Interdiskurzivita v autobiograficky zaměřených dokumentárních filmech

The present study addresses the mixing of different genres, discourses and author identities in two autobiographically oriented documentaries. Based on the theory of communicative genres, the genres of (social) documentary, video diary and home movie are characterized. Then the relations between the elements of social documentary and video diary in the films Český žurnál: Exekuce (Czech Journal: Don’t Take My Life) and Epidemie svobody (Epidemic of Freedom) are analyzed. On the level of the internal structure of both films, two different thematically defined discourses are identified, realized through verbal and visual semiotic modes: autobiographical and social discourse. The analysis reveals that in Exekuce, social discourse prevails and elements of both discourses are mostly juxtaposed (discontinuous mixing), while in Epidemie svobody, characterized by the predominance of the autobiographical component, the two discourses are more interconnected (continuous mixing). Elements of social discourse can mostly be attributed to the genre of social documentary in both films, while the autobiographical discourse does not fully correspond to the genre of the video diary: these records of the authors’ lives have a hybrid character, thus representing a kind of “documentary diary”.