ABSTRACT
Drawing on the plurality of audio-visual archive sources that portray Padstow May Day, in this chapter Monk, Tattersall, and Santi explore the relationships between filmmaker and subject in the transmission and expression of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Drawing on Mulvey’s ‘male gaze’ this chapter considers the ‘filmmakers’ gaze’ comprising the person behind the camera, the on-screen participant, and the viewer or spectator. The authors consider how the positionality of the self as insider or outsider can emerge as much from the filmmaker or subject themselves and explore a more nuanced relationship between filmmaker and subject that could potentially contribute to the resilience of ICH. Sources discussed span nearly a hundred years of audio-visual representations, from the earliest filmed recording, Summer is Y…Comen in by British Pathé, through Alan Lomax’s seminal ethnographic work Oss Oss Wee Oss!, to more recent instances including BBC news features, and contemporary documentary films, including a first-person reflection from Barbara Santi, director of King for a Day. The authors conclude by adapting Fisher, Patton and Ury’s ‘zone of negotiation’ into a ‘zone of cultural osmosis’ as a tool with which to analyse – or self-reflectively to shape – these varying positionalities.
