The Visible Camera: Hand-Held Camera Movement and Cinematograpohic Embodiment in Autobiographical Documentary

This paper presents a new theoretical framework for examining the relationship between the hand-held camera and the camera operator’s body in autobiographical documentary. While many documentary scholars have written extensively on cinema vérité and direct cinema, they have not examined how the camera can embody the movements and perceptions of the cinematographer. In this analysis, I reexamine the relationship between hand-held cameras and the cinematographer to better explain how the operator’s hands help construct an image and reveal off-screen space in autobiographical documentary. Drawing from examples from the autobiographical documentaries A Silverlake Life: The View From Here (Friedman and Joslin, 1993), The Gleaners and I (Varda, 2000) and War Photographer (Frei, 2001), this paper highlights instances where the camera operator’s hands and body movements are made visible. As I argue, the recorded material is not only the cinematographer’s visual depiction of the world but is also a record of his or her intentionality and bodily movements as they happened at a given space and time. the choreography and improvisation that transpires between a cinematographer and the subject being filmed. This relationship is similar to what Jean Rouch calls the “cine-trance.” As theorized by Rouch, this symbiotic transformation between a cameraperson and his subjects is the “harmony of a traveling shot that articulates perfectly with the movements of those being filmed.” [1] Building upon Rouch’s idea of the “cine-trance,” I will examine the tactile dimension of hand-held cinematography and underscore the self-reflexivity of the cinematographer whose off-screen presence (and in some cases, personality) become embodied onscreen by the movements of the camera. In this analysis, I will examine how documentary filmmakers interact with the camera and analyze instances when the cinematographer’s body becomes observable in the frame through the movements of the camera itself. Although documentary filmmakers do not always operate their own cameras, I will primarily focus on directors who perform the majority of their own This paper is part of a larger project that seeks to establish a theoretical framework for rethinking the cinematic properties and tactile dimensions of the hand-held camera by analyzing moments in documentary video practice where the off-screen space of the cinematographer’s body becomes visible through the movements within the frame. Despite the array of visual metaphors that still dominate film and media studies’ understanding of cinematography, camera operation is a tactile practice that requires the use of the hands, fingertips and shoulders. As such, camera operation and hand-held cinematography is more fully immersed in the body than has been acknowledged previously. This new understanding of hand-held camera movement provides the initial framework for what I classify as “cinematographic embodiment”— instances when the camera operator’s bodily movements and perceptions are recorded or “embodied” along with the subject(s) in the frame. Whether these movements are spontaneous or rehearsed beforehand, I seek to more fully address