The Faults Of Documentation. Migration Through An Experiment In Film Pedagogy

Abstract

This article reflects on the paradoxes of representing exclusion through a pedagogical encounter that investigates the faults of documentation in migration. Dominant representation manages exclusion through figures, where a life’s contingencies are condensed into transferable forms — the victim, the dreamer, the resilient subject — in a manner that is compact enough to circulate at the cost of what they leave behind. Through theoretical inquiry and dialogue, we explore how images can resist the circulation of exclusionary figures without abandoning the terrain of representation.

Rather than critiquing the act of looking alone, the article focuses on how the image’s materiality resists complete figuration. Drawing on surfaces as sites where this friction operates, we work with figuration’s faults — darkness, silence, or blur — as openings where a shared capacity of imagination can emerge.

The dialogue is offered here as an experiment in film pedagogy. David speaks from the experience of being a returning migrant and artist, interviewed by journalists and scholars seeking predetermined narratives; Edwin, a film scholar, questions whether a documentary can avoid reproducing the exclusion it sets out to document. This exchange does not come to a conclusion. The friction between the two positions — and the documentary that remains unfinished — is the method and the finding.

The article suggests that when film pedagogy is faced with exclusion, it can embrace material limitations as invitations for imagination: a shared capacity emerges precisely where mediation is made visible and representation cannot come to a closure.