Bodies in the Documentary Scene: The ‘A-Staging’

Abstract

In this article, we approach documentary film through the concept of a-staging. It describes the body, a ‘camera-subject’ in the documentary take, twisted by sensation. Historically, documentary ‘mise-en-scène’ evolved from an initially classic, ‘constructed’ scene, heir of an enunciative horizon defined by educational claims. A-staging makes a differential turn at this 'constructed' reenactment, in a Griersonian sense, and the 'direct' (‘cinema verité’) type of documentary performance. Both are anchored in epistemic assertions of knowledge and instruction (Grierson), or in the retreated, reflexive, performance of direct cinema. The a-staging mise-en-scène is able to pierce the representational screen through the excessive imitation of life, or to densify the take as scene to a haptic point, which is caught in the thickness of the narrative form. Then, matter can coalesce, melt as filmic sensation in the circumstance of the take. The a-staging turned by duration, express the monotonous extension that run along the take, as a bodily experience. As intuition, a-staging lies beyond perception and knowledge, twisting the space in film, as a sensory dimension within which substance is duration.