‘Towards Intercultural Documentary’ is a PhD by Published Work that is comprised of
four documentary films, an exhibition catalogue essay and an academic book chapter
to form a collective body of work in film and text focused on what Rughani proposes
as ‘intercultural documentary practice’. This body of work configures ‘intercultural
documentary practice’ as a space or arena in which people of radically different
perspectives encounter the other.1 Intercultural documentary aspires to create
pluralised spaces of exchange by engaging difference within and between
communities. In this work, voices traditionally overlooked, excluded or edged to the
cultural margins are re-framed to find a new centrality in a broader encounter, more
accurately reflecting the diverse influences that comprise polyglot societies. In the
United Kingdom (UK) context, three submitted films, broadcast to peak-time
audiences on BBC 2 and Channel 4, stood in contradistinction to mainstream
narratives that typically portrayed British experience as largely monocultural and
homogeneous.
The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is in deepening and extending the
dynamics of documentary practice to embrace intercultural communication and to
weld this to the ethics of documentary making. In so doing, this body of work situates
ethics as central to the documentary encounter and offers new practice-based insights
into navigating tensions in the process of making such work and its methodologies.
‘Towards Intercultural Documentary’ presents a case for the coherence of the body of
work that makes a contribution to knowledge at the inter-disciplinary confluence of:
documentary studies and practice, ethics and intercultural communication. The
submission comprises: Islam and the Temple of’ ‘Ilm’ (BBC 2, 1990); One of the
Family (Channel 4, 2000); Playing Model Soldiers (Channel 4, 2000); Glass Houses
(British Council, 2004); the exhibition catalogue essay British Homeland in Home
(British Council, 2004) and the book chapter ‘Are You a Vulture? Reflecting on the
ethics and aesthetics of coverage of atrocity and its aftermath, in Peace Journalism
(Peter Lang, 2010)