About ethics of documentary video art : "Veljeni - My Brother" as a case study

Abstract

The topic of the written part of my thesis is about ethics of documentary video art. The practical – artistic - part of my thesis is also based to this study, I worked on a documentary video art piece “Veljeni” and used the knowledge I gathered for this written part. I studied the boundaries and limits in video art, ethics and law in it. The main focus is on whether documentary film can be called video art and where does the line of appropriateness go when filming someone else’s personal life.

I have mostly used information I have gathered from books and internet sources, but also from my own experiences while working on my video. I have used my own perspective and interpretation to form the conclusions. I have also analyzed my work “Veljeni” and how results of my study show in it. I concluded that documentary can be an art form and that the legislation forms the artist boundaries but the ethicality needs to be weighted on moral and ethics of the author but also subjects of the art work.