Teaching Documentary for the 21st Century, Vol. 3, published by CILECT—The International Association of Film and Television Schools.

The volume, edited by Kerstin Stutterheim, Gerda Cammaer, Roz Mortimer, Kym Campbell, and Nico Meissner, explores the dynamic landscape of film, TV, and media education in the 21st century.

Chapter 11: Ella Raidel, “Performative Documentary, Artistic Research, and Emancipatory Pedagogy,” is included in this important collection. The e-book PDF has the ISBN 978-619-7358-13-1.

Abstract:

The Performative Documentary as a Method for Artistic Research

The performative documentary embodies a method I have developed as a filmmaker and arts-based researcher to perform documents while interacting with sites, actors, and audiences. I define the performative documentary as a play on reality, contrasting straightforward reports, facts, or information. My use of the word “play” is understood for its polysemy, where it not only means a theatrical drama but can mean a child’s activity in a game, an improvisation, using an instrument, or singing. Departing from the theories of the performative, this artistic form of filmmaking refers to its capacity for transformation. To perform the documents means to take action to reveal their inner logic of cultural representation. Through the consideration of documents in relation to poetics, participation, and activism, colonial truths and knowledge can be revealed, and diasporic histories experienced. Films become not only cultural-political texts but also visual and acoustic devices for making aware of one’s origins and destinies. The performative documentary encourages students to become active as researchers and understand their practice as an open-ended process in which thinking and making are one. It employs art as the discursive tool, which often goes beyond the traditionally defined medium and method. Its reflexivity engages the self-critique of representation.  This paper sets out to define documents and performativity in filmmaking in terms of its methods, artistic processes, and cultural and political significance, and how this practice-based knowledge can be adapted to a teaching method.

Forthcoming: Performativity in Documentary Filmmaking. Poetic Play of Life. Amsterdam University Press, 2026