Reframing Documentation, Representation, Visibility, and Legibility: Documentary Film and Marginalized Embodiment

Friday, 11 July 2025: 11:00-12:45
Location: FSE013 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
RC57 Visual Sociology (host committee)

Language: English

Individuals with marginalized identities have historically faced harm through the use of film as a research method. Visual work inherently centers the visual, enforcing notions of difference as a visual category. The medium, its technology and its vocabularies themselves are often discriminatory, for example privileging lighter skin colours, which are easier to expose without stretching the dynamic range of the recording material. In addition, documentary film often needs to balance the needs of the individuals being portrayed with funders’ demands for easily digestible narratives, for “heroes” and stories.

When the visual representation of othered bodies has so frequently been a source of harm, how can this tension be addressed by work being done today – while using the strength of visual methods to work against these harmful structures? What strategies can be employed – in the work process, the approach, the distribution, but also in the very acts of framing and editing images of bodies – that can seek to actively work against perpetuating this violence? What are the relationships between documentation, representation, visibility, and legibility that those utilizing documentary film as a responsible research method must consider and investigate? What conversations have to happen about these issues and who do they need to involve and center?

This session features researchers who use documentary film as a method to engage with individuals or groups with marginalized embodiments and who themselves have othered embodiments. Presentations will include film excerpts as well as reflections on the film work and the session’s themes.

Session Organizer:
Magdalena HUTTER, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Oral Presentations
Cinematic Representations of Disability: A Comparative Analysis of Indian and International Films
Mohammad YUSUF, Aligarh Muslim University, India; Mona ASADIAN, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Iran; P. BOOPATHI, Central University of Tamilnadu, India
Central Eastern European Contribution to Documentary Cinema – Festival Trends of Cinematic Diversity.
Alicja WASZKIEWICZ RAVIV, University of Warsaw, Poland; Jacek MIKUCKI, University of Warsaw, Poland; Anita ZAWISZA, University of Warsaw, Poland
'born of a Fraud' - a Documentary Podcast on Insemination Fraud
Sabrina ZEGHICHE, Université du Québec en Outaouais, Canada
Decolonial Fashion Ethnography: ‘before Yesterday’ Method
Michelle "Mi" MEDRADO, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil
Maids, Wives, Kóres and Psychokóres Representations of Female House Workers in Greek Movies
Nickos MYRTOU, National and Kapodistrean Univeristy of Athens, Greece
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