Latest issue
Recherche-création autour de l’intime
Edited by de Martin Bonnard et Diane Poitras
According to common understanding, intimacy is a closed, interior territory, which confers a privileged character on those who have access to it, notably through friendship, love or sexuality. This conception, centred on the individual, places intimacy in opposition to public and political space. However, with the advent of the web and the circulation of networked images, intimacy is invading public space. Self-exposure on socionumeric media, from the posting of everyday images to the sharing of innermost thoughts, sometimes resembles diaries that are open to all winds. This phenomenon calls for a fresh exploration of our understanding of intimacy, which suddenly seems contradictory to the reality that develops online.
Consequently, intimacy as a “relational concept” (Fœssel 2008) may give rise to a redefinition of the relationship between this portion of individual life and collective space. From this perspective, rather than a closed space, intimacy appears as the hidden (or internal) face of social relations. Such a conception of the intimate sphere thus echoes the feminist slogan, which, long before connected practices, proclaimed that “the personal is political,” approaching this issue from another angle and revealing an essential link to democratic life.
The prism of intimacy as a space closely connected to the public sphere thus constitutes, according to our reading, an original and rich way of perceiving in film democratic issues in terms of forces and tensions that resonate in both spheres. More specifically, we see it as a way of approaching the practice of research-creation in documentary cinema in a new light. Indeed, by firmly linking a theoretical approach with a creative approach, the texts in this issue offer an opportunity to shed light on the intimate experience of documentary filmmakers' reflective work on the world.
This is what this dossier offers, with articles by emerging researchers and practitioners. Drawing on their own research-creation work, the authors explore the ways in which intimacy circulates, the possibilities of evoking it through cinema, and its place in the very practice of documentary filmmaking.
[Excerpt from the issue presentation]
With contributions by
Natalie Bookchin, Bálint Demers, Henri-François Imbert, Marie Braeuner et Diane Poitras
Miscellaneous
Guilherme Machado et Yahaglin David Camara