A 15 Minute Documentary made for the International Symposium of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry (ISAN) 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib5yYgNwY1M
Through a 15 minute documentary, The Bodies Collective aims to share their process of writing, working and collaborating virtually during the last 5 years culminating in publishing a collaboratively edited book with Routledge in November 2023. This is the first book edited by a collective rather than first named author et al that Routledge has published. The Bodies Collective aims to trouble the traditions of the academy and at the same time add a collective voice sharing autoethnographic, arts-based, embodied and more than human stories. This documentary celebrates a collaborative, autoethnographic and arts-based approach.
An intimate embodied encounter
With the aim of bringing a broader audience closer to the human experience, we follow Douglas and Carless’ (2018) call for qualitative research to use film-making and Cayir (2020) in exploring Autoethnography as documentary. The film allows those watching an intimate embodied encounter with the process of collaboratively writing and producing a book: getting to know The Bodies Collective members in interviews, observing them in play, and hearing their discussion about their role in the book and how their research fits into the wider project.
The documentary was coordinated and edited by Alys Mendus and Claudia Canella after hosting zoom sessions with The Bodies Collective members to discuss the process, our back catalogue of photos and films from workshops, short film clips from members about their own practice of Bodyography and sections from the online conference workshops for the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) in 2021. The documentary allows the audience to join in with the embodied experience of being and becoming within The Bodies Collective workshops as well as getting a more candid discussion about the complexities of working as an international collective over vast continents and time zones. We hope you enjoy the documentary and we invite you to now read out book!
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