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Participatory Documentary Then and Now: A Conversation about Practice and Pedagogy

Television & New Media

Published online on

Abstract

In this conversation, community media activist jesikah maria ross and filmmaker Vicky Funari talk about the work they have done together in alternative media since the 1990s. Their shared projects include skin•es•the•si•a (1994), an experimental video exploring the cultural codification of the female body; Paulina (1998), a feature-length documentary about a resilient Mexican woman whose parents traded her for land when she was a child; and Maquilápolis [City of Factories] (2006), a participatory documentary that tells the stories of women workers in Tijuana’s multinational factories, and explores through their eyes the transformation of a city and its people by the forces of globalization. Set just after their last collaborative project, Troubled Waters (2014), their conversation addresses the issues of media pedagogy and aesthetics, technological affordances and limits, and the changing state of participatory media production in the United States.