Documentary in Wales

Documentary in Wales has emerged only recently, with a new Welsh-language broadcaster launching in 1982. It has been modulated by the enriching, but sometimes uneasy, relationship between both national languages (Cymraeg and English). This book explores the unique Welsh context and its effect on the development of documentary.

Documentary, in a small, bilingual nation such as Wales, experiences many of the same challenges that it faces across the world. As the costs of professional documentary production lessen, and the potentialities of internet distribution loosen the grip of its traditional tele-cinematic gatekeepers, documentary production communities face both the potential of new distribution avenues and severe professional precarity.

In Wales, the dynamics of this transformation unfolds according to a specific historical, political and cultural situation. With funding, regulatory frameworks, audience taste, viewing figures, and contractual territories all mostly emanating or controlled from across the border in England, at times it is difficult to identify texts that can and can't be claimed as «Welsh». But then again, contingency and struggle have always been fundamental aspects of Welsh cultural identity.

What emerges is not so much the documentary culture of a small nation, but a documentary culture that is still struggling to come to terms with itself, giving Welsh documentary a character defined by a specific set of features: the political and cultural interplay of two languages, a continuation of older British public service broadcasting traditions, the acceptance of the marginal, the close interconnectedness of key players and the often paralysing effect of underfunding.

Auteur

Dafydd Sills-Jones is Associate Professor at Te Kura Whakapaho, Te Wananga Aronui o Tamaki Makau Rau (School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology). Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones is Director of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies and Professor of Linguistic Diversity and Creative Industries at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Contenu
CONTENTS: Dafydd Sills-Jones/Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones: Documentary in Wales: Cultures and Practices Dafydd Sills-Jones: Anorac : Locating «Feature Doc» in the Documentary Ecology of CymruWales Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones: Representing Sociolinguistic Reality in a Minoritized Language: S4C, Documentary and «Translanguaging» John Geraint: Making History: The Story of Wales Representing the Nation Geraint Ellis: Arts for All?: S4C, Arts Documentaries and the Notion of Quality Iwan England: Embracing Complexity: Aberfan: The Fight for Justice Colin Thomas: Rethinking Documentary: Wales and the British Documentary Tradition Nia Dryhurst: Creative Documentary?: Csikszentmihalyi's Systems Model and Documentary Production in Wales Greg Bevan: Activism and Online Documentary: The Life and Death of Sianel62 Helen Davies/Merris Griffiths: Capturing Youth Voices: Participatory «Social Network Documentary» Production and Political Engagement in a Small Nation Anne Marie Carty: Authorship, Representation and Ethics: Collaborative Filmmaking with Rural Communities in Wales Joanna Wright: Interactive, Immersive and Digital Documentary Practice in Wales: A Work in Progress.