The choice to interview my grandfather was made pretty soon after understanding that the theme of the project would be “home,” as I’ve always been fascinated by his experience as an immigrant. A secondary reason for wanting to interview him is the fact that he primarily left his home country of Poland with my mother and the rest of the family due to political persecution and the repression of speech that was occurring at the time in Poland. Thus, I felt that that context made the story a rather resonant one for our current times. The other important choice I made had a more significant impact on my own location within this narrative, which was the decision to only use the voice of my grandfather to accompany the images. I could have used my own narration, or a combination of both my input and my grandfather’s, but I did this out of a desire to distance myself from the narrative, and allow my grandfather to be the sole teller of his own story. My voice as a documentarian would still be able to show through my selection of the family photos, but the narrative itself would be more in the hands of the subject, my grandfather. However, while my grandfather’s specific words were under his control, I still had to decide which portion of the interview would best display the narrative of “home” that I hoped to communicate. The entirety of our discussion was twenty minutes, of which I had to find a portion that would appropriately fit my narrative. Thus, this is a decision that brought my own location as a storyteller closer to the narrative, as this decision granted me greater control. I think my location is addressed well within my grandfather’s introductory lines, in which he identifies himself as my grandfather. Thus, he unintentionally addresses my location relative to the narrative by showing his own connection to myself, the documentarian telling the story.
Leave a Reply