From video activism to collaborative creative documentary: co-authorship in 5 Broken Cameras and For Sama

Abstract

This paper presents case studies of two documentaries made in the last decade that arose out of the video activism of their protagonists, who, after several years of gathering footage, sought out external co-directors from outside their communities to help them create a documentary feature film. The films in question are 5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, 2012) and For Sama (Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts, 2019), which deal with two extremely important contemporary social conflicts: the territorial dispute in the West Bank and the Syrian Civil War. These films are analysed here in relation to their processes of discursive production, the narrative and aesthetic elements involved in the transition from video activism to documentary film production, their enunciative perspectives and their processes of collaborative creation.