Documentary narrative for a new understanding of a stigmatized public space

• Main Author: Natacha Cyrulnik
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade do Minho 2020-06-01
• Series: Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais
• Subjects: documentary; public space; communication; tourism
• Online Access: https://rlec.pt/index.php/rlec/article/view/2121

Following on from an audiovisual project carried out over fifteen years in cities in the South of France, the tourist sites are now being filmed as part of a new documentary series, in an attempt to better understand daily life in these easily stigmatised areas by telling the story. The aim is both to apprehend the public space from an urban (Paquot, 2009) and media (Habermas, 1978) point of view, in order to try to better understand it (Niney, 2000). The creative documentary offers both a device (Agamben, 2007) and the possibility of sharing an experience through art (Dewey, 1915) that encourages a sensitive approach to the tourist territory. It requires the narration of a territory in images and sounds, whether through the words of tourists (Augé, 1997) or travellers (Paquot, 2014) or through behaviour in “family films” (Odin, 1995), for example. This narrative of a territory is based on the relationship that man establishes with the tourist site. Thus, in a way, he fictionalises a reality by asserting a point of view. In this way, it allows a more or less imaginary journey for the person who experiences it, as well as for the spectator in the end.