Each month, we show you a short film that’s moved us beyond the day – meaningful stories that inspire us to pause, think and feel. 

Drawing on Autism is an investigation into the ethics of representation in documentary filmmaking. Director and animator Alex Widdowson explores what it means to tell another person’s story through film, particularly animation – and the ethics of representing a group you don’t belong to.

“As a non-autistic filmmaker representing an autistic participant, I needed to be mindful of the well-rehearsed and problematic tropes about autism,” says Alex. “These tropes seem to say more about the desires and needs of neurotypical audiences than they do about their autistic subjects.”

Alex dives into the ethics of representation, including the power dynamics at play in documentary filmmaking, and the necessary process of collaboration. “Animation presents a distinct set of ethical dilemmas. Without the mechanical indifference of a camera, the act of observation is substituted for expressive or symbolic representation. A mode of representation where the artist is responsible for how the documentary participant looks, where they appear, and what they do,” Alex continues.

“Through collaborative feedback I attempt to share these responsibilities with my participant, while making use of positional and textual reflexivity to equip my audiences with the information they need to scrutinise my documentary interventions.”