Animating with Facts: The Performative Process of Documentary Animation in the ten mark (2010)

Abstract

This article examines how animated films re-present and re-interpret real world occurrences, people and places, focusing on an area that has been overlooked to date: the process of performance and how this manifests itself in animated documentary films. Not simply a notion of ‘performance’ as we might understand it in an ‘acting’ sense (someone playing a role in a re-enactment), but that of the animator performing specific actions in order to interpret the factual material. The central questions addressed are: how does an understanding of ‘performance’ and the related term ‘performativity’ help us to frame animated/nonfictional acting? What ontological questions are raised by thinking about notions of acting in animation (and the performance instantiated in the very action of animating)? How do viewers relate to, interpret or ‘believe in’ animated films that are asserting real/factually-based stories? The article uses a recent film, the ten mark, as a case study to explore possible answers to these questions.