"I was surprised that many people automatically assumed that any documentary film would inevitably be objective. Perhaps the term is unsatisfactory, but for the distinction between the words document and documentary are quite clear. Do we demand objectivity in the evidence presented in a trial? No, the demand is that each piece of evidence be as full a subjective, truthful, honest presentation of the witness' attitude as an oath on the bible can produce from him."
check out the author of this quote here:
Joris Ivens
"The documentary is not a step to fiction film but a step to freedom. Commercial fiction film is only real estate. When real auteurs, the Harvard Business School graduates, their concern is neither art nor ideas, but money. Maximize rents for a space called a seat. In documentaries, I confront our history on my own terms. Brecht said that only BOOTS can be made to measure. He was right."
check out the author of this quote here:
Emile De Antonio
check out the author of this quote here:
Joris Ivens
"The documentary is not a step to fiction film but a step to freedom. Commercial fiction film is only real estate. When real auteurs, the Harvard Business School graduates, their concern is neither art nor ideas, but money. Maximize rents for a space called a seat. In documentaries, I confront our history on my own terms. Brecht said that only BOOTS can be made to measure. He was right."
check out the author of this quote here:
Emile De Antonio
1 comment:
I wish I could say that I of course agreed 100% with the first quote by Joris Ivens - but my ignorance and frustration with American Teen says otherwise. The manipulation within documentary is unavoidable - just the simple fact that someone is holding a camera, capturing an event, even if it was all in one take, a single shot, of an event without any external manipulation from the director, makes it subjective. "Do we demand objectivity in the evidence presented in a trial?" - Ivens is right. We don't. And like in a trial, or a critical essay, or even a fictional, narrative film, the creator is telling us something they want us to hear and see. They have a message in mind. They have a story for us to understand, and their "construction" however hands-on and apparent or distanced and "objective," no documentary is truly objective.
As for the second quote, this idea has been giving me some trouble as I prepare for my final project. I wonder how I can tell someone else's story in a way I want without tarnishing their "truth" or creating a film using their "lens." Then, I remember that I am "[confronting] history on my own terms," and that as long as I am true to the story and character as I know them, I can't do wrong by them. Mostly.
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