Abstract:
This research paper is a study of the documentary film titled My Mother’s Village in which
Aaron Burton attempts to portray individuals from several communities in Sri Lanka. The
film is linked to the work of Burton’s mother Sharon Bell who was an anthropologist and
released a documentary titled The Sri Lankan Series in 1980, which was filmed by his father
Geoff Burton who was a cinematographer.
This research analyses the documentary as a life narrative through assessing the portrayal of
Sri Lankans while engaging with the position of Aaron Burton in compiling the film. Therefore
the study grapples with the notion of inheritance as Burton argues, “we’re both looking
at what you inherit. My work is about the next generation – so I look at what I inherit from
my mother and father and what the people in the film inherit from their parents”. While
the study challenges traditional auto/biographical practices related to singular and stable
subjects and subject positions, the boundaries between biography and autobiography and
notions of autobiographical truth, it also delves into aspects related to women’s life writing,
caste discrimination and the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
The study draws from feminist auto/ biographical and postcolonial theories, critical theories
on life narratives and politics of storytelling in order to assess areas related to intergenerational
continuity and construction of memory as aspects of a journey of inheritance portrayed
in the selected documentary. While this documentary has been screened in several
spaces including the International Centre for Ethnic Studies and the Colombo Art Biennale,
limited research has been conducted on its role and function as a life narrative. Therefore
this study finds increasing significance in addressing the dearth in literature on Sri Lankan
life narratives in general and more specifically on Aaron Burton’s documentary film My
Mother’s Village.
