Disruptive docs: teaching hybrid documentary filmmaking in Australia

ABSTRACT

As a documentary educator and practitioner in Australia, ‘truth’ is an area of concern for both my students and I in undertaking the risky capturing and the representation of the lives of others. Documentaries are deceptively difficult to make, especially for the novice, and most especially when considering hybrid non-fiction genre forms. The questions my students pose often centre on how much can they blend reality in the ‘post truth’ moment, and what are the practical and ethical challenges of doing so? This paper urges teachers and makers alike to refer to established documentarians who investigate at truthful depictions that often transcend the didactic recitation of facts. Citing the examples of Conjuring the Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (directed by Martin Scorsese, 2019) and The Rehearsal (created by and starring Nathan Fielder, 2022), I present a pragmatic discussion as to how disruptive non-fiction form a pure triadic relationship between participants, audiences, and filmmakers, which necessarily involves the overlap of ethics and creativity. I refer to a recent student hybrid documentary film Bustard Head (directed by Lucy Lakshman, 2021) as an example outcome of this pedagogically oriented approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Documentary studies
• film analysis
• narrative analysis
• creative practice
• genre studies
• disruption
• archival practices
• ethics
• filmmakers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sue Cake, Glenda Hambly, Anna Dzenis, Sean Maher, and Felicity Collins for their comments on this paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phoebe Hart

Phoebe Hart is a “pracademic” who is a successful documentary filmmaker based in Brisbane, Australia, as well as a widely published screen researcher and associate professor at the Queensland University of Queensland. She has written, directed, and produced non-fiction films for more than twenty years for various broadcasters and streamers such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special Broadcasting Station, Stan, OutTV, Showtime and ARTE. Hart has received multiple awards and honours for her autobiographical documentary Orchids, My Intersex Adventure and an academic commendation for her thesis entitled “Orchids: Intersex and Identity in Documentary”.