Antigone in the London office: documentary film, creativity and female agency

Abstract

In this paper, the authors explore female creativity and agency through the means of documentary filmmaking. Husband and Wife is an experimental documentary concerning one woman’s journey from Poland to London, England to reclaim the body of her husband after his death. The authors/directors discuss the process of creating a space where the life of the characters and the life of the camera merge. This creative, feminist space is one of mutual influence between themselves, the protagonist and their documentary film. In their investigation of the protagonist’s journey from her Polish hometown to the city of London, they all become affected by the process of filmmaking itself and by the widow’s relentless resourcefulness in her mission to reclaim the body of her husband. To understand the widow’s tenacious approach of dealing with UK institutions, as well as her mourning, the authors refer to the feminist theories of Luce Irigaray, and Judith Butler, who offer different conceptualisations of female identity and ethical agency. Drawing upon Irigaray, and Butler’s analysis of Antigone (Sophocles, 441BC), the cinematic picture of the Polish widow’s commitment to her husband’s post-mortem civic dignity is compared to the commitment of Sophocles’ heroine, who transgressed the patriarchal order attributed only to proper, male citizens. The authors of the paper discuss the definition of otherness, as a mode of creative and ultimate resistance that both Antigone and the Polish widow embody, as women acting in the patriarchal world. In their documentary, the authors-directors articulate Polish Antigone’s act of resistance through the angle of female interiority, as defined by Lucy Bolton, which in cinema is more characteristic of male protagonists. In that way they reflect the incomprehensible agency of a woman that is gained through her gendered performance, her creativity and her everyday existence in the world of men.