The Point of Order

This last week we watched Emile De Antonio's documentary The Point of Order. This documentary was a phenomenal piece of filmmaking during this era. Emile took ever 200 hours of film and was able to cut it down into just over 90 minutes of film and still was able to relay the overall message of the hearings. This project took the better of a decade as Emile worked oin this piece from the fifties and not releasing the film until 1963. These hearings were the McCarthy vs. the United States army. The feud was about McCarthy and Kohn giving an army soldier special privileges, and they followed by counter suing the army saying there were communists inside of it. McCarthy got to power by accusing people of being communists, but he never revealed who these commies were.
The point of Emile's film was to show the hearings in general, but the way the editing was done made it seem much more than that. The film starts with McCarthy being extremely powerful, but progressively he loses all of his power and eventually is just dust in the wind, as shown by the last scene of everyone leaving McCarthy alone yelling into nothingness. This was not the intention of De Antonio. He simply put clips of powerful footage together to give his watchers the general idea of what took place over the thirty plus days of the debate.
Throughout the film there was minimal narration. Actually the only narration for this film was at the very start. It was a simple intro to let the viewer know what to expect for the following 90 or so minutes.

The Zapruder Film & More

In class this last week we watched a series of miniature documentaries. The style which these documentaries followed was the Zapruder film style. This form of movie making happens completely by accident. For example we watched the JFK assassination video. This film was not meant to show him being shot, but it was meant to be a family video of the day JFK rolled into Dallas to great his people. Some critics call this a snuff film. Meaning its a film of a murder, but when you look at it closely this was just an average guy with a new piece of technology trying to have fun. There is still much speculation on whether or not the film is legitimate and if the whole assassination was a setup by the government or the driver, but the film sadly does not give us enough information to tell.
The other film we watched was the brutal beating of Rodney King. The filmmaker in this piece was an average person who happened to be at the right place at the wrong time. Through the camera's eye we see the African American Rodney being beaten my a squad of cops, between 5-8 cops take their rounds at Rodney and beat him senselessly. The film held up as phenomenal evidence towards this case as it was the only real account of what had happened that night.
The Zapruder film style is an extremely valuable way of film making that anyone can do. It just takes the right amount of luck an d having the right technology at this right moment.

Hearing the News vs Being There

The article which we were required to read was a man's (David Pillemer) account of how memories between people vary from where they are, who they are with, or how they hear it when the event takes place. For example, in class we had a discussion of 9/11. We talked about where we were, how it affected us and any other thing that may have happened that day. Of course we were only kids at the time and do not really have any burned memories of this event. It may be different from person to person because of family issues, but the majority of our class had identical stories of how their day went.
This article could connect to the theme of our class when looked in a more broad prospective. The main discussion of our class is the study of documentaries and the way the filmmakers decide to film them. I believe the purpose of documentaries is to strengthen or even build memories we may or may not have. David Pillemer discussed how tragic events are burnt into our minds. Some documentary makers take these same horrific memories and either make them their own or strengthen the thoughts we may already have about them.
Another point David makes in his article is that many of the memories the average person have fit a certain criteria. Whether it is an experience with the opposite sex, a tragic death, or some other fantastic or horrific personal experience. Of course someone who had a family member pass with the 9/11 may have an identical memory to someone who had the same thing happen.
All in all David's article got me thinking about how my memories may differ from society, and how I look upon events such as 9/11. It showed me my tragedies may or may not be the same as another person. Even my family may have completely different memories than me and we live together every day for the last 19 years.