Roger Frampton comes alive! : finding the father, sleuthing the self through an analysis of grief, patriography and documentary film

Abstract

This doctoral study comprises a documentary film and a dissertation. The documentary film, Roger Frampton comes alive!, provides a biographical portrait of my father, the jazz musician Roger Frampton, while the dissertation explores the fields of grief, patriography (or 'writing the father'), and documentary film. These explorations are contextualised by the film, and the tensions that derived from my role as its director as well as the daughter of the biographical subject. Roger Frampton (1948-2000) played a significant role in the development of Australian jazz and improvised music. Through his playing, composing, collaborating, and long-term teaching at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, he helped nurture a generation of jazz artists, and to cultivate a style that remains today. The film illuminates his life and work through interviews with his family, contemporaries, and former students, as well as through his music and archival footage of his performances. The film also functions as a creative expression of loss. Resonating with theoretical notions of documentary film as 'domestic ethnography' and a 'cinema of mourning' (Renov 2004), it demonstrates the capacity for filmmaking to mitigate the experience of grief through the creation of a connection between the bereaved filmmaker and the deceased biographical subject. This new and ongoing bond between biographer and subject, between daughter and father, brings about an understanding of the father that allows love and forgiveness to prosper. Through the research of the filmmaker's family history that underlies the patriographical project, it also brings about a greater understanding of the self.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Hart Cohen (Supervisor), Rachel Morley (Supervisor), John Encarnacao (Supervisor) & Bruce Crossman (Supervisor)