Poetic Re-presentation as Social Responsibility in a

Collaborative Documentary

By Paola Bilbrough

Re-presentation, Sudanese-Australians, Documentary, Poetry

Discussing documentary practice, Trinh T. Minh-ha has

observed that, “in affirming righteously that one opens a

space for those who do not have a voice, one often forgets

that the gaining of a voice happens within a framed context,

and one tends to turn a blind eye to one’s privileged position

as a ‘giver’ and a ‘framer’” (qtd. in Hohenberger 115). I

contend as an extention of Trinh’s point that intrinsic to

giving is an equal element of taking, and that for

practitioners this dynamic highlights the complex dance

between self and Other, a tension between aesthetic freedom

and ethical practice. This tension is particularly pertinent

to auto/biographical1 documentaries that focus on aspects of

participants’ lives. Paul John Eakin has observed that,

“because our own lives never stand free of the lives of

others, we are faced with a responsibility to those others

whenever we write about ourselves” (159). Notions of

responsibility gain extra currency in regards to documentary,

as both a narrative and visual medium. Although Eakin’s

observation is in regard to close others, I suggest that it is

also applicable to texts featuring individuals from

marginalized communities who may carry the “burden of re-

presentation” for a whole culture.

In this essay I discuss issues of voice, framing, and

responsibility in No One Eats Alone, a documentary I made with and

about twelve Sudanese-Australian women. Visual anthropologist

Jay Ruby argues for a reflexive practice, which reveals

documentaries as “created, structured articulations of the

filmmaker and not authentic, truthful, objective records”

(44). According to Ruby, documentary makers have a “social

obligation not to be objective” (45). In this essay I explore

his contention in the context of a collaborative practice in

which the participants and I negotiated a specific “created”

articulation. I suggest that in auto/biographical documentary,

a non-literal, poetic approach offers a possible way forward

in ethically framing life stories involving shared privacies

and/or sensitive cultural material.

Ethics and Collaborative Practice

In 2007, I began a collaborative documentary project

entitled No One Eats Alone with twelve Sudanese-Australian women

and a Melbourne refugee settlement organization, the New Hope

Foundation. The No One Eats Alone project resulted in the creation

of a film, a book of oral histories, and a collection of

photographic portraits by Grace McKenzie, and was funded by

Arts Victoria under their Community Partnerships Fund. This

type of funding requires the artist to be ethically vigilant

and emphasizes relationships and process. Participants had an

integral role in project development and each participant was

invited to contribute to the framing of shots and the

narrative content, and each had power of veto over her own

story and image. Additionally, a Community Steering Committee

was set up, which met with me throughout the duration of the

project to help make decisions about content. A loose theme of

parenting was agreed on: what it means to be separated from

one’s own parents and extended family and to bring up children

in a new culture. The resulting documentary relies on the

participants’ personal testimonies, mingling their

recollections of Sudan and descriptions of their current lives

in Melbourne with archival footage of Kakuma refugee camp and

family videotapes of Sudan. Drawing on Annette Kuhn’s work, No

One Eats Alone can be described as a “memory text,” although in

this case I am the mediator of the participants’ memories.

Rather than conforming to classical narrative structure,

memory texts may be re-presented as “a montage of vignettes,

anecdotes, fragments, ‘snapshots,’ flashes” (Kuhn 162).

In an important essay on documentary ethics published in

the mid-1970s, Calvin Pryluck noted that the ethical

complexity of documentary as a genre hinges on the fact that

unlike other art forms such as painting and writing, it relies

on real people’s life stories and therefore may also have real-

life implications (204). Widely acknowledged in documentary

scholarship,2 the issue of possible real-life implications

requires us to think about what a practitioner’s

responsibility might be when he or she uses a participant’s

story and image. Although it is impossible to predict the

exact outcome of a film, collaborative practices and shared

creative input can go some way to militating against a

negative impact. Collaboration in documentary is not new:

pioneering anthropologist-filmmaker Jean Rouch’s concept of

“cine-ethnography” is based on the belief that “rapport and

participation” between filmmaker and participants is what

shapes the final film (20). And in his essay on documentary

ethics Calvin Pryluck asserted that: “collaboration should be

welcome. . . . Without the insider’s understanding, the

material could be distorted in the editing process by the

outsider. . . . Collaboration fulfills the basic ethical

requirement for control of one’s own personality” (205).

However, Pryluck’s contention presupposes that there is only

one or at most a small number of insiders and personalities

who the filmmaker might collaborate with. What was most

noteworthy about making No One Eats Alone was the complexity of

collaborating not only with twelve individuals, who all had

differing motivations for wanting to be involved, but also

collaborating with a Steering Committee. The “distortions”

that occurred during editing were carefully deliberated upon

by all those involved, and it was not just “control” of one

personality that everyone understood was a stake, but the

potential impact of the film on the broader Sudanese-

Australian community.

As Steve Thomas has noted, documentary makers and their

participants frequently “become allies, with shared values and

a message that both want to see communicated to an audience”

(34). This was particularly so in No One Eats Alone, as the

possible outcomes of the film were discussed in detail with

participants; indeed, many saw it as an advocacy project. The

ethical issues that arose stemmed from the re-presentation of

Sudanese-Australians in the media and an awareness that we

(the Steering Committee, many of the participants, and myself)

wanted to contribute to a different understanding of Sudanese-

Australian culture. Novelist Chimamanda Aidichie describes how

once, after giving a speech at an American university, a

student had commented that it was “such a shame that Nigerian

men were physical abusers” like the character in her novel.

Aidichie uses this anecdote to make the point that because of

America’s cultural and economic power, she grew up with many

and varied stories of America, yet the western world has very

few of Africa. Stories become dangerous, suggests Aidichie,

when they are positioned as the definitive story of a person

or a group—the only story. The single story of “Africa,” notes

Aidichie, is often one of “catastrophe”—one in which there “is

no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no

possibility of a connection as human equals.” As Aidichie has

pointed out, narrative is powerful: we are “impressionable and

vulnerable” in the face of stories.

A lack of stories about Africa, and more specifically

Sudan, is also evident in Australia where “Africa” is

frequently spoken about as if it were a country rather than a

continent full of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. In 2007

when I began making No One Eats Alone, the single story of the

Sudanese in the media was of young Sudanese men as gang

members (Windle 558–59; Nolan and Farquharson et al. 656).

Joel Windle argues that racialization of African refugees in

the Australian media draws on “a history of racism, on wider

colonial narratives about primitive Africa, on the perennial

discourse of dangerous youth, and even on fears about American

cultural imperialism (in the form of Black ‘gang culture’)”

(563). Drawing on the work of Kerry McCallum, Windle (563) has

observed that, “as with Indigenous Australians, the dominant

frame is one of underlying social risk”. However, while print

media in Australia has largely depicted young Sudanese men as

gang members, documentaries have tended towards a depiction of

them as heroes. As Anne M. Harris has pointed out, there are

numerous films on the “sufferings and resilience of the ‘Lost

Boys of Sudan’” (36). While there are numerous films about the

Lost Boys, there is a dearth of films featuring Sudanese women

(Harris 36). In the reductive focus on young Sudanese men,

women (apart from the occasional model) hardly seem to merit a

mention.

As a white woman framing the stories of Sudanese women,

my responsibilities were complex; this difference in

backgrounds created an inherent power imbalance necessitating

ethical vigilance. However, there were also other dynamics,

which influenced the project. Kate Nash has contended that

“power flows through the relationship between filmmaker and

participant with both actively influencing the documentary

text” (30). In the case of No One Eats Alone, my relationship with

each of the participants also involved the Steering Committee.

The creation of the text was negotiated with at least three

people with two different audiences in mind—the Sudanese-

Australian community and the broader Australian community.

Writing about ethnographic practice, Norman Denzin has

observed that “a written text becomes a montage (and a mis-en-

scène)—a meeting place where ‘original voices’ their

inscriptions (as transcribed texts) and their interpretations

come together” (41). This is an apt description of No One Eats

Alone, an actual film, which was a “meeting place” for a range

of voices, which were sometimes in conflict.

A significant issue was a lack of consensus around what

should be voiced on film. Diversity of perspective amongst

twelve participants was hardly surprising, it was difficult to

navigate what has been widely referred to as “the burden of

re-presentation.” Ella Shohat has contended that in texts

by/about people from minority cultures, “representations tend

to be taken as allegorical, that is every subaltern

actor/actress, character, filmmaker and even scholar is seen,

at least partially, as synecdochically summing up a vast and

presumably homogenous community” (169). Arguably, this is

directly related to the lack of varied stories by and about

subaltern individuals and cultures. Wahneema Lubiano has

observed that “the question of representation and what anyone

should say about his or her community is a constant pressure

under which African-American cultural workers produce” (107).

In research on the perspectives of producers at the BBC from

ethnic minority backgrounds, Simon Cottle found that there was

a “double-sided complexity” involved with re-presentation, as

pressure came from both within the black community and from

outside—the broader community (17). Internally, program-making

was influenced by the pressure producers felt to speak on

behalf of their community and ensure positive re-

presentations. They felt a heightened awareness of

responsibility around re-presenting “problem” issues, which

might feed into negative perceptions in the broader community.

The women involved in No One Eats Alone were concerned not

only about their responsibility to the larger Sudanese-

Australian community, but also felt a burden in terms of

possible perceptions of refugees. During the second meeting

for the project, a lunch that the co-producer and I organized

in a church hall, Elizabeth, one of the older women in the

group, stood up and announced that the film must be made in

Dinka (a Southern Sudanese tribal language group) and English.

According to her, if the women were to speak Arabic—the

“language of the oppressors”—white people who had assisted

Sudanese refugees might feel that the women were being

hypocritical. Another woman, Rose, responded that as she spoke

Arabic rather than Dinka, she would not be able to

participate. She stood up to leave but was persuaded to sit

down. Ultimately, Rose decided to tell her story in English.

Though this may have been because she was keen to improve her

English, it may also have been because she did not want to

offend Elizabeth. Thus in the small group that participated in

the No One Eats Alone project, internal and external pressures

operated as researchers have observed.

I want to now turn to a situation that vividly

exemplifies the burden of re-presentation and conflicting

responsibilities for myself as a framer/mediator (in both

sense of the word) and for a storyteller, Bronica, an eloquent

woman in her fifties. Bronica had made contact with the No One

Eats Alone project after early meetings around content had

occurred; she said she had an important story she wanted to

share about childrearing. She became a priority in the project

because of her enthusiasm and the ease with which we were able

to set up a time to film. However, when we arrived for the

filming, it became clear she was largely uninterested in how

the film might work as a whole, either aesthetically or

politically. Rather she saw it as a means to communicate an

urgent message to the Australian government about the position

of the Sudanese in Australia.

Bronica framed much of her narrative not from her

personal perspective but from the perspective of “we”—either

consciously or unconsciously putting herself forward as a

spokesperson for her cultural community. Her central point was

the breakdown of traditional family structure and she railed

against young people disobeying their elders, drinking, and

hanging out on the streets. Welfare services, she said, had

taken away one of her daughters. “We beat our children in

Sudan,” Bronica asserted, “and as a community we Sudanese want

some authority; we want to continue to do things as they have

always been done” (Dhiew, Interview). This triggered an

immediate, negative response from the women on the Steering

Committee who were angry about the use of “we.” They were

concerned that viewers would believe Bronica’s version of

Sudanese culture as the only truth. One member worried that it

might sound as if the Sudanese community were “ungrateful” for

all the settlement assistance they’d been given in Australia.

Additionally, I could see that aspects of Bronica’s narrative

fed into the media’s re-presentations of young Sudanese-

Australians as gangsters.

Bronica’s story also revealed how values and definitions

often assumed to be universal are dependent on personal,

cultural, and social position. This was evidenced in the

concept of “child.” While Bronica attributed me with the power

to ensure that the government would listen to her concerns,

she also called me “little girl.” A committee member pointed

out that since I was unmarried and without children, from a

traditional, Dinka perspective, this meant that I could not be

considered an adult. Based on the western concept of “child,”

I had assumed that Bronica’s daughter must be between six and

ten years old and felt enormous sympathy. However, further

questions revealed that Bronica’s daughter was nineteen. The

daughter’s unplanned pregnancy had resulted in a dispute with

Bronica and a welfare organization assisting with independent

housing. In a further twist, her daughter did not want to be a

parent, so Bronica took responsibility for her granddaughter.

This was quite a different narrative than the one Bronica

seemed to be telling, about how welfare services removed a

young child. It was also one that the Committee and I felt

would evoke less sympathy from a non-Sudanese audience.

It was evident that what lay beneath Bronica’s narrative

was enormous grief and loss. Describing her life in Sudan, she

had said, “We were born, seven of us. Then five died. There

were two of us left. My mother and father died. My sister and

her child died. My other siblings died and they were not

married. There were two of us left. Then war started” (Dhiew

22). This matter of fact summary of tragedy began Bronica’s

further statement that she had managed to ensure that her

children “lived and became adults” (Dhiew 23). To then lose a

daughter because of different cultural mores was the

culmination of a myriad of losses. Bronica was also struggling

with the fact that in Australia, “family” had a different

meaning: “whole families are separated; children by

themselves, mother by herself, father by himself. Everyone

makes their own way” (Dhiew 23).

Listening to Bronica, I admired what the committee member

had worried might be construed as a lack of “gratitude.” Her

attitude seemed a courageous dissent from “happy,” “grateful”

refugee voices, and as such it ruptured overly positive, one-

dimensional discourses about Australia as the “lucky” country

and a refugee benefactor. This was a luxury of interpretation

as an ousider; as a non-Sudanese, Bronica’s story did not have

the power to reflect on me. However, from my perspective as an

artist, Bronica’s anger also necessitated a broader

contextualizing and some kind of resolution. Left as it was,

there was a danger of its not fitting into the film’s overall

narrative and alienating or confusing viewers. I had to a find

a compromise: a way to re-present Bronica’s concerns, one that

did not take away the individuality of her voice, did not

disregard the Committee’s views, and still “worked” on an

aesthetic level. Marcia Langton has argued that any

representation of an Aboriginal by a non-Aboriginal is an “act

of fictionalisation” and “creative authority” (40). Without

intending to dilute the political impact of this contention, I

extend it here to say that all documentary re-presentations,

both of other people (regardless of culture) as well as of of

ourselves, are a type of fiction. Such representations are, as

James Clifford has stated in an ethnographic context,

“constructed domains of truth, serious fictions” (10).

Ultimately the version of Bronica’s story that appears in No

One Eats Alone is a poetic re-presentation of events, a co-

articulation created by Bronica, the translator, and myself

based on an extended metaphor.

After the first interview on camera, I visited Bronica

three more times: once to explain in detail why I could not

use the original footage and twice more to shoot new material.

Initially I did not expect that Bronica would necessarily pay

much attention to my concerns—she had told her story with a

great deal of passion and I was uncertain that she would

listen to the perspective of a “little girl.” In fact her

response was a positive one. I felt very empathetic towards

Bronica, and in turn she treated me very warmly, as if,

perhaps, I was one of her children. As well as discussing the

re-presentation of Sudanese-Australians in the media, I talked

about No One Eats Alone as an artwork with an aesthetic purpose as

well as an advocacy aim. Bronica was able to respond to this,

as she is a teacher of traditional Sudanese dance and is no

stranger to performance. When we visited to film again she was

making necklaces and stitching costumes for her dance class,

and she offered a narrative that was clearly an expression of

her own artistry. From my perspective, this was the real

collaboration. Discussions with the Committee involved

negotiating acceptable content in terms of the politics of re-

presentation. However, the solution could only really come

from Bronica and was dependent on our relationship.

The new version of Bronica’s story (which appears in No

One Eats Alone –both the book and film) hinges on a metaphor she

uses for the flawed nature of the resettlement experience:

“Australia has cleaned a bowl; they have cooked food and put

it in the bowl. We Sudanese came with a lot of interest

wanting to eat this well-prepared food in a beautiful dish.

But the woman who prepared this food has made a hole in the

dish and the food falls out” (Dhiew 23). Bronica still uses

“we” in this narrative, and arguably, her story could still be

seen as contributing to essentialism. Yet I felt that, in this

case, it was unlikely that anyone would be able to attribute

any particular characteristic to the Sudanese community from her

metaphor, except a desire to accept hospitality and partake of

something appealing. Throughout filming, Bronica had been

threading a necklace and to illustrate the bowl she held up a

plate of multi-coloured beads and tapped the bottom

emphatically with the point of her scissors. She repeated the

description of Australia as a bowl and demonstrated with the

plate of beads a number of times, so that I had a number of

versions on film to work with. Although it is impossible to

know Bronica’s exact intent, the metaphor of the bowl seems to

sum up a paradox inherent in resettlement—that of being

surrounded by material abundance but still experiencing loss

and cultural dislocation. When I edited the footage, I let

this become the central focus, leaving Bronica’s loss of her

daughter ambiguous, allowing the viewer to believe that she is

speaking of a very young child. This is a deliberate

“fiction,” yet “true” to Bronica’s feelings of loss and

separation. While aspects of Bronica’s story have undeniably

been taken away, I would argue that aesthetically this version

has more “give,” as its non-factual nature allows the viewer’s

imagination to come into play, opening up rather than closing

off interpretations, and as such it resists homogenizing

Bronica’s story as “the Sudanese” experience.

Conclusion: The Expansive Power of Metaphor

In concluding, I want to return to auto/biographical

practice and metaphor in terms of what both contribute to the

politics of re-presentation. Auto/biography as an expression

of an individual’s voice tends to throw up uncomfortable

questions around what is “acceptable” to express. This is

relevant both to the privacy of close others, and to sensitive

or controversial contexts, such as the re-presentation of

marginalized groups. However, I argue that through the use of

metaphor, Bronica’s story for No One Eats Alone avoided impinging

on shared privacies or contributing to cultural essentialism.

Shohat uses “allegorical” to refer to a reductive

understanding of re-presentations that point to a paucity of

imagination, an inability to accept individuals and culture as

multidimensional (169). In this essay, I have argued for the

value of metaphor (in order to avoid the reductive quality of

allegory) in communicating highly emotional events and

potentially divisive subjects. Metaphor in a work of art has

the power to create wide-ranging associations requiring the

viewer to draw upon sensual, emotional, and non-literal

understanding. Poetic re-presentations offer a different

variety of “truth,” and can be more expansive in terms of

possible meaning for maker, participants, and viewers. In this

way, the use of elliptical expression can be a type of social

responsibility in the re-presentation of auto/biographical

stories that include shared privacies and sensitive cultural

information.

Coda

Although I do not know if the Australian government

officials Bronica had in mind saw No One Eats Alone, the film has

been screened widely among organizations who are interested in

building their cross-cultural competency. I have also been

approached after screenings by audience members working in

child welfare who were particularly moved by Bronica’s story.

I have not seen Bronica since the screening of No One Eats Alone,

but our lives indirectly crossed again—in a way that has a

certain poetic logic. About a year ago a close friend of my

partner’s sustained a serious head injury playing basketball.

In the first few weeks of awakening from a coma, he could not

hold anything in his hand and had to be fed. My partner went

regularly to the hospital to care for him and during visits

realized with some surprise that Bronica was his friend’s

aunt. She was unsurprised by the connection and welcomed my

partner as a family member, directing him to feed her nephew

when she was not able to be there herself.

Affiliation: doctoral student, Victoria University, Melbourne,

Australia.

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1

I use Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s definition of auto/biography

as signalling the “interrelatedness of autobiographical narrative and

biography with the slash marking their fluid boundary” (256).

2 See Aufderheide; Chapman; Pryluck; Plantiga; Nichols, Introduction and

Representing Reality; Ruby, “The ethics of image making or, ‘They’re going

to put me in the movies. They’re going to make a big star out of

me...’”