The question is then how such an everyday micro-physics is played out in documentary practice, or more specifically, in the ‘formatted documentaries’14 of Martinsen. The question is also how this affects the experimental everydayness of the Freetown. a historical answer would take as its starting point the close affinity between documenta- ry filmmaking and the emergence of ‘everyday life’. it is not incorrect to claim that the notion of the everyday constitutes the floating label for the sphere of minor whereabouts articulated through modern me- diating technology. Film, it seems, naturally captures ‘the ordinary’; everything from people leaving their work place to the whirl of leaves stirred by the wind.15 as such, the moving image brings the trivial in- to common consciousness. as the discourse on everyday life develops, especially after the second World War, it is certainly influenced by this new and mass-mediated visibility.16 Yet, the everydayness emerging on the screen is not simply a passive representation, but a political shift- er; a socially active figure dislocating focus from structures of power to spaces of mobilisation and change.17 Thus understood, ‘everyday life’ is the ‘micro-space’ where ordinary acts such as chatting, cooking, fix- ing water pumps, singing or throwing stones at the police takes place; in short a space where representational practice is acted out, invented and reinvented.
accordingly, rather than a capture of or an outlook onto everyday life, documentary film could be understood as an integral part of it. as Bill nichols, principal theorist of documentary puts it, even though there is a strong mutuality between the documentary and ‘authentic’ everyday life, it is not a representational relationship. rather, the doc- umentary unfolds as ‘a practice of authentication’,18 and as such consti- tutes a rhetorical claim to realism and relevance, which should not be confused with the ‘real’. Thus dependent upon documentary ‘authen- tication’ for its emergence, everyday life is rather an effect of the use of certain modes or representational formats. These modes include such
aspects as camera positioning, framing of subjects, directing of per- formance, and sequencing or editing of footage; all of which accord- ing to nichols present the ‘axiographic’ scheme of the documentary.19 Mainly operating through what may be called a conventional, ‘ex- pository’20 documentary format, the camera in Martinsen’s films is dis- guised, first and foremost used as an instrument, blending in with the happenings in front of it and subjugated to the goal, which is that of ex- posing a topic and giving a report. There is also an affinity between the camera perspective and the commentator’s or narrator’s voice, which is equally neutral and anonymous, even when it occasionally leaves its external position, addressing the family members directly. at these in- stances, the framing is simple and the camera frontally positioned so as to emphasise the disinterested and impartial onset. This establish- ing of a self-evident point of view is specifically obvious in the evalu- ating sequences, often talking-head shots, where the family members reflect upon their experiences, for example in their own living room in hedehusene.
While the voice-over in both films sometimes crosses the border and enters the plot, the opposite is also frequent, as the testimonies of the family members are elevated to the commentary level, often further sustained by overview images, giving the statements an analytical dis- tance. The neutrality is also reinforced through the chronological ‘di- ary’ format, which renders to the films a self-evident temporality, the flow of images and sounds constituting a natural analogy with quotid- ian, day-to-day living.21
at times, however, this expository mode is shifted for a more subjec- tive form of expression. Occasionally, the camera interferes in a more intimate way, closing in on happenings or tracing movements, almost seeking bodily contact, all in order to create a more emotional sense of uncensored presentness, a heightened atmosphere of embeddedness. in Martinsen’s films, this mode — at times achieved with handheld cam- era — is used in many of the more intimate, indoor sequences, such as
those depicting the social activities of cooking or having dinner, or in the sequence at nemoland, where controversial issues, such as weapons and violence are being discussed. Paradoxically enough, this ‘direct’ or ‘close’ mode also has an intensifying and dramatic effect, in the Diary most notable in the Fredens ark scenes, where the camera explores the darker corners of the Freetown along with dogs and drug addicts. in the Return this mode is applied in the intimate everyday sequences at the hairdressers or in the bath house, but also in the more confrontational passages depicting encounters with drop-outs or politicians. The most ‘direct’ sequences in the films are, however, the riot sequences, partly consisting of imported, shaky and rough amateur footage, which in the Return fills the double function of authentication and dramatisation.
The most explicit gesture, used by Martinsen, however, concerns the performance of the protagonists. The authenticating power of the films first and foremost emanates from the fact that the typical hansen fam- ily plays themselves; that they re-enact all the minor actions and social relations of the everyday. When in a rooftop shot we see the family, as they meander through the Freetown, perched on a red tractor, it is cer- tainly not an unprompted happening, but a highly stylised ‘masquer- ade of spontaneity’,22 planned and directed for dramatic and rhetori- cal purposes. This very specific kind of acting imbues the two films, af- fecting the tension in the kitchen, at the dinner table or in the plenary meeting. irrespective of how messy the social experiment, we immedi- ately spot the ordinary hansens, who through their presence provide us with a space, where the ‘recognisably ”real” interacts with the dra- matically ”irreal’’’23 The ordinary is made to perform for us, and in this specific case in an extraordinary and experimental everyday setting.
When the Diary was shot, in the mid-seventies, this accentuation of everydayness through the use of non-professionals represented an emergent mode in cinematic and televised documentary. The inspira- tion for Martinsen was most certainly the ciné-ethnographic tradition24 and perhaps more specifically Paul Watson’s BBC production The Fam
ily, broadcast in 1974, a television series following a working class family in reading on their daily ventures, thus offering to the similarly fami- ly-centred television audience an entirely new potential for access and assessment of their own ordinary lives.25 in the same vein, Martinsen’s films present a mix of objective — or looking at — and subjective — or looking through; in their acting themselves, the hansens appear as both objects and subjects, through their familiarity rendering the extraordi- nary recognisable, at the same time dramatising their own typical roles, narratives and identities.