Private Life Going Public: From A Personal Documentary to A Dialogical Screening

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how personal documentary filmmaking can be extended into a broader social practice, taking as its point of departure the process of filming my mother and reflecting on our intergenerational relationship. While personal documentary has often been understood as a mode of self-expression or individual testimony, my research demonstrates that such work can also become the foundation for participatory and dialogic practices that engage communities in acts of shared reflection. Central to the project is a practice-based methodology that combines ideas of autoethnography, affect theory, and feminist ethics of care to explore how intimate, family-based filmmaking may be transformed into a model of collective engagement. By examining both my filmmaking practice and its subsequent extension into workshops and screenings, I argue that the personal, far from being insular, can function as a generative force for social dialogue.
The film I produced with my mother reveals how personal narratives, though rooted in subjective experience, resonate with broader cultural concerns. Themes of memory, care, and intergenerational tension emerged as central motifs that connected my own story to those of participants who later engaged with the work in workshop and screening contexts. These events were deliberately designed not as passive presentations of a completed film but as dialogic spaces where audiences could contribute their own perspectives, linking the film’s content to their familial and generational histories. Through this approach, the dissertation demonstrates how filmmaking can move beyond representation and instead serve as a catalyst for relational knowledge-making.
The research also highlights the particular significance of personal documentary in contemporary China, where political developments since 2012 have further constrained independent filmmaking and restricted conventional public forums for debate. In such contexts, intimate and family-centered filmmaking becomes not only a personal practice but also a subtle form of cultural resistance. By foregrounding everyday life, memory, and relational care, filmmakers are able to open up alternative micro-publics, circumventing censorship while fostering small but vital spaces of dialogue. My practice thus illustrates how personal filmmaking can both reflect and reshape the conditions of cultural production under restricted public discourse, while offering a model for socially engaged art in contexts of constraint.
The findings contribute on three interconnected levels. Theoretically, the dissertation reframes personal documentary as a dialogic practice that generates relational rather than merely representational knowledge. Methodologically, it advances a transferable model that integrates filmmaking with participatory workshops and screenings, showing how practice-based research can move fluidly between the personal and the collective. Practically, by offering a model of mother–child dialogue that can be adapted for wider communities. The work enriches the understanding of Chinese independent documentary culture by demonstrating how personal narratives can negotiate political restrictions and create meaningful spaces for collective reflection.
In sum, this dissertation shows that personal documentary is not confined to the introspection of the filmmaker but can form the basis of a wider social practice. By linking personal experience with collective engagement, the research repositions documentary as both an artistic and a social act: a means of representing life, of creating knowledge, and of building new forms of community.

Date of Award	5 Nov 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Northampton
Supervisor	Craig Staff (Director of Studies) & Andrew Hewitt (Supervisor)