Table of Contents
Life writing, an overarching term encompassing memoirs, diaries, letters and more, can be represented on screen in many forms, making it an underrated yet extremely valuable genre of film. Falling under the realm of first-person documentaries, the personal element can add an emotional and experimental twist to the standard documentary. Films in this category can be enlightening in many ways; they have the power to offer uniquely intimate looks into the minds of others and, importantly, to give us countering views on lesser-known moments and marginalized perspectives throughout history.
First-person documentaries have been released throughout film history in the tradition of cinéma-vérité, bringing the camera into the domestic sphere. The genre grew in both concept and popularity in the 1990s, when digital cameras became more affordable, making amateur filmmaking more accessible. With the rise of the internet and video-sharing platforms, the focus on the self in media is only becoming more prevalent.
A particularly significant feature of first-person documentaries is the home video. Home videos are not typically filmed with the intention of public viewership, yet they can provide a look into the lives of ordinary families across the world, capturing interpersonal dynamics and daily life. They also have the power to intimately capture the rituals of everyday life through war, internment, and other traumas.
"Something Strong Within" (1995) is a film that compiles home videos taken by Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War 2. Cameras were prohibited in the camps, but people snuck them in nonetheless, capturing daily life in the camps. These videos showcase community, baseball games, and laughter, but also the chilling artificiality and barren isolation of the internment camps.
In the article "Change of Scale: Home Movies as Microhistory in Documentary Films," Efrén Cuevas argues that archives should be valued not merely as aids to documentaries but as the primary source for examining history from below, or history focusing on the lives and voices of ordinary people. "Something Strong Within" demonstrates the ability of archival footage to speak for itself.
Another example of life writing on screen film that utilizes home videos is “A World Not Ours” (2012), directed by Mahdi Fleifel. This movie is more narratively structured than "Something Strong Within," centering on the director's family and friends living in Ain al-Hilweh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. The movie contains voiceovers, home videos taken by Fleifel's father, and interviews with multiple generations of Palestinian refugees, capturing the multitude of perspectives and experiences held by the people residing there. His personal connection to Ain al-Hilweh and its residents provides nuance and a feeling of intimacy that would not be possible from an outside source.
Personal and collective archives offer a way to interpret and view narratives that often aren't shown in mainstream media and may challenge the common social memory or the narratives pushed by hegemonic powers. We discover the past through archives, and yet historically, the archives that are preserved often must have the stamp of approval from those with power. These can be misleading, if not altogether false. There is immense power in reclaiming the archive as a tool for marginalized communities to share their own histories, told from their perspectives. Life writing and self-narratives on film, often low-budget filmmaking, allow these stories to be told from the source.
Increasingly, with the accessibility of video tools, the video archive – whether home videos or personal diaries – has become a staple source of social memory. Recovering marginal archives can help transform and rewrite dominant historical narratives, placing them into a broader framework of understanding the past.
