A Multimedia Prehistory - Text 1
The web documentary, a liminal object in the audiovisual world, appears in our view to be fertile, as the aspects discussed above attest. One of the principal communication strategies at work in these objects is that of an author who expresses the difficulty encountered, and the labour expended, in seizing hold of a topic. The complexity of the research and directing work carried out by Samuel Bollendorf and Abel Ségrétin in their Journey to the End of Coal (2008) is a good example. This webdoc, which does not sublimate into a smoothed-down form the frictions of investigation, restores the commitment the authors needed to move about in the heart of Shanxi province. The non-linear form makes it possible to gather the personal stories of miners who have been excluded from the “Chinese miracle” while at the same time being one of its pillars; to become a part of their private moments, stripped bare of everything; to invite accounts which contrast with that of the authorities; and to tie all that up with factual information about this industry. Viewers making their way through the webdoc follow the signs of this groping approach to reality. Not so much a real groping during their travels in China, which had to be prepared with a network of informants facilitating their connections, but rather the groping that the authors must have carried out when assembling what they had captured in their nets.
