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Replacement and reparation in Sarah Polley’s Stories we tell

  • Agnieszka Piotrowska
Research Output:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
Chapter
 Peer-review

Abstract

The question of the ethics of a documentary film has been debated for decades, with the work of Emmanuel Levinas gaining a particular currency lately. My own contribution to this debate focused on the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject of her film – a process that under certain circumstances could evoke a deep bond between the filmmaker and her subjects, and which I claim is similar to a mechanism which clinical psychoanalysis calls ‘transference’. This chapter looks at Stories We Tell (Polley 2012) and examines it as a site of reparation. I also investigate the notion of obsolete technology and fake archive as pivotal in Polley’s project, which I see as a way of a reclaiming the lost agency of the filmmaker’s mother vis-à-vis the patriarchal systems that she inhabited.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
Chapter
 Peer-review

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 06/06/2018

Publication status

Published - 06/06/2018

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., United States, United Kingdom

ISBN (Print)

9783319760100

Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623419
  • Scopus: 85061889500

Host publication title

On replacement : cultural, social and psychological representations

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