Why Do We Love To Film Ourselves?

Long before phones turned every life into footage, a small line of filmmakers was already pointing the camera at themselves — not to perform, but to work out what a life was. This week, producer Elliot Bloom sits down with co-host Kiriko Mechanicus to talk about her new short documentary How To Catch A Butterfly — a first-person essay film that traces how ethnic fetishisation has shaped her relationships and sexual experiences as a Dutch-Japanese woman. The film had its world premiere at SXSW Documentary Short Competition 2026 and won the EMEL Short Film Grand Prize at Indie Lisboa.

Together they ask why we keep personal archives at all and what those archives teach us back, especially now, living through the most self-documented stretch of human history — through three landmarks of autobiographical documentary: Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (2003), Bing Liu’s Minding The Gap (2018), and Tom Fassaert’s A Family Affair (2015).

Plus: a hot take from one of our listeners on Michael , Antoine Fuqua’s long-delayed Michael Jackson biopic, now in cinemas.

Related episodes: Documentary Ethics with Miriam Guttmann · 2000 Metres To Andriivka And Why We Need Documentary Films.