What happens when participatory principles are applied to all aspects of a documentary film? Can this result in a film coherent beyond its content, with a narrative and an aesthetic that helps to mediate between divergent views on shared realities?
Drawing on her experience in Latin American cultural research and in the use of audiovisual formats and processes in work with social groups, Vera Gerner examines participatory approaches in theory about documentary film and in academic research, focusing on Latin American practice with its specific view of the relationship between university and society. Starting from the principles that can be derived from the combination of these approaches, she examines the practice of Costa Rican documentary film in the 21st century in search of concrete principles and practices for participatory film processes. This is input for a film project on the Dance of the Devils in the indigenous community of Boruka, a cultural practice that currently is not only a field for interaction within the community, but also for the positioning of the Boruka in the national context.
Apart from the film that results from this process, the project closes with a written work that reflects on participatory approaches from perspective of the validation of theoretical proposals through the film process.
- Project lead: Vera Gerner
- CV: Vera Gerner is an ethnomusicologist and sound and film technician, who is active in Costa Rican art and cultural research for more than twenty years. She is particularly interested in the intersection of theoretical research and cinematic and artistic projects, as well as in ways to create a more equitable balance between inequal partners, as is necessary, for example, in the collaboration of university projects with independent artists or with socially disadvantaged groups. Her doctoral project is an attempt to use this search for documentary film. Some of the projects in which key questions for this doctoral project were initiated can be seen at HERE.
- Contact: vera.gerner(at)una.ac.cr
- PhD Advisors: Prof. Dr. Ursula von Keitz
- Scientific / artistic PhD in the discipline: Film Heritage