Capturing freedom: direction, dramaturgy and ethics in contemporary Finnish documentary

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the possibility of capturing Other’s freedom in documentary film. The writer discusses the theme in contemporary Finnish documentary film. The documentary film, as all forms of capturing reality, set things to themselves. Philosophically one may say that the problem arises when the filmmakers’ actions place the Other in the position of a moral object. The moral dilemma became eminent as the lightweight filming equipment offered a fly-in-the wall strategy and the observational documentary became a powerful vein in documentary film practice. The Observational strategy often lead to situations in which the characters were put in a victim position. The writer explores these challenges in the framework of existential philosophy. He adapts the ideas of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the Brasilian pedagogue Paolo Freire and the ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch. The writer utilizes the existential maxim of treating every human being as free as a moral aim for the documentary film practitioner. The writes points out that the existentialistic maxim may offer an approach, which can be utilized to understand the ethics of the documentary filmmaking and also to find ways to create an even dialogue between the filmmakers and their characters.

KEYWORDS:

• Documentary film
• observational documentary
• Finnish documentary
• existentialism
• Other
• morals
• ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The film was broadcasted in Finnish television (YLE) in 2001 and in Austria, the Netherlands and Spain in 2002–2003.

2. Robert Flaherty’s actions’ ethical core can be described as follows: if the documentary filmmaker is an artist, can their professional virtues mainly support the fulfilling of their artistic ambitions. Flaherty’s answer was positive. His activity realizes the virtue ethical interpretation, in which the agent is not interested of the question of right but prioritizes the question of good. According to its view, the basic judgements of morality are not deontic but aretaic in kind and they concern virtues in lieu of principles or rules. Further, the moral quality of an agent, rather that of a deed, receives prior attention in their ethical evaluation. The Griersonian understanding ‘of the duty of the elect’ represents instead deontological ethics, which prioritizes the moral norms as the basis of action. In the deontological approach, the debate of morals is not concerned of the obligation to obey the moral norms, but the means of following them. According to the deontological approach, the morality is, above all, a restriction to what agents would otherwise do and not a positive means of human flourishing. These theories accept as an implicit starting point a certain view of human beings. Human beings are taken as naturally selfish rather than benevolent, and that is why they have to be educated (Frankena 1973, 63–65; Hallamaa 1994, 104–105, 175).

3. In my study (Korhonen 2013, 270), I researched the story structure of 40 Finnish observational documentaries by 12 directors. In 16 of them, the storyline started in the autumn or winter and ended in the summer, which is a significant proportion. It is even more significant as 9 of the 40 films could not be placed within any particular time of the year. This means that half of the films (16/31) having a developing seasonal story structure ended in the summer. According to my interpretation, this is a kind of metastructure of the documentaries of my study. It does not take place by accident, but seems to be an assumed choice by the Finnish directors. The directors place the story into a metastructure they feel is best suited to communicating with the audience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timo Korhonen

Notes on contributor

Timo Korhonen studied religion sociology (MA) and photography (BA). His doctoral dissertation (1993) deals with the ethics practised in Finnish documentary film. Korhonen has directed and produced documentary films since 1990. He has also worked as a film commissioner and as a director of a large documentary training project The Other Finland. Currently, he is directing a documentary film about the inheritance of the WWII war trauma in Finland.