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The teaching of documentary film faces particular ethical and practical challenges in intercultural environments when working with marginalized groups. The author of the paper was one of the acting teachers for an intercultural group of film students making documentaries on sex workers in rural South African communities in 2015. The paper explores the pedagogical and ethical dimension of the encounters between students and the documentary subjects. It argues for the benefits of creating shared meaning – a third culture – through the fostering of relational empathy between student film-makers and their subjects. The focus of the analysis lies in the emotional reactions of the documentary subjects, observed in community screenings in 2016. Conclusions suggest that the concept of relational empathy can help us understand and develop the teaching of documentary in novel ways. It represents a pedagogical choice that is ethical, as it allows for consent that is truly informed.

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Cinema theatres are designed to foster collective emotional responses. Ghana’s capital Accra, like many other African cities, used to be full of such spaces. Urban infrastructures no longer support cinema theatres, and subsequently, television, video and small screens, in general, have replaced the dark room. This study explores some key aspects of how film spectatorship is embedded in the historical and current geography of Accra. It traces the undoing of cinema and its spaces, as well as the possible consequences of this development. The article retells an artistic research process that took place in a video parlour in Accra. The findings of the artistic research are supported in part by theories on space and apparatus. In Accra, collective spectatorship has turned into a mostly random event. Passers-by watch short glimpses of narratives without a pre-existing understanding of, nor commitment to, the narrative. Fragmented spectatorship can ultimately lead to a loss of shared feeling – empathy – between audience members and film characters, and as a consequence, between members of broader societal and even global contexts.