Digitizing Democracy

For our last class blog entry this semester, I’d like for us to further explore two issues. First, in the assigned reading from Julianne Pidduck about citizen journalism, she quotes Graham Spry discussing the relationship between communication and community: “A society, a community, a nation, like any other organism, is a function of a network; society is organized, integrated and made responsive by information” (478). Do you agree with this analysis? Why or why not? Moreover, where does documentary fit into this schema? Yesterday in class, we debated the function of non-fiction films in (our) society, and there seemed to be a consensus that it’s acceptable (or even only possible) for documentaries to just provide information to the public. This assertion certainly conforms to the ways people have understood the purpose of documentary cinema historically (i.e., to educate, to inform, etc.). Yet, I can’t help but think that these filmmakers (especially the ones whose works we’ve screened this semester) want their documentaries to accomplish more (such as ameliorate some aspect of their society). What do you think? Can documentaries like Burma VJ do more than simply educate and inform? More importantly, should they aspire to do so? What do you see is the connection between communication and community, especially in the current era of new media?

Second, Burma VJ, just like Waltz with Bashir, considers the issue of the personal and the public. Arguably, all of the recent documentaries that we’ve screened in this course address the tension between the personal and the public somehow. Burma VJ makes the case that one should risk one’s own personal safety in order to support a greater, public cause (the anonymous cameramen in Burma are certainly not the first in film history to sacrifice their own well-being for the sake of documenting something they deemed important, nor will they be the last to do so). What do you think? Should the “public” always trump the “personal” in documentary cinema? Can you give examples of non-fiction works that privilege the personal over the public? Is it ever possible to find a compromise between the two? Why do you think this tension between the public and the personal is such a popular topic for recent documentary cinema?

Thank you for all of your thoughtful contributions to the course this semester, and I hope that you continue your explorations of documentary cinema long after this class ends!

Projecting Trauma: Animated Documentaries

One topic that we briefly discussed during yesterday’s discussion was the question of history. The representation of history is a key concern for documentarians, and many of these filmmakers (including contemporary ones) have struggled with the issue of how to show the past. In the History of Documentary course that I teach, this question of how to represent the past (particularly a traumatic past) always arises when we screen Alain Resnais’ reflection on the Holocaust, Night and Fog (1955). In Resnais’ case, he was faced with two problems in particular: how does a filmmaker portray an event from the past where (s)he was not present, and how can anyone adequately represent the horror of something that defies representation? While Ari Folman was not attempting to illustrate the Holocaust in Waltz with Bashir and he *was* present at the Sabra and Shatila massacres, I do see Folman’s film as grappling with the problems of how to represent the unrepresentable (in this case, the internal, the subjective, memory, trauma, dreams, and the psyche). What do you think - was Folman successful in his quest to represent the unrepresentable in Waltz with Bashir? Why or why not? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Folman’s utilization of animation to document emotion and history, and to illustrate the relationship between the past and the present?

Torture Docs

Yesterday’s excellent discussion briefly touched on a topic that I’d like to explore further in the blog: the issue of time and documentary. Both Julia Lesage and Alex Gibney (in his interview with Gary Crowdus) mention in the assigned reading the question of documentaries presenting information, knowledge, and/or an argument in a limited amount of time. Lesage writes: “What is the relation of all this [torture epistephilia] to the documentary films about torture? Well, they are a short way to sift through all this information and come to an understanding of the situation in about ninety minutes. The viewer may gain only a provisional understanding but it’s a beginning” (p.14 of the PDF). Later, she notes, when discussing the limits on torture epistephilia: “Feature-length documentaries have to edit to an approximately ninety-minute length. So a director’s pursuit of knowledge cannot be replicated in the film" (p. 15). Meanwhile, when Crowdus expresses his desire to have American documentaries be in a longer format (for ex., 5 hours long), Gibney responds: “The frustrating thing is that you get to a certain point where you need to be able to tell the story, and you tell it properly at a certain length. Inevitably, during the editorial process, if you step away from the film for a while, and then come back and watch it, you see huge places where it just sags, and you start to lose viewers” (p.36).

Their statements lead me to ask you your opinions on this issue of time and documentary. Do you think that there is an “ideal” length for a documentary, so that the filmmaker is able to present the information and arguments (s)he wishes to convey but, simultaneously, does not lose viewers? Do you believe that filmmakers will always have to choose between these two possibilities - either the documentary sacrifices knowledge in order to stay within a 90-120 minute format and appeal to a wider audience, or the film is far more comprehensive in scope but risks a narrow spectatorship because of its length? Which approach should be endorsed and why? Is there a “happy” medium? How does a documentarian achieve it?

Screening Scandal

Yesterday’s class discussion led me to continue thinking about two, related issues. First, Deliver us from Evil is the second film we’ve seen this semester that discusses religion. How would you compare and contrast Deliver us from Evil and Trembling Before G-d? How do Berg and Dubowski represent their respective religions? What are their relationships with the film subjects? Do these two films have anything in common?

Second, the mid-2000s seemed to be quite a popular time for documentaries on topics relating to religion. For example, there’s Kirby Dick’s 2004 documentary Twist of Faith, a film that also examines the clergy sex abuse scandal, as well as Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s popular documentary Jesus Camp from 2006 (a documentary about children and Evangelical Christianity). In 2007, Daniel Karslake made For the Bible Tells Me So, a film exploring homosexuality and religion. There’s also Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye’s 2006 documentary about the abortion debate that devotes a considerable amount of time to the role of religion within this controversial issue. Moreover, this is just a sampling of the works created recently that address religion. This makes me ask: Why? Why so many docs about religion at this particular time? Is it, as Carl Cannon suggested in his article assigned for this week, that the 2000s have been a time (i.e. the “post Monica Lewinsky” period) when the media are more willing to tackle controversial, previously taboo issues? Or can this phenomenon be explained by something else? Why do you think that religion seems to be a popular preoccupation of recent documentary cinema?

Transnational Visions: Docs from the “New Europe”

Yesterday’s class discussion raised some provocative issues about how to understand cinema from the “New Europe,” and I think that many of you offered some excellent insights about the films from Latvia and Lithuania and about transnational media. I particularly enjoyed hearing your readings of the two films, and having you engage in debates about their possible metaphoric and political meanings (or lack thereof).

One question that we talked about briefly at the end of class that I would like to explore further is whether this framework of transnationalism is useful when considering American documentaries. Have Iordanova’s ideas changed the way you consider the American documentaries you’ve seen? Why or why not? For the filmmakers in the class, do you see her formulations of transnational cinema as potentially useful to your own practice? Why or why not? What do you think are the advantages and the disadvantages of examining documentaries through a transnational lens?

Documentary Ethics

Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s documentary Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004) raises many provocative issues about the ethical concerns involved in documentary filmmaking. One particular problem is discussed in the assigned article by Frann Michel. Michel offers a scathing critique of Briski and Kauffman’s film, suggesting that the documentary perpetuates a colonialist view of India. The poor children of the Sonagachi district are presented as “others” in need of rescuing from their situation, and the only people capable of offering this help are the western filmmakers (instead of, for example, local activist or social resources and support systems). Moreover, Michel contends that Briski and Kauffman “succumb to some of the failings typical of documentaries and other research projects by outsiders, especially when, as so often, the outsiders are more privileged in their access to resources – the wealthy researching the lives of the poor, westerners researching the lives of those in the developing world” (55).

Michel’s point brought to my mind the title of an article on documentary ethics by Calvin Pryluck: “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders.” What are the implications of seeing nonfiction filmmaking from this perspective? Does this mean that documentary filmmakers can only make films about themselves in order to escape the problems mentioned above? Do you agree that documentarists are always “outsiders” when filming? Is it ever possible for a filmmaker to make a documentary about someone else without risking exploiting or rendering exotic his/her subjects?

Another issue that is relevant to any analysis of Born into Brothels is the question of the moral obligation of the documentary filmmaker, an argument taken up in the assigned article by Ellen Maccarone (and a question we began to debate when we talked about To Be and To Have). Does the documentary filmmaker have a moral, ethical obligation towards his/her subjects? Is it morally acceptable for documentary filmmakers to intervene in the lives of his/her subjects? What happens when this intervention causes harm to the film subjects? Is this harm justified if it potentially leads to a greater good?

Non-fiction filmmaking in the Postmodern Era

Since this week’s topic involves an examination of documentaries “in the Postmodern Era,” it’s useful to begin our discussion by determining the definition of “postmodern.” It’s a phrase that has been thrown about in popular culture for years, but what precisely do we mean when we say that something is “postmodern”?

Scholar Fredric Jameson famously theorized the postmodern in his 1991 work Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (and yes, get ready for a brief VM200 Media Theory and Criticism refresher). Jameson identified 10 characteristics of the postmodern, and claimed that the following features inform our contemporary lives:

1. Aesthetic populism (there is no difference between “high” and “low” culture anymore)
2. Depthlessness (everything is reduced to an image, flatness, the primacy of the surface)
3. Waning of affect (Our emotional responses to our cultural phenomenon is changing, now our emotions are impersonal and free-floating)
4. The end of the subject/ego (there is no more individuality, no more unique style, no more unified concept of identity)
5. Pastiche (a “cut and paste” decontextualization and recycling of artifacts from the past, collage; there is nothing original being create)
6. “Historicism” over history (we are disconnected from our past, our history no longer bears any resemblance to our current experience, we can only “signify” the past without ever being able to access it)
7. Nostalgia (our longing for the past, our attempts at recapturing idealized visions of what the past was like - whether these visions bear any resemblance to what the experience was actually like has no relevance)
8. Schizophrenia (the fragmentation of the self, feeling disconnected from your lived experience, the breaking down of the “signifying chain”, free-floating and unrelated signifiers)
9. Radical Difference (everything in life is a “text” that we read and it only gains meaning through how it is different - and not how it is the same - as everything else)
10. The Hysterical Sublime & Our Relationship with Technology (technology now seems to dominate our daily existences to such an extent that we have an ambivalent relationship with it; we simultaneously experience euphoria, delight, and marvel AND we are terrified by it; our human brains also can’t begin to fathom the implications of technology and all of this leads to the feeling of the hysterically sublime)

Given the above list and what you know about postmodernism, do you think that postmodernism has affected recent documentary filmmaking? If so, how? Can you give examples of recent non-fiction films that you consider to be “postmodern”? Do agree with film historian Lucia Ricciardelli when she characterizes Errol Morris’ The Fog of War as “a paradigmatic example of American postmodern documentary films” (35)? Why or why not? How does viewing the work through a “postmodern lens” help us understand how Morris (re)presents McNamara and history?

Social Actors or Movie Stars? Documentary Subjects

Given its complicated legal history, To Be and To Have challenges the definitions and audience expectations of documentary cinema. What is (or should be) the purpose of nonfiction films? Should they educate, turn a profit, or be a mode of artistic expression for the filmmaker (or all/none of the above)? Are the documentary subjects “co-authors” of the film, and should thus receive monetary compensation and film rights? Or is paying documentary subjects absolutely taboo, since it “would be to treat them as an actor, and that would be the death of documentary filmmaking” (according to Philibert’s lawyer, Claire Hocquet, as quoted in the assigned Bruzzi chapter)? Are the film subjects “social actors” or are they movie stars? Who ultimately controls the “image rights” to a documentary? And do documentary filmmakers have an obligation to their film subjects? If so, what kind of obligation? Financial? Artistic? Moral? Legal? Lisa Leeman explores some of these questions in her article “Money Changes Everything - Or Does it?” (also assigned for Monday’s class), and I am curious to hear what you all have to say on this topic. Given our class discussions so far this semester (especially our passionate debate about Michael Moore in Monday’s class), it seems that many of you expect documentarians to treat their subjects with respect and to present them in a “factually correct” light (in other words, many of you expressed the viewpoint that documentaries are responsible to educate their audiences and not to misrepresent their subjects). But what exactly does this entail? How does a documentary filmmaker go about fulfilling this mission? What happens when your film subject objects to his or her cinematic representation after the film is screened? Who has the final say in situations like these?

Fear in the Post-9/11 World

Love him or hate him, you can’t talk about 21st century documentaries without discussing Michael Moore. This week’s film, Bowling for Columbine (2002), is the first documentary we’re watching together that was completed after September 11th. Moore’s film raises many of the issues that are addressed in Trembling Before G-d (albeit from a different perspective), such as the tension between the public and the private, and the relationship between the filmmaker and the film subjects. Bowling For Columbine also seems particularly relevant at the moment, given the contemporary debates regarding gun control in light of the shootings in Tucson, Arizona and the attack on U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords a few weeks ago.

When thinking about Bowling for Columbine, consider the following questions:

• How does Moore present the events of the Columbine High School massacre?
• How does one find a balance between the Constitutional right for each citizen to own guns and protect oneself, and concerns regarding public safety?
• What is the role of media in our society, according to Moore? How do his ideas about the media fit in with what Moore thinks about freedom of speech in our country, as presented in the film?
• How does Moore present history in the documentary (both U.S. history and the U.S. role within global politics)?
• According to Moore, what is the link between violence and economics in our society?
• What is Moore’s relationship with the victims of the Columbine shooting? Do you think he’s exploiting his film subjects? Why or why not? When (if ever) do “the ends justify the means” within the realm of social activism cinema?
• What are the effects of the past on the present, according to the film?
• Do you think that the events of 9/11 have changed the ways nonfiction media “represents reality”? If so, how? Do you agree with Christian Christensen when he writes in one of our assigned articles that “the events of 9/11 provided a starting point for an interesting phase in documentary film-making”? What do you think about the criticisms that he addresses, such as the emphasis of the events of 9/11 “as some type of milestone for documentary film was to place the United States (yet again) at the centre of our understanding of popular culture and media in general, and documentary film specifically [...]”?

I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on these issues...

Docs at the Beginning of the 21st Century

This week we screened Sandi Simcha DuBowski's film Trembling Before G-d (2001) to begin our exploration of 21st Century Docs. I chose this film to begin the course in part because of the questions it raises:

Is it possible to reconcile tradition with modernity? Why or why not? And if yes, how?

Who gets to decide who is "inside" and who is "outside" within communities? Are these boundaries always clearly defined or is there some fluidity?

Why do we need communities in the first place? What do we get out of them, especially when they can cause so much pain?

How do you balance the private or personal with the public?

How can one use documentary for activism? In his interview with FYI magazine, DuBowski maintains that "this film was not just a movie, but the seeds of a movement." What's the most effective (and affective) way to use film for social change?

What is the role of the documentary filmmaker vis-a-vis his or her subjects? In his interview with Lucy Walker and Carey Monserrate, DuBowski claims that he is "an interventionist" but also admits to struggling with his responsibilities as a film director. His interview concludes with him asking when should be he a director and when should he be an interventionist when interviewing his subjects.

These are just some of the issues that preoccupy many contemporary documentary filmmakers, and these topics are all explored in some way Trembling Before G-d.

So, what do you think? What are your views on the questions posed above? And how do you think DuBowski addresses these questions in his documentary?

Definitions and Contexts

Before we start discussing documentaries from the last 10 years, it's useful to first talk about what we mean when we use the term "documentary." I asked each of you to write down your own definition of "documentary," and here's a sample of what you said:

- "Non-fiction; non-narrative; portrayal of real and true events"

-"A documentary is something (media-related) that explores topics/events which are things generally unknown or unclear to common man. The purpose of the documentary is to explore these topics and enlighten others about things they may never learn in schools or be exposed to at all."

-"An attempt to subjectively capture and convey accurate accounts of the world as it is happening."

-"A film (or video) intended as a document of some political, historical, cultural, social event or events."

- "I think a documentary is a non-fiction account of a chosen topic. Documentary films present this account via movie picture and sound. A documentary may feature partisan personal interviews or original footage or reenactments, but the intention of all presented content is not to mislead, but rather present an assumed truth."

- "A documentary is a film that is presented as nonfiction. It is a filmmaker's attempt to capture and convey something 'real' on camera. It's a tough thing to define because you can't box it in. The more you narrow the definition the more you stifle the true potential of what documentary can be."

All very provocative statements! I think the sample of definitions above raises some important questions that I'd like for you all to address. What do we mean when we use terms like "real," "true," and "accurate" in this documentary context? Fiction films also portray real people and events (just think of films like "The Fighter" and "Schindler's List"), so what's the difference between fiction and non-fiction? In other words, what does it mean to be "non-fiction"? What does it mean to "document" something? What is involved in this process? What is at stake here? Do documentaries have to be non-narrative (in other words, can you think of docs that present information in the form of a narrative)? What about this idea of "intent" and the mission of the documentary filmmaker? Should the purpose of every documentary filmmaker be to "enlighten others" and never to "mislead"? Who gets to decide what is misleading and what isn't?

Next, you wrote down how you would characterize the last 10 years in documentary filmmaking. Again, here's a sample of your comments:

- "Last 10 years? Digital progression allows for more people to more easily document things they want to in places and ways that weren't exactly previously possible. Tarnation comes to mind of a perfect example of this new development."

- "Politicized. Recent docs seem to be 'over' the experiment-laden years of early, celluloid documentary film and are relatable to current events even if they do not depict them. The distribution capabilities of internet mean that current, highly political messages are more immediate/effective than ever."

- "A few things come to mind. One would be the ease of production afforded by improving video technology. Thus, there are many more docs these days than in times past, covering more topics. Another would be the embrace of destroying the 4th wall, with directors often taking active part in the films. It ends up blurring lines between journalism, documentary and activism further than they always have been."

- "I would say recent documentaries in the past 10 years are largely politically motivated with objectives to expose the human condition's shortcomings and correct it."

- "Documentaries in the last 10 years have been hugely shaped by national and global events. 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have informed not only content but style, as well. Disenchantment of government, war and politics has played a large part in the stylization of certain films. Also, technology has changed documentary. The availability of capturing image has been more readily available in the last 10 years than ever before. Not only traditional cameras, but through cell phones and flip-cams."

Politics and technology seemed to be the two aspects of recent documentaries that most of you highlighted in your responses. Many of you identified a certain urgency in the docs from the last 10 years, a predisposition towards activism and using cinema as a way to enact social/political/cultural change. Do you think this is something new? From what you know about docs pre-2001, is this interest in politics, this drive towards making the world a better place, this influence of technology - are these things something new and unique to the 21st century documentary filmmaking practice? Why or why not?

From the looks of your responses from class, we're off to an excellent start! We'll talk about these issues in class Monday (especially once everyone has read the assigned readings - we'll see how your ideas change/don't change particularly after the Renov and Nichols' chapters), but let's get the discussions going online now.

Let the debates begin!

Welcome to 21st Century Docs!

Hello, and welcome to VM402, 21st Century Docs: Recent Non-Fiction Cinema! During the spring 2011 semester, this blog will be an important part of our class, serving as an extension of our classroom discussions, as a space for continued debates about the films and issues examined in this course, and as a place to share your ideas about recent non-fiction cinema.

Ground rules: all students are required to post thoughtful and articulate comments each week, and you're all encouraged to make connections between the material we cover in this course and your own professional and personal experiences. Be as interdisciplinary and creative as you want to be! Engage your peers in lively (and respectful) debates! Ask provocative questions! Be a devil's advocate, but always keep a critical voice and support your arguments.

I'm looking forward to a great semester!