Cinema In Context

William Chen, Jeremy Downing, Max Tarrant and Sarah Watt discuss the films Tickled (2016) and Catfish (2010). Both films are documentaries and deal with online manipulation. The discussion touches on a number of topics, including: how film creates a sense of place; the universal struggle of bullying; how truth is created in documentary filmmaking; creating online personas with varying levels of resources; differences in class; tension in documentary; the desire to investigate the truth when you have been “duped”; “catfish” becoming a verb; what is morally okay to reveal in documentary filmmaking; how both films capture a sense of humanity; the various uses of a camera in a coffee cup; and the ethics of recording people without their knowledge.