Animation Documentary
The term ‘animated documentary’ may seem like a contradiction. While documentary films endeavour to depict ‘real life’ and ‘the truth’, animation is associated with humour, exaggerations, and visual fantasy. But despite their apparent differences, animation and documentaries have often appeared side by side and even together throughout film history. Any piece of moving imagery that is stating the facts and when done through the medium of animation is called an Animation Documentary. According to Honest Roes’ ‘Taxonomy for documentation’， animation documentary is also an integral part of documentary and it is a rich way of expression.
My Troubled Mind
Today I am going to talk about an animated documentary series “My troubled mind”.
My troubled mind is a series of powerful animated short film documentaries exploring through personal testimony, the experiences of teenagers dealing with mental health issues including eating disorders, anxiety, addiction, and depression. By bringing together knowledge on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent.
Honess Roe describes “My troubled Mind” as a non-conventional form of animation documentary. According to him it is a non-fictional documentary, and it highlights the mental health topics that are still not openly accepted in our society, without breaching anyone’s identity.
I consider that this film can be classed as a documentary. The animation in this film enhances our knowledge of an aspect of the world and to the extent that the separation of the animation from the documentary is either impossible, or would render the inherent meaning of the film indecipherable. (Honess Roe, 2013: 10)
Reference list
Honess Roe, A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.