Double Voiced – poetics of exchange in documentary film

Double Voiced examines the documentary interview as a cinematic space of dialogue and encounter, in view of negotiating a more equal exchange in filmmaking and transposing ethical concerns into cinematic form. As the art of filmmaking is penetrated by relations of power, the legitimacy of dominant regimes of representation, in particular with regard to the documentary image, have repeatedly been called into question due to theoretical and structural difficulties in representing lived experiences of the Other. This research addresses the aesthetic implications of fostering an approach founded on dialogic engagement, described by Mikhail Bakhtin as fruitful contact between human beings in a living, unfinalized context where “each retains its own unity and open totality, but they are mutually enriched”. An aesthetic of dialogue arises from the intricate combination of intimacy and outsidedness to create what he calls a ‘double-voiced’ discourse. The pursuit of such critical distance within the interlocutory relationship enables mutual enrichment without striving for a definitive narrative or factual truth but to witness the transformation of the self and the other.