My Life as a Poster

My Life as a Poster by Indian filmmaker Shashwati Talukdar is a mockumentary of a stereotypical, tragic foreign teen’s story about moving to a strange, new land. An Indian girl and her parents move to the United States after the mysterious death of her sister. The girl struggles to fit into her new school while her parents adapt to new jobs and lifestyles. The story covers all the bases of the immigrant’s heartbreaking tale: not finding acceptance, the stubborn father versus the American boyfriend, the longing for home, etc. The film is shot with footage of different streets, buildings, windows and doors. Several pictures of Indian people also are shown during the narration. At the end, it is revealed that all of these pictures come from a Bollywood movie poster, revealing that the entire story is fictional.

This film was believed to be a true story by audience members when it first premiered. When the director/writer revealed that the story was fictional and not about the filmmaker’s life, the audience was shocked^[1]. Instead of a documentary, they had just viewed a new kind of film, which can be described as a fact-fictional form. This form maintains a close relationship to both drama and documentary. It not only uses documentary codes and conventions but constructs a particular relationship with the discourse of factuality^[2]. Talukdar did indeed closely tie drama and documentary together, using the typical themes described above that, at the time, were commonly expected in the story of an immigrant^[1]. Audiences had a difficult time believing it was not Talukdar’s real story, even after the movie poster revealed that it was fictional^[1].

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Enteen, Jillana. Lecture. Northwestern University. Evanston, IL. 2008 April 1.
2. ^ Roscoe, Jane, and Craig Hight. “Introduction: Mock-documentary and the Subversion of Factuality.” Faking It: Mock-documentary and the Subversion of Factuality. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2001. 6.