Film Makers Theories: Kim Longinotto
- A British documentary filmmaker
- Well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination
- Prolific documentary filmmaker (an observational filmmaker (Observational cinema, also known as direct cinema, free cinema or cinema verite, usually excludes certain documentary techniques such as advanced planning, scripting, staging, narration, lighting, reenactment and interviewing.)
- Gives the women on camera a certain voice and presence that may not have emerged with another documentary genre.
- Received a number of awards for her films over the years, including a BAFTA for her documentary PINK SARIS.
What are the main features of how Longinotto makes films?
Observational style:
- Present everyday people living their life
- Making the film with the people/ make it the people’s film
- Need to make it interesting- very personal subject matter
Why women are the main focus:
- Films ‘survivors’ ‘rebels’ and ‘women who are standing up against tradition.’,
- Contrast how past and modern society treats women
- Its rare to have films with women as the centre
Intended impact of films:
- Different mentality in our culture
- Mentality that needs to change
- Wants to create an experience like you would get in fiction
- Not to instruct but enrich our lives
Kim Longinotto’s career and style:
- A British director who works in observational documentary. Her subject matter has a primary focus on women’s lives.
- She favours long takes and she tries to capture the extraordinary in the lives of the subjects that she observes.
- The stories that she brings to the screen are often uniquely personal, mainly focusing on society’s outsiders.
- Her films shot in a calm, unobtrusive style, often centre on victims of discrimination and oppression and tell the stories of strong female characters fighting for change and justice.
- She has worked in a number of different countries around the world for example Iran, Cameroon, Japan and the US. Her key films Dreamcatcher (2015), Rough Aunties (2008) and Divorce Iranian Style (1998) all expose the raw immediacy in her films.
- It could be argued that her perspective on the range of different cultures she encounters in her films gives a real sense of herself as an ‘outsider’ filmmaker.
Kim Longinotto and ‘Amy’:
- Links to watching a fiction film (Kapadia’s ‘true fiction’ technique).
- Longinotto uses subjects you are able to identify with – sympathetic, arguably ‘victim’ characters, like Amy Winehouse.
- Longinotto’s films highlight female victims of oppression and have female central protagonists – who is this oppressor in Amy?
- No traditional narrative voice over reinforces a ‘fictional’ film tradition.
Conventional documentary genre tropes:
- Hand-held camera – realism and ‘truth’
- Narrative voice over – preferred readings (Hall)
- Intercutting with archive footage – non-linear. Investigative narrative building a picture. Vox pops (“voice of the people”) and interviews, use of conflict
- POV, mediation and subjectivity – exploration of themes and issues
- Informing, educating and entertaining the audience – voyeurism
Narrative levels (Amy):
- requiring a montage-like editing approach
- Stock archive footage (news sources)
- Unseen footage released by friends and family
- Use of still image (juxtaposition important with a lack of traditional narrative voice over)
- Captioned present day indirect interviews
- Footage of aerial shots (London locations)
Narrative:
- Based on archive footage and 100 edited interviews.
- Linear with flashback as ‘narrative journey’ – use of home video footage – teenage wannabe to pop star to drug taker to music icon
- Spectator interaction with Amy – ‘positioned’ using emotive representations e.g. Mitch (her father) and his 7 yr. affair, walking out on mother when Amy was 9 years old
- No narrative voice over (challenging doc. convention) – use of captions position the spectator
- Use of still images with stock news footage, unseen and interviews create a montage editing effect
Emma Coe Film Studies 