One of the subjects I studied this semester was ethnographic films. I learned that the right of staging scenes in documentaries has been defended by different writers and filmmakers. According to Flaherty, for example, “sometimes you have to lie because one often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit”. And, with different elements of ethno-fiction, Jean Rouch is also another example of how re-creating and staging an event in order to register it can be completely legitimate and even more efficient than trying only to capture spontaneously. I was particularly intrigued by this matter. I then began to think about another question: how authentic can an auto-ethnographic movie be? If we are applying this method during an auto-ethnography, isn’t the temptation of romanticising too strong? We are so worried about our self-image. How can we be honest with the public? How can we be honest with ourselves?
I think I found the answer in a very unexpected way. Yesterday I was coming back drunk from a party, where I was taking pictures. I left my camera on inside my purse by mistake. While looking for the keys, I accidentally pressed a button that made my camera start recording a video. When I was checking the photos in the next day, I found this 15 minutes video of a candid-camera inside my bag recording a short moment of my intimacy. So I wanted to share with the world my first (and probably only) piece of honest auto-ethnographic. I only edit it to make it shorter and I removed the parts where you can’t see or hear anything.
