Together with my colleague Eva Bakøy, I’m doing a project on the documentary My Daughter the Terrorist, which focuses on the Tamil Black Tigers. The paper The Dilemmas of the documentary maker as witness was presented at the Anniversary conference of Media, War & Conflict, Royal Holloway, University of London in April 2013. At the moment we are preparing an up-to-date version of the paper, watch this post for further developments.
The abstract is available below, accompanied by a CNN interview of director Beate Arnestad, as well as the presentation from the Media, War and Conflict Conference.
The abstract is available below, accompanied by a CNN interview of director Beate Arnestad, as well as the presentation from the Media, War and Conflict Conference.
Abstract
This paper investigates ethical and political dilemmas documentary filmmakers face handling the issue of terrorism in the context of on-going ethnic warfare, through a case study of award winning Norwegian documentary My Daughter the Terrorist, focusing on contents as well as the history of production and global reception. Documentarists operating within the Western independent documentary tradition cultivate the suffering individual as the victim of ruthless authorities.
Our case represents documentary makers with an idealist mission to explore the human costs of warfare, focusing on two young female members of the Tamil Black Tigers and the mother of one of the two girls, a few years before the tragic ending of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. The production- and reception history highlights dilemmas which occur when this type of perspective is applied within the context of on-going civil war and terrorist acts. Especially when applied outside the Western hemisphere, the perspective of human interest stories tends to get lost among audiences attached to the conflict. Instead they become embedded in the «perceptual battlefield» of war, in this case interpreted as supporting the Tigers and even terrorism.
The reception history illustrates the relevance of the concept diffused wars, through mediatization of on-going violent conflicts and triggering unexpected consequences. While the documentary makers were surprised by becoming the centre of a minor global controversy, their film was also taken as evidence within the major Sinhalese discourse about the official Norwegian peace facilitators siding with the Tamil Tigers.
