Telling stories: the narrative study of documentary ethics

The telling of stories unites documentary practice and ethics. Moral judgements are often central to storytelling and for that reason stories are uniquely placed to help us engage with the ethics of documentary production. Documentary ethics has developed as a broadly situationist discourse, characterized by a desire to situate individual moral judgement within specific contexts. While on one level this complicates ethical discourse, it also suggests a key role for empirical study. A significant contribution that empirical research can make, and the one that guides the research presented here, is to contribute to a full understanding of the complexity of the contexts of documentary production and reception from a variety of different perspectives. While there is a growing body of research from the perspective of the documentary maker, relatively little is known about the participant’s experience of documentary production or the interpersonal relationships on which documentary depends. Two case studies demonstrate how participant narratives can inform debates around consent power and trust.