From surviving to thriving: emotion-focused documentary filmmaking as therapy

Abstract

This is a self-as-subject heuristic inquiry on using documentary film making as a therapy approach to treat emotional blocks. Film making process is similar to systematic evocative unfolding (SEU) technique in EFT which evokes emotions and episodic memories. Camera can be regarded as an extra eye capturing something one may not notice. The documentary film in this research records and tracks the process of me: in an encounter with a wild swan, my previously numbed bodily feelings were awakened, which led to a discovery of cultural and personal influence that prevented me from feeling protective anger. Camera witnessed my therapeutic change which supports the effectiveness of emotion-focused documentary making as one way of therapy. In this research, data were footages collected regularly during a period of a few months. Watching footages helps one recollect and unfold what had happened, while editing footages again and again is a re-experience, re-narrative / re-telling and making sense of one’s experience, which is therapeutic and serves as data analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Film making
• trauma
• emotional block
• self-as-subject
• heuristic inquiry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).