Gripping Reality (con't)

McNamara

 

Erin Faith Young used this mentality in her first film, Hardwood. It follows the director, the son of a former Harlem Globetrotter, as he examines his family, including his absentee father. The critically acclaimed film grabbed a nomination at the 2005 Academy Awards for Best Short Documentary.

“My role while I was there was to make sure everything was easy and flowing smoothly,” she says. “The director doesn’t have to think about where the dolly is or if a location is booked. I even remember Hubert (the director) leaving the Vancouver shoot saying it was the best shoot he’d ever had. I felt that way too.”

It’s strange how the director aims for the emotional in a documentary. Western culture doesn’t handle strong emotion very well. When real emotions are at stake, the director must create a sensitive atmosphere, even if it’s not what they’re feeling. Anderson came across that on a shoot once.

“I was interviewing a famous historian in Britain named E.P. Thompson. He’s a practiced speaker, tells really good stories, and he was talking about World War II and being part of a campaign to support the partisans, people fighting against the Nazis. We were just talking about the period and he must have been thinking of people who had died. All of a sudden he just stops and starts to cry. I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh great, now what am I going to do?’ I realized later we were all so intently listening to him, it was so quiet, and he was talking about something painful while the camera was on him that he just got overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment. It just goes to show you that you don’t even have to be talking about anything particularly personal. The camera sometimes acts as an accelerator to truth.”

The camera can also be detrimental to gaining personal insight. She’s experienced both sides of the documentary filmmaking experience in her career.

“The hardest film I ever had to do was a film about Che Guevara. Nobody wanted to talk about him because they were scared. It was the least satisfying film because I had to convince everyone of my intentions and they always doubted me. They were never truly forthcoming. Everyone was so cagey because I was talking about somebody who’d been misinterpreted so many times. People weren’t going to let me do my interpretation. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t be nicer. I couldn’t be more honest. It was just impossible. Sometimes you come back from shooting and you have no film.”

“I heard through contacts about this one person and I went to see them without a camera. I knew if they were in my film their life would be very uncomfortable, so I didn’t put them in. I could’ve insisted. I don’t know if they would have said yes. I didn’t go there because I already knew I couldn’t protect them. It’s not worth it if it’s going to make their life very difficult. It’s my code of ethics. You leave and they have to stay.”

 

 

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