Sherman's March

Another strange, and slightly awkward, documentary was the 1986 film Sherman's March. It was an interactive and reflective documentary. This means that whoever the subject of the film happens to be is receiving some form of interaction with whoever is behind the camera. This being the case, the entire movie was the cameraman/director interacting with whoever, mostly ladies, he chooses. The purpose of his film was originally do document the damage and destruction left behind by the Union General Sherman. It eventually came to be a search for love as the director kept on the hunt for a companion. He came across several different women along the way, but the one that seemed to draw the most attention was Pat. Personally I believe that she was simply using the camera to increase her fame. Simply put, she was an actress looking for a big break and may have been using the director, Ross McElwee, for this her own personal gain. There was one comical scene where Pat was doing her anti-cellulite exercises. Would someone actually do that, or was it for the attention? It is left to speculation, but I believe she's nothing but a Hollywood wannabe.
Throughout the film there seemed to be five big topics that Ross kept coming back and talking about. They are: Sherman's conquest, Ross' personal romantic conquest, the camera, his car and nuclear warfare. There is one thing tied into all of these and that is phallic. All of these things could be viewed as the male's way of showing dominance. For instance, when Ross is riding on the train you see one young blond woman. Shying away from his view, yet he keeps the camera trained on her for a good amount of time. The car showed a masculinity aspect because it was a nice muscle car and they were attempting to fix it up. Lastly nuclear warfare showed the masculinity trait. Warfare around this time had been strictly for men, and only men could kill with such an atrocious weapon.
You can argue that Ross was using that camera as a facade for his true self. He used it as a conversation starter, a protective barrier, and for his job all at once.

London

In 1992 the BFI ( British Film Institute) funded a reflexive journey documentary about London. They left Patrick Keiller in charge of making their desire come true. This film was very strange, in my opinion it was right up there with Sans Soleil. The film traversed the English frontier in a random pattern. It was a story of two men: Robinson and the narrator. The narrator spoke of both of their journeys throughout London and what they have learned/seen. The film used the Voice of God narration style, which is, when there is a voice that is not attached to a visible body. The film also has no synchronous sound at any point. This means that whenever there is a voice or a noise, it will not be attached to whatever is making that noise. An example of this is when the camera is focusing on the entrance to an old park and remains there for a while. All of a sudden the viewers can hear an ambulance.
There is also another strange part of the film. This is that many of the images do not relate to the narration that the mystery man is giving us. For example, when he is talking about Robinson's best place to write and read, but the corresponding scene was of a mall's escalator. This film was definitely a strange one. In being strange it also falls under the avant-garde film style. This style is extremely experimental and mixes fiction with reality. Some people argue that documentaries shouldn't have any fictional elements. This is just a stereotype that falls onto documentaries, but this film definitely had its fictional elements.

Rick Burns

Last week, renowned documentary film maker Rick Burns came to the Aurora University campus to discuss his new work with the students. He began with an introduction of himself and his many awards. These ranged from things like his writing ability to his filming ability. He then left a little opportunity for us, the audience, to ask questions. He was a very educated man and had superb speaking ability. He then gave us a little treat, we would be the first people to see the preview to his new documentary. This film was going to cover the voyage of one of the only boats in history to be attacked and sunken by a whale. The film was very interesting and held my attention for all of it, which is something to say for a documentary. He told us that everything he used for the film, ships, clothing, and other voyaging supplies, were made from scratch. This is a monumental amount of work for a two hour film. This film also took a great amount of coordination to make because he didn't use any arch-able footage. All of his footage was from actors or extras on the boats doing actions that he directed. The story itself I have never heard of. The crew of a whaling ship set forth to go hunt whales, obviously. They were on the water for quite some time when a large sperm whale began to ram the hull of the ship. It broke the ship with little effort and left the crew stranded amongst their life boats. It wasn't for many months, and over 2,500 miles that the two survivors that ventured forth, that they were discovered. His style of film making is one i have yet to see in my Honors Film Studies course. He used historic events and actors to play out the events of the sea. There was no material to use for him besides the stories and the history reports, so Rick had a lot of work to do to make this documentary a good one.

7 Up

7 Up is a mid 1960's documentary on 14 children of 7 years old. Each of the children are native to England and live there throughout the course of the documentary. This documentary shows many different point of views of little children. The director does an interesting thing with this series. Every 7 years he goes back and films the children, who are now grown, and asks them a series of questions. It is done to show how their ideals, lifestyles and dreams have changed as they've matured. For instance, one of the boys wants to be an astronaut when he gets older. How many of us could say they wanted to be something ridiculous when we were little children? I'm sure most of us fall into that group. The director does a good job of simply asking and listening in these documentaries. He strategy would be to take each child, or even a group of them, and question them about things such as their future, their love lives, or maybe there families income. For 7 year old boys and girls, they were able to answer the questions with a fair amount of maturity. You can see as these stories go into the later years of their lives that everything from their childhood begins to change. The one that wanted to be an astronaut now realizes that it wasn't a realistic possibility, the ones that really disliked girls have crushes, and they have gone from bit sized to nearly full fledged adults.

Salesman

Last week we viewed a documentary that started the direct cinema movement. Salesman is a 1969 documentary made by the Maysles Brothers. These two followed around four bible salesman that were going door to door attempting to sell extremely expensive bibles to the poor population of America. The cost of just the bible was around fifty dollars. Today's equivalent of fifty dollars is somewhere near 500 dollars. It is astounding that they were even able to sell a single bible to the people.
The way direct cinema works is the director/cameraman attempt to capture reality and represent it truthfully. The filmmakers usually spend countless hours with their subjects. This was a direct cinema because of the long period of time this film was taken over. The film went from the prime of Paul Brennan's selling to his downfall.
The film itself had many different emotions to it. At some points the film was very funny, showing the comical sides of these lowlife bible salesman, but in some cases it was extremely serious. One example of this is when you see how poor some of the Americans are that they are trying to sell to. The people cannot afford even a dollar a week for the gorgeous bible.

Prison Terminal

The other week, in class, Dr. Butters brought in a friend of his. This friend was a documentary filmmaker. He talked to the class for a very short amount of time, and then he showed us a film he is in the process of making. The film is called Prison Terminal, and it follows a terminally ill prisoner that has a life sentence. The prisoner, Jack, seems like an angry old coot, but his story made me feel sympathetic. Jack is an inmate that is sentenced to life in prison for killing a drug dealer. The real reason Jack killed the drug dealer is because his son was addicted to drugs, and he ended up committing suicide.
Now more about the actual film and its style. The director used cinema verite to record the happenings at the prison's hospice. Cinema verite is the "fly on the wall" style of documentary film making. The way it works is the cameraman/director is given a portable camera. The cameraman follows his subject(s) around without any interference or side commentary. There is no voice of God narration. The only input the director had was the title screens between segments, and he also controlled what scenes the audience would be viewing.

Sans Soleil

We viewed the awkward documentary Sans Soleil in class the other week. This film was very strange, to put it lightly. It was almost telling a story in a way. The narrator was a woman. This is different on most accounts and caught my attention immediately because almost every single documentary I have watched before this used a male narrator to do the Voice of God. Why did the male director chose a female narrator when the film was also through a male cameraman? The only thing I can say is that the film was already strange enough, so why not add a female narration? The film was formed as a letter to someone dear of the filmmaker. The reader of the letter was the narrator, and the cameraman caught what the letter was saying through his camera lens. I honestly did not think he was capturing half of what the narrator was saying, but that is why film making is an art form.
Another thing I found interesting was the directors interests with the strange ways of the Japanese people. Well it is strange to us Americans because it is so foreign to us, but to them it is an everyday thing. One scene that interested me was the multiple cat temples and shrines. It seems to me that the Japanese have a sacred belief towards cats.


Another interesting thing about this film was the way the woman narrator was speaking the man's thoughts. One scene where I noticed this was when the cameraman was trying to gain eye contact with a random African woman. The narrator was talking of how the woman would look up, and then she would look away. All of this that she was saying was what the cameraman was portraying, but it was what the writer's (a.k.a. the director) letter that she was reading.
When all is said and done Sans Soleil is one of the most strange and awkward films that I have viewed and will always stay at the top of that list for me.