“I don’t think anybody can be objective or nonpartisan. My take on this is that everybody has a point of view, so what’s wrong with expressing that point of view? But it seems to me, and this is a line I remember from Marcel Ophuls, the guy who made The Sorrow and the Pity, who said, “I always have a point of view, but in my films I like to show how hard it was to come to that point of view.” In Taxi, I tried to be as muted and dispassionate as possible, but I don’t think there’s any doubt where my sympathies lie.”
-Alex Gibney, producer of documentaries including “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “No End in Sight,” and the soon to be released documentaries “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” and “Taxi to the Dark Side.”
As quoted in “Making Must-See Documentaries” in Studio Monthly.
I’m currently working on editing the Guatemala piece, and realized that the script is currently twice as long as it should be- not a fun thing to do. So last night I was working on cutting things out, and got it down a lot closer to what it should be.
Here’s the problem: In my attempts to shorten it, I realized that I was losing a lot of the voices of the people, and leaving in the well spoken workers.
This is definitely a sad reality- the higher your class, the more well spoken you are. This means that the nun will speak of lofty things, and in really clear ways, while the farmer will be more likely to mutter and stumble around.
So it’s easy to take out the more bumbling quotes. And that’s what I did. And now I’m off to put them back in, and make sure that their voices are heard, just as much as their advocates.
If this video, Waiting for the Guards, isn’t Socially Aware Media, I don’t know what is. Amnesty International is putting out several films like this to show what interrogation (torture) really is like.
Just a warning- this is an actor actually experiencing “interrogation” techniques. It’s not pretty.
Last Wednesday night, I attended a showing of Michael Moore’s “Sicko”, newly released on DVD. It was part of a nationwide showing time, including a conference call with Moore himself.
As most of the reviews have noted, “Sicko” is on a different level than Moore’s other documentaries, coming across a lot more intelligent and less divisive. Moore takes more of a back seat role in this production, and lets the subjects speak for themselves. It doesn’t come across as twisting like Fahrenheit 9/11.
While I definitely saw his case for socialized medicine (and some flaws in his argument), Moore also touched on a much bigger issue- the general apathy of the country. Moore says that in many countries, the governments are afraid of the people, whereas in the U.S., the people are afraid of the government. We can not expect to sit back and expect the government to give us what we need- we need to be willing to fight for it. And when the government makes fighting for what we want hard by undermining the democratic system, we need to be willing to speak the truth ever louder.
After a recent Fuerza showing, someone (we’ll call
them Pat) came up to tell me that they mostly enjoyed it, but one part
bothered them. It was the part where we showed the video of the mother
in Mexico to her son in Indiana.
“It went on too long,” Pat said. I explained that we cut out over half of the scene as it was. Pat
thought it was showing the emotional side too much. “Do we need to just
look at the issues, separate from emotions?” Pat asked me.
Socially Aware Media means that the whole story is told. Emotions are
an enormous part of immigration, and to separate the personal aspect
from the rest would really be detrimental to the story, to the people
involved, and to the understanding of all.
As I was leaving, Pat told me that the scene made him uncomfortable. Is
this really a bad thing? I don’t think so. I’ll be honest, I HATE being
uncomfortable (I have to leave at certain points in Zoolander and The
Office). But when used properly, it can really spur deeper thinking.
This is the scene from Fuerza that I’ve gotten the most comments on, and many
of them are about how we handled the situation. Some people have told
me that it was perfect, and others have seen it as manipulative and too
drawn out. I, however, and content with how it is, and think we handled
it respectfully and honestly.
Related links-
My Kid Could Film That
Why church is loud
I just saw Amir Bar-Lev on CNN. He was talking about “My Kid Could Paint That,” his latest documentary that is playing in select cities.
He talked about the role of a documentary maker in light of that film, where the big question was whether 4-year-old Marla actually paints the amazing abstracts that are selling for big money. By the time those allegations arose, he was already 6 months into filming and quite close to the family.
The family is not happy with the end result, which Bar-Lev let open. He said something to the effect that he couldn’t say what the family wanted him to say, only what he saw from his experience. So his experience was that he had no idea what the truth was, so that’s how he reported it.
I agree with this approach- in Socially Aware Media, you are presenting the truth as best as you can figure it out, in other people’s words. Even if that doesn’t go with what people want you to say, it is your responsibility to say it.
Last night, as part of the Community Sustainability Project Film Series, I got to see the documentary “Before the Music Dies.” It’s a star studded cast, with Dave Matthews, Les Paul, Eric Clapton, and many others.
It uses the tempting crutch of documentaries to make the process of making the documentary a significant part of the story-telling. The filmmakers traveled for a year, talking to bands and fans all over the place. Interesting, but maybe save it for the extras. It also started out with the filmmakers’ motivation: each had a musician sibling who died (and here’s a leap of logic for me) so they wanted to take a good look at the music industry.
The story telling is rather weak- although there is general layout, it jumps around, and seems to hit the climax several times throughout. Also a bug for me was rather sloppy use of images- the images often did not add to the story telling, which should be a must.
As for content, it was pretty good overall. I can’t pull one main theme from it (again pointing to the writing). My one beef was when it suddenly turned into a promo for the record label Dave Matthew’s Band is on.
I think this duo of Andrew Shapter (director) and Joel Rasmussen (editor/writer) have the potential to do some great work- they just seemed a bit green in Before the Music Dies.?
Socially Aware Media, old blog | James | 
January 13, 2008 6:35 pm | 
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