A River as a Character (Catherine Gough-Brady, 2019)

As a filmmaker, I feel the need to develop a deep connection with my subject, but I was unsure how to do so with the Murray-Darling River. Initially, I saw the river as a system akin to what Pierre Bourdieu calls a field: as a field of forces external to me acting upon each other. I felt that to connect with it I needed to adjust my habitus (personal dispositions; way of being) to its field. This continued once I returned to Melbourne, but through the medium of the images of the river. During the edit, I shifted from seeing the river as a field of external forces to seeing it as a habitus, a way of being. This was necessary for the river to become a character, rather than just a location.

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