Work(ing Together) in Process

Two strangers met in a sex shop. With differing motivations, they began a multi-year film project. Work(ing Together) in Process is a romantic comedy desktop film performing an autopsy upon their tragic collaboration.

In 2020, I ordered some batteries for my new camera. I missed the delivery and was left with a note telling me to pick them up from the sex shop below the flat I had just moved into. Did I need to go in there? I wanted to make a film, but I needed those batteries…

Work(ing Together) in Process is a film project that explores my relationship to the man I met behind the counter, Marty. The work soon became a collaboration, and slowly developed into a critical reflection upon the project itself. As Marty and I proceeded it began a meta- dance around the issues of the documentarian gaze, of friendship, of not losing sight of oneself while doing something together, and the curious issue of why two men would be discussing artistic collaboration in a sex shop.

The film is an audio-visual blueprint of a long-term process in which two friends from different worlds make a film together. For Marty, this means examining his own self through images and image making, beyond the terms he ascribes himself as a disconnected ‘junkie’ living without a fixed address or connection to ‘contemporary society’ (his words) – and embarking in a therapeutic creative act. For me, it is an attempt to employ a filmmaking process that departs from traditional documentary systems to avoid the stained history of ethnographic work; to have a subject who also serves as a (co) author and to try to allow for the moment to present itself rather than premeditating its creation.

If Marty is Dionysius, Sam is Apollo. Marty insists that the continual filmmaking process serves him as a form of therapy. It serves Marty’s need. Sam accommodates Marty, in the service of his friend, but along the way, Sam realises that in fulfilling his duty to his friend Marty, he is failing his duty to the film. Sam’s true intention and need has been sacrificed. The work is a story about telling stories and dealing with the harshness that is inherent to making a film. It is about friendship, doing things together and the constant risk of losing sight of oneself amongst such dynamics.

What is gained and what is lost when a subject becomes an author, and when the collaborators have different intentions for the project? What happens when the participants have different entry and exit points in relation to such a project? Ultimately, did collaboration provide a “pseudo- solution” which allowed me to avoid the issue of representation?