How I’ll Film You in Your Home
Influences for film-making, editing, and sharing
Our Everyday Forms is an archival service for individuals, co-habitants and families who want their care tools documented for personal, community, and legacy purposes. It comes in the form of a two-hour interview and ‘home tour.’ It’s a service by and for Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color.
It’s part of a larger academic research project through Monash University in Melbourne, by Ph.D. candidate, Myriam Diatta.
You’ll name your audience.
At the end of the interview and home tour, I’ll ask you, ‘Who are you archiving for? Start your sentence with “Dear…” and name again who you’re addressing, and what you want them to know.’ You may choose to address your sister, your friends, your community at an organization you’re a part of, your family, or everyone and anyone.
As we talk and you share stories, we have a camera pointed at us. It’s either on a small tripod, or I’m holding it and shooting. It’s a small camera, not a big DSLR, but because we’re being filmed, we’re made aware of an audience’s gaze. In this work, it’s important to address outside gaze and to speak on it.
Arthur Jafa talks about that gaze at 13:15 in this video.
“If you point a camera at black people, on a psychoanalytical level that camera is also functioning as the white gaze even if a black person behind the camera. so I said, ‘I’m just not going to point a camera at people at all.’ The whole film is structured around having conversations with people audio only. often times the camera will be turned away so that they can see it. and then we’ll shoot them afterward. or before. so there’s no talking heads in the whole thing … It’s about surveillance … and the whole idea that the way power is structured, it always drifts upwards… presumably going to be a representative of white power… We can’t very much go forward with this whole idea of never pointing a camera at black people… I want to privilege the idea of black people being able to speak freely.”
— Arthur Jaffa
We’ll be casual and spontaneous.
Examined Life, with Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor
The two of them take ‘a walk’ with a plan to talk about gender and disability. It gets cold so they go into a thrift store and buy a sweater for Sunaura. The detour made for a conversation about what it means to ask for help. The language they use is much more academic and theoretical than the conversations I have during the home tours.
It’s a balance to get good footage (capturing the spirit of the conversation) and to not overwhelm a participant with pretentious equipment.
