Creative practice: A love story

In this chapter, the author seeks to examine how ethical and aesthetic screen-based responses can fight shame, discrimination, homophobia and misogyny, arguing that such affective interventions may be potentially transformative. Two case studies are given: Orchids: My Intersex Adventure and Handbag: The Untold Story of the Fag Hag. Both are documentary films in which the author was a key creative. Both are filmic mediations with the aim of demystifying and destabilising assumed knowledge and were shaped by a predominantly female production team, emerging partly out of professional practice and partly out of the academy, in which the text adopts a ‘stronger critical research focus and often mirrors the distinct vision of a single writer-researcher’ (Baker 2013, 4). Throughout the works, the author(s) reveal much about themselves in order to generate a contract with participants and audience and establish a supportive relationship that cherishes openness. The resultant works are imbued by love, marked by a certain (and increasingly prevalent) hybridity of screen documentary form and offer an emancipatory encounter