ABSTRACT

This article considers Strong Island, the Oscar-nominated documentary by Black, trans filmmaker Yance Ford about the murder of his brother, as a case study that allows us to think through questions of Blackness, transness, and visibility within the realm of documentary. The film refuses the forensic model of the juridical documentary, which seeks to uncover hidden truths and remedy particular miscarriages of justice. Instead, through an aesthetic emphasis on flatness that denies the viewer entry into the diegetic world, it forces us to confront more directly, for longer, and through specific eyes, the network of causes and consequences of the crime that were never hidden. Analyzing Strong Island’s formal strategies, I argue that the film reshapes the conventions of documentary – interview, b-roll, archival material – into a new visual grammar that highlights the limitations of visual evidence and mitigates the risks of visibility for Black and trans subjects. Ford rejects the standards of evidence inherent to both the legal system and the documentary film, instead fabulating, reaggregating, and producing counter-forensic evidence so that landscape, family snapshot, and his own body become implicated in his brother’s murder.

摘要

本文将《壮岛》（Strong Island）作为一个案例研究，由 Black 跨性别电影制片人 Yance Ford 执导并获得奥斯卡提名的纪录片，讲述了他的兄弟被杀，让我们能够思考纪录片领域中关于黑人、跨性别和可见性的问题。这部电影拒绝司法纪录片的法医模式，该模式旨在揭露隐藏的真相并纠正特定的司法失误。相反，通过对平面的美学强调，拒绝观众进入叙事世界，它迫使我们更直接、更长时间、并通过特定的眼睛面对从未隐藏的犯罪因果网络。解析强岛的正式策略，我认为这部电影将纪录片的惯例——采访、b-roll、档案材料——重塑为一种新的视觉语法，突出了视觉证据的局限性，并减轻了黑人和跨性别主体的可见性风险。福特拒绝法律制度和纪录片固有的证据标准，而是虚构、重新汇总和制作反法医证据，以便景观、家庭快照和他自己的身体与他兄弟的谋杀案有牵连。