Documentary-for-the-Other: Relationships, Ethics and (Observational) Documentary

Abstract

While documentary ethics has been largely normative to date, there is growing interest in alternative forms of ethical thinking. The work of Emmanuel Levinas in particular is providing a way of thinking through both the ethics of documentary viewing and production. This article begins by drawing attention to the link between documentary ethics and aesthetics and then uses Levinas's work to consider the ethical relations established in observational documentary production. Of the different documentary modes, the observational has been the source of particular ethical difficulties, yet viewed from a Levinisian perspective it is possible to identify ways in which observation preserves the alterity of the documentary subject.