ABSTRACT

What do we learn about documentary forms, practices and relations when marginalised communities adapt documentary filmmaking to revise their historical conditions? The use of documentary filmmaking by Indian media collective Chalchitra Abhiyan responds to three historical circumstances: socially marginalised groups’ under-representation in media industries, their misrepresentation in mainstream media products and the systematic deployment of mainstream traditional and new media forms to promote religion-based constructions of Indian national identity. In this media ecology, community use of documentary functions for social transformation, through representation and the relationships, methods and practices defined by the needs and goals of otherwise marginalised communities (such as Dalits and Muslims) who use media for functions of visibility and counter-representation. Examining media production and circulation together with the arena of social relations, I contend that ‘embedded aesthetics’ of documentary in this setting involves a representational focus on the collective in agentive processes that use documentary to recognise, deconstruct and reinterpret an accepted victimhood into a form of resistance (Ginsburg, Faye. 1994. ‘Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media.’ Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 365–82). Critiquing individualist social relations of mainstream media, concrete documentary practices re-organise digital and physical modes of media production and circulation by reference social and cultural functions, connecting filmmaking to lived histories of discrimination and possibilities of collective resistance.

摘要

当边缘化社区采用纪录片制作来修改其历史条件时，我们对纪录片的形式、实践和关系有何了解？印度媒体集体 Chalchitra Abhiyan 使用纪录片制作回应了三种历史情况：社会边缘化群体在媒体行业中的代表性不足、他们在主流媒体产品中的失实陈述以及主流传统和新媒体形式的系统部署以促进基于宗教的印度民族认同的建构。在这个媒体生态中，社区使用纪录片功能进行社会转型，通过表现和关系，方法和实践是由边缘化社区（如达利特人和穆斯林）的需求和目标定义的，他们使用媒体来实现可见性和反代表性的功能。审视媒体生产和流通以及社会关系领域，我认为纪录片在这种背景下的“嵌入式美学”涉及对集体的代表性关注，这些过程使用纪录片来识别、解构和重新解释一个公认的受害者身份，使其成为一种形式抵抗（Ginsburg, Faye。1994 年。“嵌入式美学：为本土媒体创造一个话语空间”。文化人类学9 (3): 365–82)。批判主流媒体的个人主义社会关系，具体的纪录片实践通过参考社会和文化功能，重新组织媒体生产和流通的数字和物理模式，将电影制作与生活中的歧视历史和集体抵抗的可能性联系起来。