Class, gender and cultural work in British documentary film production: Experiences, subjectivities and policy discourses

This thesis explores class, gender and cultural work in British documentary film production. It investigates documentary filmmaking as creative labour by using interview, ethnographic observation, and discourse analysis. The methods allow analysing experiences of class and gender and modes of articulating them. Thus, the thesis means to contribute to the collection and analysis of data about cultural labour. Much academic work on cultural industries has considered increasing social inequality. However, sociological studies of cultural production have little attended to documentary films. My research findings indicate that socially marginalised workers are more likely than their privileged peers to encounter obstacles when working in documentary filmmaking. My interviews reveal that filmmakers in marginalised positions are likely to be aware of structural inequalities, whereas privileged filmmakers are likely to reproduce discourses of meritocracy and postfeminism. A central aim of the thesis is to identify within independent film enterprises the workings of class and gender. The thesis argues that entrepreneurial work practices sustain, rather than depart from, discriminatory working conditions. The thesis considers also how to address social inequalities within filmmaking work by exploring cultural policy discourses that operate within the British film industry. The thesis takes a ‘bottom-up’ approach to cultural policymaking in the hope that it might encourage more socially-disadvantaged workers into film production.