In this lecture, I underline how documentaries allow for building connections and meeting points with others who would otherwise be strangers. In interacting with characters in a story and creating relationships that evolve throughout the production process, ethical and narrative questions arise as to what the role and position of these people are (or could be) in a film. I reflect on these queries by screening and discussing two documentaries.

The lecture thus starts with the screening of the film Fuera de forma (Out of Shape), which is a portrait of Argentinean writer and rapper Matías Fernández Burzaco. He has a rare disease that he shares with only 60 other people in the world, but he also has a wild imagination that makes him write in an almost compulsive way. I will then discuss the genesis of this documentary and how it continued to evolve over time, as Matías became much more than the main character as he gained an active creative voice for the film.

Out of Shape: https://vimeo.com/799802721/71dd1b7049

Then we will watch and discuss an excerpt of Exoskeletons, a more personal and creative documentary in which I follow Sandor, a neurologist passionate about beetles, in his expeditions to the Hungarian forests. The film is narrated as a research journal examining both his passion and my own entomophobia. I will address some of the questions that appeared while defining what the ‘optimal’ distance between character and filmmaker is and how the risks and uncertainties of being a guest in someone else’s life can indeed become a part of the story.

Exoskeletons: https://vimeo.com/685252121

BIO

Mariana Castiñeiras is a Uruguayan filmmaker. After working as a journalist for six years in her home country she joined the DocNomads master’s in Documentary Filmmaking, which took her to make films in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels. She is currently based in London, working as a video producer for BBC Mundo. Her film Exoskeletons was screened in Hot Docs (Canada), won the Best Short Film Jury Award at José Ignacio Film Festival (Uruguay) and will have its European premiere in CPH:DOX (Denmark).