I watched a couple of movies recently for Experimental Approaches to Non-Fiction Media.
The first was The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris. This is a really interesting film about the investigation into the murder of a police officer in Texas, and the eventual conviction of a man who it is strongly suggested was innocent. The film works by means of re-enactments, but what we see relates to what witnesses are saying and are often contradictory, so there is certainly a refusal to use video to show “what really happened” That said, Morris definitely has a point of view and he is not shy of bringing that across – it is clear that he does not believe the man convicted of the crime was the one who committed it.
The second was a weird, weird movie Close Up by Abbas Kiarastomi. Ed had said in class how much it affected him although he found it quite boring to watch, so after I watched it I was waiting for this revelation. It didn’t come though until after we discussed the movie in class yesterday. It’s a story about a man who poses as a famous film director and tricks a family into believing he is going to make a movie about them. In the end a movie (this movie) is made about the family, that starts the family, the famous director, and the impostor. It also includes real footage from the trial of the impostor. It’s so meta and layered that you really have to see it to get it. It’s pretty wonderful. I interpreted totally differently to everyone else in class – they seemed to see the end as happy and the redemption of the impostor. I saw it as hollow redemption based on abject performance of contrition and thought the making of the film in the end only heightened the sense that those with access to the media have the power. It was very interesting to hear what other people took from it.
I also read some articles Sarah assigned from a great book called New Challenges for Documentary
The first was “The Image Mirrored: Reflexivity and the Documentary Film”, which is a short piece by Jay Ruby where he argues that a documentary filmmaker has a responsbility to be reflexive, i.e. remind the viewer of the contructed nature of the flim. His argument is persuasive. Rather than buy into the bogus idea of journalistic objectivity, it is far more truthful to reveal your bias. In documentary and non-fiction film terms I think that means making movies that point to their constructed nature.
Another was “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders: The Ethics of Image-Making” by Calvin Pryluck looks at the responsibilities a filmmaker has to his subjects. Should a documentarian involve subjects in editing and in choosing how they are respresented? I think yes. I think it is unconscionable to invade people’s privacy or exploit them just to make a movie. However different rules apply when you are filming the powerful – in that circumstance it would be unethical to allow people to determine how they will be depicted.
Lastly another Ruby article and another called “The Ethics of Imagemaking”. It is about an artists obligations to herself, her audience, and her subjects and how they often don’t align. I’m all about these ideas and questions at the moment. This is a piece from the article, it’s absolutely spot on:
“If we perpetuate the lie that pictures always tell the truth., that they are objective witnesses to reality, we are supporting an industry that has the potential to symbolically recreate teh world in its own image. Technology grows out of a particular ideology. The Western world created image-producing technologies out of a profound need to have an irrefutable witness – to control reality by capturing it on film.”
