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?
