Amy

Question 1

Types of documentary on Amy

Answer 1

📂 Documentary Types
• Expository: Voiceover narration is used (e.g. interviews) but never shown on-screen — Kapadia lets Amy’s story unfold through others’ voices.
• Observational: Intimate, fly-on-the-wall footage of Amy at home or in studios (archival).
• Reflexive: Challenges the media’s gaze and how audiences constructed her image.
• Poetic: Non-linear, impressionistic editing that foregrounds emotion over chronology.

Question 2

Use of archival footage and evidentiary editing

Answer 2

🗂️ Use of Archival Footage
• Kapadia’s signature style: No talking heads — instead, audio interviews overlay found footage.
• Home videos, phone recordings, concert footage, paparazzi clips — all construct Amy’s narrative visually.
• Feels raw, immediate, and deeply personal — as if Amy is narrating her own life.
• Key moment: early footage of a young Amy singing shows talent before media distortion began.

⸻

✂️ Evidentiary Editing
• Used to build an argument: Amy was failed by the media, her management, and the public.
• The editing juxtaposes media praise with later cruelty — showing how public adoration became toxic.
• Contrasts early joyous moments with later distress — e.g., showing her dad encouraging touring when she clearly needed help.
• No explicit commentary — the cutting creates meaning.

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

🌍 Context
• Reflects on:
• Tabloid culture and voyeurism.
• Gendered media narratives – women’s mental health mocked or ignored.
• Celebrity and exploitation in the 2000s (link to Britney Spears, etc.).
• Kapadia gives voice to Amy’s silence, reclaiming her humanity posthumously.

Question 4

Kim longinotto’s “Sisters In Law”

Answer 4

🔁 Comparative Notes

🎥 Sisters in Law (Longinotto & Ayisi)
• Observational mode dominant – filmmakers are invisible.
• No voiceover or music — reality is shown as it unfolds.
• Focuses on social justice and women’s rights in Cameroon.
• Editing is less emotive, more restrained — allows audience to draw conclusions.
• Use of courtroom footage as a form of testimony → connects to Amy’s evidentiary narrative, but in a legal, not emotional sense.
• Less stylised than Amy, but still deeply empathetic.

✅ Link: Both films focus on female voices being heard after being ignored — one through law, the other through documentary.

Question 5

Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”

Answer 5

🎥 Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)
• Expository and reflexive: Moore is both narrator and provocateur.
• Heavy use of archival footage and editing as persuasion – similar to Kapadia but far more direct and polemical.
• Contrived juxtapositions and ironic music (e.g., Bush clips) → manipulative tone.
• Unlike Amy, Moore features himself — undermining objectivity for impact.

✅ Link: Both use evidentiary editing and archival footage to construct a critical argument (Kapadia subtly, Moore overtly).

Question 6

Exam structure

Answer 6

✏️ Exam Tip:
• Structure comparison around mode, editing, and authorship.
• Amy = subtle, emotional impact via footage and editing.
• Sisters in Law = quiet power, reality over aesthetics.
• Fahrenheit 9/11 = satirical, political persuasion through performance and montage.