A Whited Sepulchre

'A Whited Sepulchre' explores autobiographical documentary and the video diary from, drawing on the stories of two journeys: my great-grandfather's account in his diaries of his military posting to Sierra Leone, and my own ‘video diary' of a trip that I made in December/January 2004-5, seeking a different understanding of Africa and of myself as a white ‘Englishman'. Through these contrasting discourses I tried to call into question aspects of the autobiographical form (written and filmed), and, more specifically ask how the video-diary mode can deal with binaries such as the public and private and the historical and the personal. Part of the research was the attempt to discover aesthetic strategies within (and beyond) the ‘video diary' mode that will enable the piece to reveal and represent complex issues of identity formation – my own and my great-grandfather's.