Scrutiny and Documentary: Hubert Sauper’s documentary film, Darwin’s Nightmare

Abstract

This article is an attempt to understand the significance of the considerable textual complexity and fraught reception history of the film Darwin’s Nightmare which was made in Mwanza, Tanzania, at the beginning of the millennium, released in 2004, screened on French television in 2006, and discussed in court in Paris in 2008 and 2009. The film is discussed as an example of recent activist documentary which seeks to make visible the impacts of modernisation and globalisation on local communities. Problems that arise out of such ventures concern evaluation of the documentary’s truth claims. The article suggests that a model of communication and cognition initially developed as Relevance Theory by Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson and developed more recently in articles on epistemic vigilance and argumentation, offers a way to maintain the truth claims made by activist documentary filmmakers, while acknowledging the creativity of both the production process and the process of interpretation.

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