Despite their significant presence in a wide range of world cinemas, non-professional actors have received very little critical attention. Generally, they have been considered as embodied markers of realism and authenticity, and their contribution a question of being (like their characters) rather than acting. Besides there being an important lack of critical attention on the creative contribution non-professional actors make to their films, there has been no consideration given to the complex ethical challenges surrounding the casting and process of working with non-professional actors.

If non-professional actors can bring realism and authenticity because they have had similar lived experiences to those of their fictional characters, what is at stake when asking non-professional actors to work with such experiences, especially when they might be traumatic? How can such processes be carried out in an ethical, collaborative, and safeguarded way?

What will the project involve? 

The rise of digital filmmaking has led to such an extraordinary increase in the presence of non-professional actors in world cinemas that, for the first time in the history of cinema, it is not uncommon for most award-winning films at important festivals and outlets – Cannes, the Berlinale, the Oscars – to feature performances by non-professional actors. More than ever before, filmmakers are working with such performers, yet there is a lack of studies exploring these processes and a striking absence of guidelines that practitioners can use to guarantee ethical and safeguarded collaborations. This project aims to make a critical intervention in the field by both offering a multi-modal (audiovisual and written) critical exploration of creative processes of collaboration with non-professional actors, and producing guidelines that practitioners might apply in future creative practices.

This project will examine the process of collaborating with non-professional actors (first-time, untrained actors) in the creation of fictional audiovisual artworks (films, TV shows) representing forms of embodied vulnerability. Specifically, it will explore how non-professional actors and filmmakers can creatively and ethically utilise actors’ lived experience in the process of creating characters who themselves experience forms of trauma in the fiction similar to those experienced by the actors in their lives.

To examine this question, the researchers will collaborate with non-professional actors with lived experience in the process of casting, rehearsing and developing a short film building on the actors’ experience. This process will be documented through the production of an audiovisual documentary.

Besides interrogating collaborative filmmaking methods and processes, another important aim of the project is to examine audiovisual embodied representations of young people affected by intersectional forms of otherness (racism and racial discrimination, unconscious biases around gender, socioeconomic background) in the twenty-first century, and to what extent these have generated a generational trauma linked to social inequalities. In cinema, these forms of representation have historically been produced through work with non-professional actors. The visibility, inclusion and ethical collaboration at the core of this project are means to raise awareness and counteract such forms of intersectional otherness and promote social and institutional change.

Who are the team and what do they bring?

• Miguel Garcia Lopez (School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol) is a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies. His research focuses on contemporary Spanish film and screen cultures in the Hispanic world from the critical perspective of Gender Studies and Queer Theory. His current project interrogates queer audiovisual representations of youth in twenty-first century Hispanic film and screen media, focusing on intersectional and transgenerational LGBTQ+ identities, embodied queer lived experiences and the creation and transmission of queer memory.
• Miguel Gaggiotti (Film and Television, University of Bristol) is a filmmaker and lecturer. His areas of research are participatory filmmaking, visual ethnography, and screen performance. Miguel is an expert in the study of the figure of the nonprofessional actor. He is currently finishing a monograph titled Non-professional Film Performance and developing an experimental audiovisual installation exploring gendered vulnerabilities in borderlands in general and the USA-Mexico border (Juarez/El Paso) in particular.
• Owain Astles (BAFTA Connect and Crew) is a participatory documentarian and filmmaker widely experienced in working with people involved in the UK criminal justice system and communities experiencing homelessness. Owain’s work focuses on social impact, participatory filmmaking and visual activism across documentary, fiction, and experimental film.
• Simon Brownhill (School of Education, University of Bristol) is an active researcher, and has developed a strong knowledge base relating to the practice of research ethics and has built up a valued expertise in qualitative data analysis.
• Xenia Glen (Sleepwalker Studios) is a participatory documentarian and film producer with over 10 years’ experience in both scripted and documentary film. Her work explores real stories with performances by actors with lived experience of the subject of the film in which they are performing.

What is to come?

An audiovisual documentary will constitute one of the project’s main outputs. The documentary will explore the creative collaboration between filmmakers and non-professional actors with lived experience. It will focus on the casting and developing process of a fiction film, offering insight into creative collaboration at the level of pre-production, a critical phase of filmmaking rarely explored in detail. The researchers hope this documentary will offer critical insight into the creative and collaborative process, enabling the project’s researchers and participants, as well as audiences (filmmakers, researchers and (non-professional) actors), to gain a better understanding of these forms of creative collaboration, their challenges and limitations.

Alongside the documentary, the researchers will write a refereed journal article examining the ethics and politics of representing trauma with non-professional actors. This paper will feature meta-critical reflection based on participant observations carried out during the documentary’s rehearsal and development process.

A final output will consist of an advisory document comprising guidelines and best practice filmmakers and practitioners can use to ensure safe-guarded and ethical casting and planning processes when working with non-professional actors with lived experience.