Memory, Place and Autobiography: Experiments in Documentary Filmmaking, by Jill Daniels

I very much enjoyed reading this book, but I should make a couple of “declarations of interest” at the outset. Daniels uses an aspect of my own work (A Whited Sepulchre, 2009) in her discussion of the “multiplicity of voices” in autobiographical documentary (69-73), and, as implied by this, we share a background as independent filmmakers with an interest in both autobiographical documentary and in Practice Research in the Academy. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, I found it a completely fascinating and thought-provoking read. Taken as a whole, the book gives both an intimate portrait of a particular filmmaker’s struggle to make work, and a very clear picture of the contexts (personal, industrial and intellectual) in which that work was produced.