Talking History on Film: Pearls and Perils

• In Event: Oral Histories of the Mao Era: Politics and Ethics

Abstract

This paper draws on the author’s experience producing documentary films about China over the span of three decades and explores the rewards and limitations of featuring oral history on film. The paper examines what information the filmic medium might privilege or obscure and discusses some of the methodological issues that arise in the evaluation and presentation of the stories people tell on film. While some of these methodological issues pertain to oral history in general, conducting interviews for the purpose of film production presents particular possibilities and challenges.

While on film, the body language, facial expressions, gestures, and cadence of speech communicate something that is lost in written transcripts. This immediacy of communication and sense of presence has to be weighed against the potential impulse for performance and exaggeration in front of a camera. Other considerations include how certain conditions influence the selection of interview subjects, how the political climate shapes the way people recount the past, and how questions asked by the interviewer affect what stories people tell and how they tell them. Finally, how do the structural characteristics of the film medium itself impose certain conditions that affect the decisions of what to include and exclude?

Author

• Carma Hinton, George Mason University