TMA 273 Doc Art Mix Tape Sundance Forum Response

During the Sundance film festival, I had the opportunity to attend a panel that was being held by Ross McElwee and Sam Green. This panel was called the Doc Art Mix Tape, and dealt with different types of documentary filmmaking. At the beginning of the panel, the moderator announced that they had originally planned to have a more formal discussion on documentary filmmaking, but that they had noticed recently that much of the discussion around documentary film has become quite negative. The moderator said that Sundance views this as a problem, especially in the wake of the vast number of documentary films that are currently being produced. As a retaliation towards this trend, they decided that the panel would just be a discussion from Ross and Sam about their favorite clips from documentaries, and why these clips were their favorite. This lent itself to a rather disjointed and quite enjoyable discussion of documentary. However, within the disjointed and informal nature of the presentation, there were several key truths that were especially pertinent. 

The first of these truths is that the most important thing when dealing with people is to have empathy for the subject. Empathy allows you as a filmmaker to connect with the subject, no matter how foreign they are to you. The empathy that the filmmaker feels naturally comes across in the final project, and allows the audience to feel empathy for the subject. Empathy is what will connect your audience to the subject of your film. Having compassion for the subject of your film brings out their humanity, no matter how much you disagree with them. Having compassion and empathy for the subjects of your film are two of the most important things that can be accomplished in documentary filmmaking. These tools allow the filmmaker to depict subjects that are three-dimensional, and are fully developed. Having compassion for even the most ornery of characters acknowledges that the people around us are more complicated than we ever fully give them credit for, and that we do not ever fully understand the people that we come in contact with. Choosing empathy allows for a more full understanding of the subject, as well as an acknowledgment that there is probably some good in that person. 

Another key documentary principle was the idea that extraordinary things can happen within restrictions. This was discussed mainly in the context of a documentary called In the Dark, by Sergei Dvortsevoy. This documentary dealt with a blind man who mainly spent his time in his small apartment in Russia. Because of his physical restrictions, the filmmakers were restricted in space and interesting things to shoot. However, by adopting a fair dose of patience, they were able to create a documentary filled with an extraordinary amount of emotion and create something that was so much more than the perceived circumstances. So many documentary filmmakers are subject to restrictions. The main one is definitely money. Is there enough money to shoot what we want to shoot? There are also restrictions on time, access, and even freedom of speech in some parts of the world. However, the gist of this forum was that we should be embracing our restrictions, because they force us to be creative, to come up with solutions, and to create extraordinary things. This same concept can be seen across the documentary world. One pertinent example is that of This is Not a Film, a 2011 film by Jafar Panahi, who was banned from making documentary films by the Iranian government. Instead of submitting to the will of an oppressive regime, Panahi works around his restrictions, and ends up creating an extraordinary film.  

There were many other bits of wisdom that were shared through the course of this forum. The filmmakers encouraged everyone to give dignity to all of their subjects, to include as immersive imagery as possible, to have a clear artistic vision, and to above all be rigorously honest and as transparent as possible. Overall. the filmmakers encouraged everyone present to keep a driving curiosity about the world around us. In the end, there is no one right way to make a documentary, and we need to be engaged with the world around us if we are going to be successful in this endeavor.