Through the years of my practice as a filmmaker, researcher, and teacher, I developed a scheme to develop and conceptualise audiovisual projects, which I call the Intention Scheme. Even if it looks more like a mathematical formula than a social science or audiovisual methodological tool, it is surely the latter since it is more a method, a grid to help analyse and create:

At first, maybe I should explain Why I created such a scheme. On the one hand, since I was trying to find a way to go beyond the obligation imposed by film commissions and often also film schools to write a script before even the filming of an audiovisual project has started. An van. Dienderen (2008) proofed how this kind of pre-writing, before the fieldwork, engenders mainly presuppositions and projections, rather than to work on ethnographic found material through fieldwork. On the other hand, I wanted to develop a scheme that would emphasis the importance and foregoing of intention in research and audiovisual conceptualisation. And also, how the prominence of the form-content relationship in audiovisual and research practices goes beyond the classical anthropological idea that access to a subject or content is an initial and substantial feature of research and, conversely, audiovisual anthropology.

Before explaining the different steps of the scheme, I start with an anecdote that exemplifies the importance of intention before access, content, or form. One day, a student came to me and said he had found a fantastic ‘subject’ for his master film project, namely the ‘Iranian gay community living in Istanbul’. He added that he had direct access to them and had already met people in the community who agreed to be filmed. Most anthropology or film studies supervisors, or even maybe a film producer, would have said, ‘Great, it seems like you have access to a rare ethnographic fieldwork or subject to be filmed’, but I just asked him ‘Why ?’. Why did he want to make this film, why did he want to spend six months or more of his life studying or filming this community, and why should he and not someone else make the film? He did not anticipate these ‘Why’ questions and could not answer them directly. What I asked was what lies (to him) beyond this incredible access and content. What is the real incentive–the intention beyond making this film? Understanding why and why me seems a basic, natural question to ask oneself before embarking on a film or a research project, but it is often overshadowed by questions of what, where, how, whom, and how many; in my view, subsidiary questions or topics that derive from knowing one’s intentions – why do we want to do this project?

Some weeks later, the student returned to me and said that he had struggled with the Why question, but he had found some answers. The fact that he was himself gay was a key aspect. However, he was from New York, where he could live his sexuality in a much freer way than Iranians, who had to flee from an oppressive (Islamic) regime to become (more) free in their sexuality (although Turkey is surely not an LGBTQ haven). So, it slowly became obvious that the theme of ‘having to go on exile to live one’s sexuality’ is the main intention of his film, and not just access to the Iranian gay community. Everyone could have access to this subject, but no one would make a film with this intention and this motivation except him since his subjectivity, historicity, and experience can be embedded and played out in this intention, this ‘why’ he (and not someone else) makes ‘this’ (and not another) film or research.

Let us now first clinically dissect all the terms of this scheme before we give it more flesh and blood through some examples of its usage:

stand for intention (s): Not really the message but closer to the motivation(s) or desire of the filmmaker. By this, I mean what the filmmaker intends to achieve and why they want to make this particular film. This intention is more significant than the content (and message) and normally has philosophical and artistic roots. In most cases, the intention is not uttered or stated directly in a film but is implied in its excess, imagination, and residue, which may or may not come across to the spectator. It precedes the filming period and is part of the initial stage of reflection.

stands for form: not really the style but the different cinematic (or philosophical) forms and methodologies applied to the film. For me, style refers exclusively to cinematic features (framing, light, colours, editing, etc.). However, form in non-fiction films also implies a mode of representation, the form of knowledge, or narrative form. In brief, the modes of representation are those affirmed by Nichols (2001) (expository, observational, interactive, reflexive, and performative); forms of knowledge are multiple and culturally situated; we discuss only those described by Amorim (2007), following the Greek philosophical tradition (logos, mythos, metis); narrative forms can also be culturally idiosyncratic: the important ones are linear, cyclical, and circular.

means a direct relationship, interaction, or articulation between the two. In this case, it is important to consider the Form-Content relation (not the hierarchy or precedence of one over the other, but rather resonance, connection, and dialectics). In my films, I always try to find a new and adequate form–content relationship and thus do not always repeat the same form, even when working on similar content.

represents content: not the same as the subject. The term ‘subject’ can be confusing in non-fiction films. When someone asks a filmmaker, ‘What is the subject of your film? This can mean what your content is, your intention, or who your characters are. The term ‘object’ can confuse. Many students in documentary or visual anthropology think that it is enough to have a ‘subject’ or an ‘object’ of study to make a film, meaning ‘my mother’, ‘this remote culture’, or ‘this special man’, without thinking any further about what they really want to say, as implied in the notion of ‘intention’. Therefore, I prefer the term ‘content’, which is limited and down to earth.

stand for images in their simple and most idiosyncratic sense: a shot, a frame, a certain light, an angle, and a sequence of images ... also a kind of image: haptic, abstract, symbolic, situational, steady, hand-held ... or size of the image: macro, wide, large…

stands for sounds, which, like images, should be interpreted in their simple and idiosyncratic sense. Sounds and images stand at the end of the formula because a filmmaker should first know his intention(s) and his desired form-content relation before starting to make images and sounds . Having said this, one regularly witnesses filmmakers filming without intent, without clear direction, and who think (or hope) that they can find their intention once they come to the editing table.

means an interplay, interrelation or fluidity between the different aspects of the scheme. As I have stated, it is difficult to determine an intention after filming. However, this is not the same, implying that it is not possible, and sometimes even necessary, to rethink (and sometimes redefine) your intention(s) once sitting at the editing table. This is not the case because the images and sounds that were recorded do not correspond to the intended effect or meaning, or the form-content relationship has not worked out as planned.

This scheme should not be considered a rule or a fixed formula but a method, a tool for analysis and research. We can replace the I of intention with the R of the research. Like intention, research also requires a form-content relationship and data (images-sounds) for study. Therefore, by equating intention with research, we also establish the possibility that (non-fiction) filmmaking can be an experiment, a process of research that, like other scientific explorations (using schemes or not), can produce or at least induce knowledge.

Most importantly, using this scheme should not impinge on the performative character of filmmaking. The scheme is a method to get things started and one which can be modified and rearticulated along the way. Therefore, the intention scheme is a methodological tool for preparing and retrieving filmic performances, but not the filmic performance itself. Intention entails a subjective dimension, but it is also performative, enacted. It can transform and be transformed by the relational, performative dimensions involved in research. And thus, an Intention can change, along with meeting others’ intentions (from collaborators or participants).

The starting I is not always or necessary the final I, but it is nevertheless beneficial to have an initial and clear Intention. Knowing and using your ‘intention’ is beneficial from the start until the end of an audiovisual project. I often recommend that students find and use one phrase that express their intentions – for instance, the example from above: ‘having to go on exile to live one’s sexuality’, above their editing table to help them make choices.

In this text, I exemplify the uses and limitations of the intention scheme through the analysis of one of my films, Surya (2006) and films by Naomi Kawase (Tarachime) and Mona Hatoum (Measures of Distance), and a previous article/creation in Trajectoria, namely Story of Mirrors by José Sherwood González.

To exemplify the scheme more concretely, let me use one of my films, the long-featured documentary Surya (2006).

My intentions were twofold. They were the first lines written in my production file and served to make choices throughout the process and post-production.

First, I wanted to make a film that was not about storytelling but storytelling, where the spectator could let his imagination wander and make an inner journey, as happens when you listen to a storyteller. I did not want to explain different genres of storytelling but to allow people to feel the power of storytelling.

Second, through experiments and research, I wanted to examine how storytellers from different cultures could enter into dialogues and create a common story. This would only be possible if imagination (mythos, not logos) could travel across borders to unite people (including myself and the audience). Thus, I intended to evoke an intercultural dialogue through mythos and imagination.

The mode of representation I used was performative; it entailed (according to Nichols’s (2001) formulation) the emotional and subjective aspects of the documentary. It also fits the performative mode of Nichols by virtue of having ‘the act of filmmaking as constitutive’ of the overall project and final film. More specifically, it used many features of sensory cinema (arguably a sub-genre of the performative mode), such as asynchronicity, decontextualisation, and cinematic imagination (Van Lancker 2025).

The narrative form was twofold: first, I used the ‘cadavre exquis’ (exquisite corpse) narrative technique invented by the French Surrealists to activate the imagination and create a series of bewildering words, images and texts. In this case, I asked ten storytellers of different cultures to continue the narration (in their style and language) of an imaginary story, which was created step-by-step.
An exquisite corpse narrative does not follow a classical linear form. However, it ensures a progressive storyline, but a progression that is very idiosyncratic and can be changed or re-sculpted by each successive storyteller.

The second narrative form was an epic. Traditional epics comprise moments of adventure interspersed with travel moments. Accordingly, the film Surya was structured through an oscillation between moments of ‘adventure’ (the storytellers narrating the quest of the imaginary hero) and moments of our journey to make the film.

The Mythos form of knowledge dominated the film. This is obvious considering that one of the main intentions was to evoke mythos and orality as knowledge production devices rather than logos and textuality.

The direct relationship between form and content was the epic story since the imaginary story told in the film, and therefore making up most of its content, is a quest, an epic story. Moreover, most storytellers come from a tradition of describing such epics. The remaining storytellers were chosen to provide an idiosyncratic taste to contemporary storytelling (including both modern and traditional styles). The content of the imaginary story added by each performer consisted of a macro-story (the quest of the imaginary hero) and a micro-story (a specific adventure) that tasted of the particular culture and was either improvised, shaped, or adapted out of local cultural aspects and/or tales.

Also, the exquisite corpse story of the film Surya is not just an epic or a tale; it also indirectly includes a number of key existential, metaphysical, and experiential questions: Why is it essential to know about our origins to find a place in the world; what is the role of fiction in the history of our own lives that we create for ourselves; what links can imagination weave between cultures?

In addition to the epic story, the images and sounds that evoked our travel, even if not contextualised, produced a journey towards the East that could be grasped as another layer of content. There is a recurrent shadow figure, a trace to be followed.

Knowing our intentions was very helpful in making choices about the form-content relations. For instance, the editor of the film wanted to find a way to inject all the contextual and ethnographic knowledge I had acquired while conducting the research and filming for this project. He thought it would add value to know more about the storytellers’ context or specific art form in addition to their participation as performers. Although I tried some creative experiments (like a voice-over of the imaginary hero telling how the different storytellers created him), we were going against the main intention of the filming, namely, making a film and not storytelling. Every experiment led to the same conclusion: It did not work to make us go in and out of the story by providing context or information. Moreover, it ruined the form-content relations – the epic form for the subjective journey and the cadavre exquis for intercultural dialogue – we had established. Also, this went against another main intention: to highlight Mythos and not Logos (the latter surely being closer to contextualisation).

The project proposed an intercultural dialogue not based on descriptions or facts but on imagination and storytelling. Rather, to experiment and research how the imaginary worlds of different cultures could dialogue with each other and create a common, contemporary, and original (epic) story. In this sense, the film was more than just an intellectual mind game or the simple creation of a story; it was a philosophical statement that mythos forms of knowledge are still alive in storytelling worldwide and that this form can induce the production of another kind of knowledge for the audience. On the macro level, it unequivocally states that people of different cultures can communicate with each other and create common artistic works. The transcultural nature of Surya was also fundamental to its intercultural endeavour since the images, by situating themselves outside the cultures and nation-states, could create new connections based on points of recognition among otherwise separated social groups (Mac Dougall 1998: 261).

in the film consist of two alternating types of images and sounds.

The storytellers were filmed directly, which was planned according to each storyteller’s genre, ranging from performative to a more fixed type of interaction. It was important to find a way of filming (fixed, fluid, hybrid, improvised) that fit each one’s specific art of storytelling.

The images and sounds that constituted the rest of the film can best be described as evocative, textured, or haptic, filmed in Super 8 video or digital photography, and recorded with four microphones on a portable recorder. They were made with the first intention - ’a film as storytelling’ - clearly in mind, and so were as haptic, suggestive and metaphoric as possible. The images and sounds were also produced as ‘poetic evocation’ or asynchronous resonance with the themes of each episode of the story. The images and sounds convey a sensory mode, away from observation or indexical descriptive observation (Mac Dougall 2022).

The different voices composing the narration are transcultural, polysemic, and polyphonic voice-overs. Soundscapes (created from actual fieldwork sounds) enhance sensory and transcultural modes of transmission. Asynchronicity as a creative dialogue to propose a ‘third sense” and immersive sound experiences are essential approaches in this film.

Most importantly, this scheme should not overshadow the performative characteristics of filmmaking. Hence, the film Surya – which was dissected here – is clearly a performative project. Surya is a film about performances, and a performance in itself.

It is easier to apply this scheme to my film practices because, with other filmmakers, any assumptions about the actual intentions of the filmmaker must be based on intuition and interpretation. Therefore, we now analyse other films speculatively.

In Measures of Distance (1988) by Mona Hatoum, their intentions were twofold. Firstly, it is about the oppression of sexuality and normative gender roles in an Arabic country and second, about exile as a way to escape this oppression (and as a rift with cultural tradition).

In this audiovisual work, Hatoum superimposes photos with letters that her mother had sent to her (Hatoum lives in the United Kingdom, whereas her mother lives in Lebanon). Words (in Arabic) cover the image, like a veil over the face of the woman. Only slightly, it becomes apparent that the images behind the text are photographs of her mother naked. At first, we only see close-ups, bits of flesh, and images that might remind us of a body, but only through their shapes and colours. When the subject becomes clearer (about halfway through the audiovisual work), the images are larger, and the entire letter is also visible. Now, the text of the letter has less of an effect of a veil over the image but has become a grid of bars that imprison the image of the naked mother. ‘Imprisoned’ and ‘veiled’ are terms that I purposely chose since the soundtrack that accompanies these images is composed of both (non-translated or subtitled) discussions between the mother and the daughter in Arabic and the voice of Mona Hatoum, reading out in English the letters that her mother has sent her. These letters speak briefly about the moment and context in which the photographs were taken and are centred on the subject of discussions they had when they met in Lebanon, namely female sexuality, the status of women in the Arab world, and menstruation. In addition to the superimposition technique used to create an abstract and veiled image, the materiality of the letters and photographs themselves also play an important role in the haptic effect. The (extreme) close-ups that enable scans of both the text and the analogical image allow the transformation of the text into a picture (an illustration) and a photograph into a form (shapes of colours and lights).

Interestingly, Hatoum also uses superimposition, which is comparable to sound. The sound for conversations in Arabic is the same as that for voice reading letters in English. Marks (2000) considered Hatoum’s work to be a genuine example of intercultural cinema. In this film, the audiovisual work speaks about cultural boundaries and uses the elements that mark these cultural boundaries as material for the production of the film. Moreover, Measures of Distance is a film to which both Arabic and non-Arabic audiences can relate in different ways, especially if we consider Mark’s statement that haptic and sensory experiences ‘are differently available to viewers depending on their sensoria’ (Marks 2000: 23).

Thus, the clear form-content relationship evokes the main intentions. The ‘veiled’ haptic images are related to the sound content speaking of women’s oppression in an Arab context. The mix of languages used (and that part of it is untranslated and can only be understood by Arab-speaking audiences) evokes exile and transnationality. Thus, Hatoum found an audiovisual strategy to evoke a veil of silence that covers women’s issues in Arabic countries.

Tarachime (2006), by Naomi Kawase, is an autoethnographic, autobiographical, poetic documentary in which she questions birth and motherhood. The film’s intentions are the cycles of life and the relationship between filmmaking and nurturing; or, correlatedly, is it possible to stay a filmmaker when one becomes a mother? Birth and motherhood are examined from several different perspectives: giving birth, becoming a parent, adopting a child, the difficulty of education, the relationship between life and death, and so on. This film is about the cycles of life and uses several cyclical narrative forms.

This film is quasi-circular because it starts and ends with the same close-up image of a bloody placenta (symbolising both childbirth and motherhood). It also starts and ends with the same words: “Grandma, did I suck your breast?”. Meanwhile, a whole filmic and poetic evocation is developed around nature and nurture and the progression from childhood to parenthood. The circle metaphorically represents Kawase becoming a mother exactly when her (adoptive) mother dies.

In Tarachime, the form and content relations also directly resonate with the main intention. They are both cyclical, referring to the cycle of life and as a way of creating a nonlinear, cinematographic narrative form. The film does not follow the chronology of events. The first time we see Kawase’s child (Mitsuki), he is more than one year old, yet the film ends with her giving birth to her son. The death of Kawase’s grandmother (the adoptive mother) is evoked in the middle of the film, yet she continues to appear in the image and sounds until the last frame (she is present during the final birth scene). Consequently, the film does not progress through an evolutionist scheme of life but through life (and film structure) composed of a succession of different cycles of life, both thematically and in form (sometimes in juxtaposition, sometimes in combination). Moreover, no explanatory device (voice-over, title, or comment) was used to guide the spectator, making the film appear universal. This intention is reinforced by Kawase’s decision not to use chronology since the film might have appeared as a diary, a simple chronicle of a family, or a filmmaker. Now, it is clearly about cycles of life, being a mother, and filmmaking as a continuous, everyday act of life.

Although this autoethnographic film refers to the cycle of life, it originates from a specific time reference and filmic desire related to life, namely, the fact that Kawase herself was about to become a mother. Kawase is known for being an addictive filmmaker who films almost daily. However, she uses this accumulated personal archive not to reconstruct a chronology but to develop a thematic film based on a time-related event in her life. This sense of performativity, which sparks off the film, is neither explained nor named in the film and, therefore, does not constitute a classical opening sequence. However, the birth scene, which is implied in the title and the motivation of the film, comes at the very end. The second intention of the film, the complicated relationship between being a filmmaker and a mother, is also evoked in this birth scene. Kawase is obliged to choose between being a mother and cutting the umbilical cord or being a filmmaker and filming this scene. The schizophrenia of documentary filmmaking in choosing between these roles is obvious. She eventually decides to film the scene, but as if she wants to ‘correct’ this gesture, the next image is her caressing the photo taken of her as a mother filming this moment. This includes affective, haptic, and emotional shots and countershots.

Image-making is connected to nurturing, articulating another strong relationship between form and content. In a scene (in the middle of the film), we hear Kawase singing and playing childishly with her sons. We understand that the 16 mm images portray a graveyard. Her baby son, Mitsuki, appears in the picture and plays around the grave. The asynchronous voice we hear is that of Kawase asking her son whilst playing: “Where is Grandma? Is Grandma gone?” The voice then continues to ask: “What is this flower?” and then answers: “Freesia”. Then: “What is this? Delicious?” and also answers: “Salmon, salmon skin”. The images we see throughout this sequence convey the same haptic aesthetic: they are close-up, advancing the materiality of the filmed objects (grave, flower, and salmon) and playing on the materiality of the altered colours and light that 16 mm can convey. Interestingly, the scene fluid, without apparent interruption of the filmic style and discourse, shifts from the theme of the grandmother’s death to that of Kawase, now left alone to educate her child. Without naming or describing these themes, the sequence evokes them audiovisually. Through asynchronous practice and associative editing, Kawase transmits these ideas, playing on our memory, our memories of senses, and embodied knowledge.

Cycles and nonlinearity are implied in Kawase’s images (her son plays with film rolls, which have a circular shape; her focus is on blossoming or dying natural elements) and in the sound (through repetition and asynchronicity). All sounds, including poems and humming, were haptically created. Most images were poetic, haptic, and sensory evocations (in both video and film) of the family’s daily life (grandmother, filmmaker, and son). The spoken words and images evoke ideas of nurturing and transmission. Life as a learning process embedded in cycles is here related to cinema as a process based on cycles. However, spectators are never disturbed or disoriented by the non-application of a progressive classical mode. Instead, the audience is taken from one theme, from one cyclical form to another, and has a clear sense of the thematic subject and intention of the film.

Finally, I will now implement the intention scheme in Story of Mirrors: Together They Cross the Border by José Sherwood González, published in Trajectoria Vol.3, 2022. According to the abstract of this multimodal anthropological project, the intention could be the difference in conceptions and perceptions of one story from different perspectives. This autoethnographic work is based on the family story of exile from Mexico to the State, as thought and told by other family members.

The form-content relationship is strongly embedded in the choice of comic or graphic novels as representing the ethnographic material. It directly addresses and questions fiction or the veracity/multiplicity of perceptions. Moreover, the graphic novel is shaped not in a classical ‘reading’ way that would invite a linear reading but allows for a rhizomatic, multidirectional reading. Its overall shape resembles something human, body-like, more than textual or book-like. The form indicates the intentions and content

Another form-content-intention relationship is the choice to use calaveras and luchadores (skulls and Mexican wrestlers) to incarnate the different perspectives and tellers of the story. This choice to move away from a more documentary or descriptive ‘talking heads’ technique also conveys the intention of the plurality of perspectives and the fictionalisation of memory. The contingency of time and fluidity of memory is further enhanced by using graphic styles from modern-day Mexico (luchadores and superheroes) and more traditional elements, such as pre-Hispanic or colonial ex-voto references.

The images have a role and function to evoke intentions. They are highly imaginary and sensory, while the sound, which is the more documentary, ethnographic part (also by their being classical interviews), is the most hidden, invisible element at first glance. The internal dialectic and tension between visible graphics and hidden speech also suggest hidden memories or the need to dig out various perspectives. Therefore, it is clear that José Sherwood González knew its intentions well before starting to create this unique and personal multimodal ethnographic piece.

To conclude this article on the intention scheme, I want to stress a point that is connected to my current research on Alternative Narrative Forms (funded by A* Midex, Aix-Marseille University), namely that this scheme surpasses (traditional, hegemonic) scriptwriting. Several film commissions ask that production dossiers of non-fiction films also entail scripts for upcoming movies. This contradicts the performative and ethnographic nature of non-fiction filmmaking. Thus, this scheme offers a (creative) way to escape the hegemony of scriptwriting rules and obligations. If we can find the intentions of form-content relations or fill in the different items of the scheme, it delivers many elements, approaches, and information that we can use to write our production dossier without having to fall into scriptwriting.