Folklor/Edebiyat (May 2016)
First Person Documentaries; The Gaze of The Ego To Herself / Birinci Tekil Şahıs Belgeselleri; “Ben”in Kendine Bakışı
Abstract
As internet started to take an important role on the circulation of the audio visual and written material, it is seen that new forms are starting to appear as well as it effects traditional mediums like cinema, television and print media. In traditional documentary narrative, while documentarists produce representations of individuals it was completely ignored that they may be interested of producing their self-representations. As it is more possible and common with the help of new technologies that people produce their self-representations, the boundaries between the documentarist and the subject/ individual began to disappear. In the first person documentaries, documentarist may be in the center or may be looking from a distance to her own surrounding, so may not start the sentence with the word “I”. She may narrate stories from the society, from her own family with a personal point of view or directly may narrate her own life experiences. In this manner, as she may be identified as the camera as well as the source of the images it may be said that the screen functions as a mirror. Whether it is in a manner of confession, a diary or a social activist first person journalism, it is obviously subjective than the narrative form of documentarist telling something on behalf of someone else. Just to better understand the communicative potential of documentaries which are transforming continuously with the effects of social, cultural, political and technological changes, it is important to crystallize the narrative layers of documentarist, subject and audience, within the framework of recent advancements in digital technology enabling and facilitating self-representation practices in the film narrative. In other words, the exemplification and analysis of most recent and strong films which have met the audience would be pertinent to concretize the potential of first person documentaries as a prevalent narrative form. As it is obvious that visual media has a strong effect on the establishment of reality in the society, first person documentaries reaching masses easily with the help of the new technologies must be accepted as an important arena of social involvement, as well as an instrument of social justice. Because, the lives and experiences of ordinary people, mostly unheard and unseen, may have strong influence on the way how the facts and events are to be interpreted and be carried into the future.
