Extra Credit #1

Panel: Tsunami Hits Cannibal Tours: Documentary in the 21^st Century
Speaker: Brian Winston

Date: 11/17/14

Attending the opening reception and panel for the Codes and Modes conference as well as listening to the keynote speaker, Brian Winston, was an extremely enriching experience. I’ve never really been interested in documentaries, either as a watcher or as a maker, but recently I’ve been trying to broaden my knowledge of filmmaking in general. Thus, this talk and the whole conference in general truly attributed to my education on the medium of documentary in general as well as the particular problems facing documentary in the 21^st century. Winston first defined documentary as a space for ideas and for people to discuss issues in the modern world. However, he also expressed that these issues are sometimes dealt in improper ways, engendering problems in the documentary genre.

            

The first problem that Winston brought up was that documentary film often reveals the “ridiculous racism” involved in the conception of the film itself. The eyes of the camera often dehumanize and objectify the subjects, who are often minorities and foreign populations that are unfamiliar to the audience that typically view these pieces. This is the problem that I took interest in most. He discussed this issue in terms of the Oscar nominated documentary feature The Act of Killing (2012). This documentary confronts former Indonesian death-squad leaders and requests for them to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish (including typical Hollywood crime scenarios and musical numbers.) Winston described The Act of Killing an ethical swamp of issues and as he says “we feel good about our empathy and knowing we can know spell Indonesia.” In essence, documentary filmmakers are beginning to argue that it is due to the “jaded audience” that they are adopting procedures that some of us read to be reprehensive. Thus, creating a trap for these filmmakers, as either the audience will feel bored or they will complain about the way controversial issues are handled. Thus, Winston goes on to say that the integrity of image is questioned and the digital medium turns the “half full glass into a half empty glass,” as we can no longer have a form that makes some comment on the real when we can no longer even trust anything on the screen.

Winston brought up a variety of interesting points during this talk/panel. I can relate these points to classes that I’ve taken and how there are so many filmmakers making films for an audience. This isn’t right and it isn’t fair to blame the audience if they recoil at your reprehensive attempts to appease them.  Filmmakers must take into account that audiences contain intelligent individuals who will question, who will criticize, who will watch analytically and observantly and who will not hold themselves back when they feel they have comments to make. Filmmakers should make films for themselves, so that these films are authentic to themselves, and then there will be no “trap” for them to fall into.