Relating through the coast – Poetic documentary film and archipelagic thinking

Abstract

This article looks to the coast as a crucial site to consider environmental issues through visual media. I argue that the meeting point of water and land is an evocative site for meaning making in documentary film. By looking to modern documentaries representing the coast, I recognise the importance of style and aesthetics in communicating world views through audio-visual forms. Veering away from more traditional approaches to film analysis, I pursue place-based theory and put forward Édouard Glissant’s “archipelagic thinking” as a framework for analysis. The archipelago, a group of islands connected by the ocean, becomes a metaphor for world formation and formal analysis is approached through the lens of oceanic relation. Local depictions are favoured to provide intimate views and understandings of coastal issues. I argue that by framing the local coast, we can extend to views of translocalism. When considering overwhelming global processes related to the environment and climate crisis, translocalism aids the comprehension of complex global processes.