happy update

yu-cheng chou, "emotions"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a quick and happy update on the film project.

performantive documentary conventions

yu-cheng chou, "emotions"

so we hear quite a bit about the need for the documentarian to form a “bond” with her subject, a kind of trust that enables her to capture special moments that reveal more than what we find in the context of a straight-up journalistic feature. i wonder if this bond is essential, forming a core documentary convention. maybe the convention myth lucky accident of the documentarian’s bond with her subject compromises a documentarian’s critical distance?

whatever the case, trust between a filmmaker (of any genre) and her subject(s) seems useful, if not necessary. it makes sense. i had thought that i was pretty good at communicating with my subject(s) over the years and forming these kinds of bonds, although i think about them only retroactively, remembering the moments when the bonds seemed to emerge or crystallize rather than how i strategically plotted and forced them into being — because i try to avoid the latter — either we will work well together or things will be a bit more complicated, possibly compelling me to be(come) more rhetorically strategic and saavy and less organically invested that i had originally hoped i’d need to be <sigh>.

all of this is to say that i am especially sad to report that my communication with the subject of my newest film project has trickled down to the pretty tiny space of a short email exchange we had a few days ago. he revealed that he’s had to alter his schedule and is feeling appreciable pressure, having committed to several other forms of interview and whatnot, for bigger and shinier publishing venues. he even went so far as to say that he’s feeling life and death kinds of pressure. wow.

so but of course i’m supposed to understand and kindly take what i can get, which is less than we had discussed and even tentatively planned. now, a few days later, i’m emboldened to say that (duh) i too give myself deadlines and schedules and pressure, and i too find that it often feels like life/death-type urgency that drives me and keeps me where i want and seem to need to be, creatively. so i suppose i’m writing about how trust goes both ways and even wondering how often a creative artist turns critic because of trust gone bad. so but i’m not simply “disenchanted” or “disappointed” any longer. i am insulted. and angry. and disenchanted.

so how do all of those loveable documentarians do it? how do they form these precious bonds? audiences often wonder and ask about this ostensibly precious commodity in screening q & a sessions. the answers are often vague, sometimes celebratory, and sometimes a bit more like straining to remember to play nice. i am beginning to think that these documentarian-subject bonds must be in large part about perserverance and performance (pp). it’s sometimes (often?) about more than magically “being there.”

so, how well can i perform “patience”? how well can i perform disinterested observer who is just, gosh, lucky to take what she can get even when the plan has been radically altered? how well can i perform, “oh no. my passion is not important, my drive and seeming lifeforce isn’t compromised in the least. you do what you need to do. it’s you, you who are the Serious Artist who needs to protect your precious gift.”

so but sure. my subject may read this, and it may further compromise the project. and i might possibly grow and mature from the experience. whatever the case, i find it valuable to write about and reflect upon documentary experiences and conventions from an ethnographic perspective,  a position that enables me to be increasingly discerning and critical of the documentaries i both see and make.

merde!

  as i had feared after not hearing from M in quite some time, M, the subject of my film, has gone and gotten himself so famous that’s he’s now committed himself to several international workshops and colloquia and whatnot and so mylittlefilm has slipped far into the background. so that’s one thing. but now, also (hear painfully creaking and rusty industrial materials — the sounds of my interior, affective architecture) M says that he doesn’t want to appear on camera in my film but will help with behind the scenes footage (“making of” stuff he says he won’t distribute on YouTube). and that’s nice, really. very. but i had hoped, so hoped to be doing a conventional documentary and happen upon Maysles-level magical captures and “find” something in my live exchanges w/ M that would make the film and make it worthy of the “feature documentary” category. now, i’ve got a short. and i’ll screen it at C’s, and it will probably be fabulous, but i must admit that i’m fairly well deflated over the whole #$%$#@!!! thing. cursing symbols . . . i know. very mature.

on the bright side, it could be that my disenchantment empowers me with a kind of critical distance i had likely surely been missing until. just. now.