Aberrancy and autobiographical documentary

This chapter (and paper presented at at Visible Evidence XXIV conference 2017 Buenos Aires) explores the creative practice challenges of disabled filmmakers, particularly those working with autobiographical documentaries. These on screen audio-visual archives allow disabled documentarians the agency to define notions of identity and “self” in relation to others, privileging their voices and creating a messy discursive dimension. Taking into account the emancipatory impulses and aims of the author’s own film, Orchids: My Intersex Adventure, this chapter argues that revised representations of embodied difference ruptures aberrancy, stigma, erasure and pre-inscription, and may even be viewed as therapeutic. On political, cultural, social and personal levels, the resulting films are ultimately transformative, empowering acts for both the seer and the seen