Documentary screendance-making as a practice of kindness

Abstract

In this essay I reflect on the mobilization of feelings of kindness as activated in the making of the documentary screendance El Cuerpo Partido (The Broken Body). The film integrates the narratives of five Nicaraguan refugees with my experience as dance facilitator working with displaced communities in Costa Rica. Screendance-making emerged as a practice which offered me a methodological approach to dignify the life stories of my workshop participants. Through my writing, I address the ethical and aesthetic considerations of making El Cuerpo Partido. From the discussion, I will frame documentary screendance-making as an artistic practice motivated and led by the human need to connect with others through the affective force of kindness. Informed by my personal meditation practice of love and kindness, I will suggest re-thinking kindness not as a quality of being or as a behaviour but, as an inter-relational moving force that energizes radical societal changes. This text is presented along with the film. Together they make a whole that the reader is invited to engage in their preferred order.