Autoethnography

In this text, the author, Catherine Russell discusses various video and film artists that are associated with the genre of personal cinema. While these artists altogether do not represent the wide diversity of the form , they do represent a variety of approaches and techniques in combining self representation with cultural commentary. There are several different ways and techniques to film yourself, and your thoughts, which is what this reading is about.
Jonas Mekas focuses his independent cinema around truth and freedom in the attempt to salvage an identity. He documented his life spent in exclusion from his culture in New York City, and documented his reunion with his family in Lithuania.  His project has been called an example of secondary revision, meaning a recount or revision of an experienced dream. While this filming is very much a dairy entry of Mekas, it is not a direct or obvious. In Mekas' strive for the past he constructs a memory by separating himself: child/adult, old/new, natural/cultural, pastoral/urban, ect. from his early life to his present. He is filming himself by filming others.
George Kuchar is a more straight forward artist in the realm of personal cinema. He films himself using live narration to explain and attempt to cope with his reality. A large majority of his work involves life in a hotel/motel, following the weather. His films make you feel uncomfortable, for his actions on camera or equally disturbing and personal. He is filming himself by filming his relationship between things, such as the weather, tv, strangers, trash, himself, water faucets, ect.
Sadie Benning, who, we as a class, watched some of her work, creates personal cinema with a Fisher Price camera. Her work includes narration, but relies also on multiple short shots of various scenes and angles she created to move the story forward. These small scenes are deeply personal as well, for they are constructed out of her personal belongings. She is filming herself by filming he personal surroundings in a story line that follows her life.