I Am 11 Documentary Analysis

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Documentaries are often thought of as purely factual accounts of unbiased real-life events. However, according to John Grierson who coined the term ‘documentary’, documentaries are actually a ‘creative treatment of reality’.

Similarly, Sheila Curran Bernard writes in her text Documentary Story Telling (2010) -

“Documentary filmmakers, strive to tell strong, often character-driven stories that have a beginning, middle and end, with something at stake, rising tension, and a narrative arc that keeps viewers actively engaged.”

A perfect example is the award-winning documentary by Australian Genevieve Bailey, ‘I Am Eleven’ (2011). The documentary uses a combination of music, camera angles, editing and character construction to invoke emotion.
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In the background, Bailey’s voice says -

“ When I was 23 I started working for a major newspaper in Melbourne, and on the first day was confronted by images of devastation and loss. A year later, I took time off work to go overseas for very first time. I wanted to shoot a film in every country that I went to. Recently I had been in a serious car accident, my dad had passed away and I was depressed. I wanted to make something energetic,optimistic, universal and real.”

‘I Am Eleven’ was the result of Bailey’s personal struggle. Genevieve Bailey has constructed the characters in ‘I Am Eleven’ to challenge our perception on what children are capable of thinking and feeling, drawing in a larger and more inquisitive
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She lives in respectable conditions with her loving Jewish family out in New Jersey, where she is filmed laughing and playing in the snow and dancing around her comfortable pink bedroom. It is made clear from the very beginning that Kim’s lifestyle differs greatly from a majority of the children filmed in ‘I Am Eleven’. Her room and house contain many material objects such as furniture, toys and clothing which viewers undoubtedly take for granted after watching children like Siham Athem fight poverty in a suffering village in Morocco. Kim has been constructed as enthusiastic and naive, one of the first things we hear from her being that she likes macaroni and cheese. A lot. She is ambitious and incredibly driven, describing her future family in a specific