First person singular, first person plural: among us, to others, about us, about them.

When a documentary essay has a voiceover for which the film maker or writer is responsible, there are issues apart from its veracity which a viewer can be called upon to take into account. There is the question of the common knowledge or beliefs assumed between speaker and audience, the question of the kind of act the utterance is and therefore how to respond to it, the question of the kind of sympathy that can be expected of the viewer in relation to the assumptions of the voiceover. Whether the filmmaker/writer speaks to the members of the national, cultural, linguistic or intellectual community from which he speaks or whether he speaks to those outside it or attempts to do both, whether the assertions of an essayist may be intended, for example, not as sociological conjecture – though they may stimulate sociological conjecture – but as aphoristic or poetic, which cultural tradition he can engage with and which he can be accepted in, these questions, often crucial to a documentary artist, are questions about common knowledge, force of utterance, and the kind of solidarity sought by the filmmaker/writer. These questions arise even when a documentary essay has no authorial voiceover, because they are raised by the assumptions that link shot-sequence to shot-sequence. In my film, Black Nazarene (about popular religion and morality in a Philippine town), I sometimes speak as an ‘I’, and sometimes as a shifting ‘We” in social criticism that is aphoristic and ironic. As the common ground shifts, the irony shifts. I discuss how the issues mentioned come into play. I argue that they underlie positions such as artistic nationalism or transculturalism in art.

Robert Nery is a filmmaker. He has also written film criticism. His 90-minute video essay Black Nazarene (2003), which he wrote, shot and edited, centers on the Holy Week crucifixions in a town north of Manila, and was shown in Artspace, Sydney in 2003. He co-wrote I, Eugenia, directed by Gabrielle Finnane. He is a member of The Boondocks, and is at work on its first project, I, On A Tropical Night – on Ferdinand Marcos and life during the Cold War – to be installed in Casula Powerhouse in 2008. He has a forthcoming video essay, The Hero Takes A Walk, shot during a recent Asialink residency in Manila. He is currently enrolled in the Doctorate in Creative Arts program at the University Of Technology, Sydney.