The way of the bricoleuse: experiments in documentary filmmaking

In this article, I explore the way experimental documentary film practitioners may utilize the methodology of the bricoleuse in order to create films. I refer to my experiments in documentary film practice – mediations of memory, place and subjectivities – where I deploy hybrid filmic strategies of critical realism and fictional enactment. The bricoleuse may use footage obtained through pocket cameras, mobile devices, stills, archive or found footage – including their own past films, analogue and digital – using a digital database to store footage and to provide her with an endless storehouse of digital documents that can easily be accessed and reused in infinite ways to create new practice [Baron 2014. The Archive Effect. London: Routledge, 142]. I analyse in particular My Private Life II [Daniels, Jill. 2015. dir. My Private Life II. UK. https://vimeo.com/139077147] where I used the footage from an earlier film, My Private Life [Daniels, Jill. 2014. dir. My Private Life. UK. https://vimeo.com/104385249], to create a split screen view and my short documentary essay film, Breathing Still [Daniels, Jill. 2018. dir. Breathing Still. UK. https://vimeo.com/253291495] (shown at The Mobile Innovation Network and Association [MINA] in 2018), a short epistolary film addressed to Rosa Luxemburg and shot on a pocket camera (Canon G9X).

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article, accepted on 1 March 2022 and published by Taylor & Francis in Studies in Documentary Film on 11 Mar 2022, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17503280.2022.2048232