Desktop Documentary and Digital Autoethnography
workshop & film screening
Led by Arti Siudem & Huiqi He, co-facilitated by Sam McNeil & Clémentine Vidal.
Mon 21.04.2025 18:30-20:30pm
Atlas Cinema, SW9 7FA London
Click and hold, screen record, type, drag and drop - what does it mean to tell a story through your screen?
We invite you to a workshop and film screening focused on auto-ethnographic desktop documentary filmmaking — a form that blends personal archives, screen recordings, and internet ephemera to tell deeply resonant stories using screen as canvas, and to research and question the factuality of visual representation. We’ll look at what defines the form, how it can be used creatively, and why it's become such a compelling mode of expression today, especially for those of us who are chronically online.
WORKSHOP RECORDING:
FILM SCREENING:
The Second Person to Stand and Clap
by Huiqi He
2023
A ghostly immigrant narrative unfolds in this experimental autoethnographic desktop documentary film, which starts with an online funeral to then focus on discussing the Chinese diaspora’s bodily experiences in digital time.
The Status of Eastness
by Arti Siudem
2024-ongoing
Experimental collaborative video essay exploring the perceptions of Eastern Europe by Westerners and by Polish people. The clip is a part of an ongoing film-research project exploring the Polish identity in the “modernising” world.
RESOURCES:
DESKTOP FILMS FEATURED IN THE WORKSHOP:
Grosse fatigue (2013) by Camille Henrot
How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) by Hito Steyerl
Watching The Pain of Others (2018) by Chloé Galibert-Laîné
TRANSFORMERS: THE PREMAKE (a desktop documentary) (2014) by Kevin B. Lee
tip: if films on vimeo don’t play, try reopening the page in the incognito browser.
INDEPENDENT DESKTOP DOCS TO CHECK OUT:
Reading // Binging // Benning by Kevin B. Lee & Chloé Galibert-Laîné
Like, Comment, Subscribe Chinese Virus by Candice Jiang
No, in My Room | A desktop documentary on the making of a video essay by Beyond the Frame
Nnama on Nnama by David Ojiako Williams - mixes his own ethnographic recordings with desktop fragments
Lots of desktop films on Alsolikelife
PRODUCTION DESKTOP FILMS WE MENTIONED:
Unfriended (2014) - horror/mystery
Missing (2023) - thriller/mystery
Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer - documentary/mystery
RECOMMENDED TUTORIALS AND PRESENTATIONS:
260. Desktop Cinema Presentation by Kevin B. Lee
Best practices in desktop documentary on film scalpel
READINGS ON DESKTOP FILMMAKING AND VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY RELATED TOPICS:
Film Essayist Chloé Galibert-Laîné on the Careful Choreography of Desktop Cinema (2020) by Dan Schindel for Hyperallergic;
Documenting the Internet. Essays on the Re-use of Online Media in Contemporary Non-fiction Cinema by Lého Galibert-Laîné;
Videographic Criticism as a Digital Humanities Method (2019) by Jason Mittell;
The Sharpening of Knives: Video Essays and Reflecting on Argumentation by Christine Evans;
From ‘video essay’ to ‘video monograph’?: Indy Vinyl as academic book (2020) by Ian Garwood;
WHAT SCHOLARLY VIDEO ESSAYS FEEL LIKE by Chloé Galibert-Laîné on The Cine Files;
Notes Towards an Anthropology of the Internet (2004) by Keith Hart;
In Defense of the Poor Image (2009) by Hito Steyerl;