequences.
Suffice to say, that the idea was to seamlessly weave
process and form to create a work that transcends genre
definition; form and subject as inseparable as possible in
order to truly reflect the inseparability of my themes of
matter and spirit, real and imaginary, fact and fiction.
Character and Motivation
A key feature of Kwasi
Akufo’s performance was that I wanted to strip the
character and his motivations of all psychologically
explicable motivations, in order to, in a sense, allow
other forces to act on him. The classical narratives of
both documentary and fictional genres requires
psychological motivations, but when dealing with realities
in which divine motivation, or so called coincidences, are
in themselves forces for action, it seemed important to
take steps to try to eliminate elements that could reduce
the narrative’s motivational forces to the cause and
effect of psychology.
Narrative Purpose
I have tried to incorporate a
sense of moral purpose into the form of the film, as this
seems to be a feature of almost every story I was told
about gold; in other words, not merely that the subject
matter or the story reveals a moral purpose, but that the
story-telling mode – the form – itself reflects
a morality. The boy’s story, with its ambiguous
ending, does not of itself reveal a moral purpose. It is
the story-teller – the filmmaker – whose
morality shapes the moral of the story. In the liberal
cultures of the developed world, the idea of the
documentary filmmaker having a moral purpose is often
treated with unease or suspicion. To the Ghanaian
story-teller – even if recounting personal
experiences – the moral purpose for telling the
story, however, is of paramount importance. I therefore
found it a challenge to try and incorporate a moral stance
in the film without destroying the ambiguity and mystery of
the story. I wanted to try and create a moral stance which
was felt, but not articulated.
In Heart of Gold, I decided to work with three simple
elements to explore this notion. They are in a sense the
three non-diegetic elements which frame the story: the
opening and closing image of the hand with the lump of cold
(in colour), and accompanying narration, repeated verbatim,
the music and its lyrical theme and the colour schemes.
Texture
The core of the film –
the story of Kwasi Akufo and his lump of gold – is in
monochrome. Why tell the story in monochrome, if the real
world is in colour? For me, the honest answer lies in the
reality of the feeling. It felt right. It felt real.
Reflecting on it intellectually, two strands of thoughts
come to mind in the decision: whether factual or not, it is
a story that is being told and the shifting from the
diegetic colour to the non-diegetic monochrome helps remind
us of that; second, I was interested in simplifying as many
elements as possible in order to facilitate the
transcendence of the surface reality to a deeper reality in
which the mystical and the material elements coexist,
indistinguishable from each other.
DISSEMINATION
The research project was
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The
film will be made available on DVD, the full version of
which will include interview extracts of participants in
the film. The DVD will be available from the One Day Films
Limited web site and through the universities’
library system. It is currently being submitted to
festivals worldwide and TV broadcast will be sought. There
is already a commitment to primetime broadcast the film on
Ghana Broadcasting Corporation during Ghana’s 50th
independence anniversary celebrations in March 2007.
Additionally, written reflections are available on the
film’s web site and a refereed research report is due
in the Journal of Media Practice. A conference presentation
of the research outcomes took place at the JMP/Salford Peer
Review and Dissemination of Practice Research Symposium in
June 2006.
If I were to advise a peer
reviewer to look at this research and evaluate the
outcomes, I might suggest that the following questions be
looked at:
1. Do the research questions posed present an opportunity
to add to our knowledge and understanding in the area being
studied?
2. Is there evidence, in the completed film, that the
research questions have been addressed?
3. In addressing the research questions in the finished
film, is there evidence of there having been success in
answering some of these questions?
4. If there are failures to answer some of the research
questions, do those failures help to add to our
understanding and knowledge of the issues the research
questions pose?
5. Does any supporting material – visual, aural or
written – encourage a better understanding of the
research outcomes?
6. Does the methodological approach to the research seem
rigorous?
7. Does the overall research package encourage further
research?
CONCLUSIONS
The heart of the process of
making a film, for me, is intuitive. An inner necessity,
which I cannot explain, drives me to make them. I would
even go as far as to say – as Rodin said about his
relationship to stone and sculpture – the stories I
tell already exist, my job, as an artist, is to see these
stories and bring them into a tangible form. Intellectual
reflection is just that: intellectual reflection. For me,
the act of creation is not an intellectual act, but an act
of inner necessity, faith, feeling and craft.
However, this research has not only taught me things about
the research experience, the process of creation and the
form of ‘documentary’, but it has also opened
up new questions and avenues. Some of these questions might
include:
• How can one further evolve a new form in narrative
filmmaking, which completely transcends (as opposed to
blends) the distinctions between fact and fiction? How can
this be done in a world where we like to define, categorise
and distinguish?
• How can one incorporate notions of so called
coincidence more fully into cinematic narratives?
• How can one abstract reality – or the
representation of reality - in order to reach the inner
reality of people beyond the cause and effect of
psychology.
• How can one deal with these themes without having to
travel to visit traditional cultures? In other words, how,
within our own culture which seems completely dominated by
the empirical, can documentary find the cracks through
which hidden realities can become palpable?
• What opportunities do developments in production and
dissemination technologies offer?
Erik Knudsen
See Research Question
See Report One
See Report Two
See Report Three
