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Outside the System: Southern and Eastern Documentary Production explores documentary theory and practice beyond the dominant industrial and cultural frameworks that have historically shaped the field. Bringing together documentary makers, creative practitioners, and scholars from across the southern and eastern hemispheres, the collection examines how documentary production increasingly develops through alternative infrastructures, emerging technologies, community engagement, and interdisciplinary creative practices outside mainstream screen industries.
Using regional specificity as a starting point, the collection investigates the diverse documentary ecologies emerging across Australasia, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Indigenous production contexts. Across discussions of immersive media, mobile documentary, vertical filmmaking, virtual and extended reality, collaborative storytelling, social innovation, and community-engaged practice, Outside the System demonstrates how documentary continues to evolve through creative, ethical, and technological experimentation beyond traditional institutional systems.
Across discussions of documentary production and distribution, social innovation, and creative innovation, the book combines scholarly analysis with case studies, creative research reflections, and practitioner perspectives. In doing so, it foregrounds documentary not simply as a cinematic form, but as a relational, interdisciplinary, and socially embedded practice shaped by collaboration, listening, reflexivity, and new modes of participation.
At the same time, the collection challenges Western-centric assumptions that continue to shape documentary scholarship, funding structures, exhibition cultures, and screen industries. Rather than positioning southern and eastern documentary practices as marginal alternatives, the book argues that these production cultures are generating some of the field’s most innovative approaches to storytelling, ethics, creative practice, and audience engagement.
Combining documentary theory, screen production research, creative practice methodologies, and practitioner insight, Outside the System makes a major contribution to documentary studies, global media studies, screen production research, and postcolonial media scholarship. The collection will be essential reading for scholars, filmmakers, educators, students, and readers interested in documentary practice, emerging media, creative research, and global screen cultures.
Max Schleser is Associate Professor in Film and Television and Theme Leader Creative Arts in the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies (CTMT) at Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia), Adobe Creative Educator Innovator, Founder of the Mobile Innovation Network & Association (www.mina.pro) and Screening Director of the International Mobile Innovation Screening & Festival. He is an award-winning filmmaker (www.schleser.nz) with expertise in immersive media, documentary film and creative arts 4.0 with a focus on cinematic VR, interactive and algorithmic filmmaking. His research explores screen production, emerging media and smartphone filmmaking for community engagement, creative transformation and transmedia storytelling.
Foreword
Professor Annie Goldson, ONZM, FRSNZ
1 Outside the System – Southern and Eastern Documentary Production
Section 1 Documentary Systems of Production, Dissemination, and Exhibition Inside and Beyond the Screen Industry (Creative Practice Research at Universities, Independent Producers, Organizations, and Institutions in the GLAM Sector)
2 What is the Documentary System?
3 Intangible Heritage in the Long Akah Fort Immersive Documentary
4 The Strez: Form and Narrative in an Australian Outback Adventure Documentary
5 iCity Film – Chinese Documentaries by and for the iGeneration
Case Study 1 In My Blood It Runs – Collaboration and Impact
INTRO 1 SWARAM – An Experimental Documentary Journey Exploring the Characteristics and Significance of Ritualistic Soundscapes Associated with Spiritual Transformation and Trance States
Section 2 Social Innovation: The Voice of the Marginalized Communities in Documentary
6 The Documentary Film as Memory Theatre for the Internet
7 Unvaccinated: Challenging the System
8 Resisting Extractive Filmmaking: The Decolonial Practices of South African Documentary Filmmakers
9 Weaving Constellations: Indigenous Women’s Cinema in Brazil
Case Study 2: Defiant Lives: A Documentary Made Both Inside and Outside the Industrial System
Report: Unlocking Creativity in Africa: Roundtable on Mobile Filmmaking at the Mobile Studies Congress (Dr Felix Gyebi, Ghana/Australia)
Section 3 Creative Innovation: Transformation in Documentary Storytelling Through AI, Vertical Video, Micro and Mobile Cameras, Smartphone Filmmaking, and XR
10 Vertical Documentary Productions
11 Thresholds: Community-Driven Documentary and Creative Regeneration in Western Tasmania
12 Outside the Frame: Extended Reality (XR) Documentary with the Salako Community in Sarawak, Malaysia
13 Virtual Reality as a Documentary Medium: The Case of Kênh Tẻ Memory Preservation and Community Storytelling Practices
Case Study 3: TikTok Documentaries and Audience Engagement
INTRO 2 Facing the Red Earth, Back to the Sky
14 Connecting the Systems: The Work of Augustus Raymond Segar