"Father, Son and Holy War" amongst 50 all-time favourites in world cinema
Preface to DOX 50
January 2004
"Films are like love stories: there are those you'll never
forget,
the
ones
that carried you away, swept you off your feet, shook you up." That is
how Suzette Glenadel introduces her piece for DOX 50 and expresses the quintessence
of this jubilee edition: 50 (+1) love stories. DOX 50 contains essays on 51
of
the kind of films that have made an indelible impression on the 51 authors
of this publication, and which for some even became a determining factor in
how
they spent their lives. (We approached more than 50 persons as we knew some
would decline, which is why we ended up with 51 instead of 50).
The authors are filmmakers, critics, festival directors, commissioning editors
and film connoisseurs, all of whom are spending their lives making, watching
and working for the advancement of the documentary. They were all asked to
write about their favourite documentary of all time. In a few cases we have
asked them
to make a second choice, as we wanted 50 different films - and 50 different
filmmakers - to be saluted. It was quite exciting to see what films this would
end up with
- the result was a selection that includes a wide range of documentary films
both historically speaking - from Wopaiz das amazonas (1922) to History of
a Secret (2003) - and geographically, as the films originate from almost every
continent.
The selection also reflects one of the prime virtues of the genre: its abundance.
The short poems (Glass;Seasons), and the long cinema verite films (High School
II; Love Meetings), the very political films (Land without Bread; Father, Son
and Holy War), the personal life stories (History of a Secret) and those borderline
films that usually are classified as fiction (Calendar; Still Life).
The latter are titles that one could arguably assert don't belong in a magazine
celebrating the documentary, but since the whole discussion of defining a documentary
in relation to fiction has been an issue from the very beginning, we thought
it would be natural to include them. And it only stresses one of the most interesting
aspects of the documentary: it has so many different expressions that it transcends
borders with other genres. It's very much a genre undergoing continuous development
that creates debate - not only about its subjects but also about its form.
Richard Leacock remarks in his essay about Robert Flaherty's Moana that this
was an issue from the very beginning: "No-one anywhere in 1925 could make
films without intervention, and it is important to realize that the man who talked
of non-intervention and not writing scripts was not Flaherty, but the Soviet
filmmaker Dziga Vertov, and he only talked about it and was no more able to do
it than anyone else." (Richard Leacock about Moana by Robert Flaherty)
In the early days, this whole issue was also influenced, of course, by the
limited technological possibilities. Today when the possibilities seem limitless,
it
is a matter of a filmmaker's stylistic choice, and there is a tendency to want
to use this liberty to move more freely across genres. Sergio Borelli describes
it as follows:
"Both doc and fiction are stories. Doc might be fake as much
as fiction might be true. A story cannot be anything but a story, and its relation
to truth is in its meaning, not its form, in its message, not its style. Let's
emancipate our creativity from the moral shackles of pseudo-realism! Even the
seal in Nanook of the North was a fake!" (Sergio Borelli about Black Harvest
by Bob Connolly)
This is one issue that preoccupies several authors, while others are more concerned
with the potential and political impact of the documentary. Throughout history,
documentaries have been considered quite powerful. Several of the filmmakers
whose works are written about in this publication have been deported or forced
to flee from their country or their films have been banned or held back by
various regimes or governments. Measures that were taken out of fear for the
effect of this powerful medium, which could tell the people about events and
conditions
the authorities were trying to conceal. Luis Bunuel's Land without Bread was
banned, as were Marcel Lozinski's films in the 1970s. Joris Ivens couldn't
enter
the Netherlands for years as his Dutch passport had been confiscated, Patricio
Guzman was arrested by the Pinochet regime and eventually had to flee the country.
All because they had been making films the authorities were afraid of. And
as DOX 50 can also bear witness to, filmmakers of today continue that tradition
by using their skills to document the injustice and wrongdoings of the world:
"
Anand Patwardhan keeps watching the madness unfolding before him. He always wants
to be a witness to the tragedy and the cynical comedy of our times. I believe
that it's one of the best ways for the documentary filmmaker to take action in
the world". (Sato Makoto about Father, Son and Holy
War by Anand Patwardhan)
Not only witnessing but also the way of portraying what happens is a major
concern of the documentary: the ability to show the complexity of the world,
instead
of the single-minded picture often provided by the news media, which focus
on sharp angles and easy answers to everything. Jose Manuel Costa observes:
"
Today, this is precisely what political documentary can be: before standardized
strategies to shape our attention and reception modes, the radical concreteness
and the radical abstractness of Wiseman films - their refusal to provide us with
o meaning - are major subversive responses." (Jose Manuel Costa about
High School II by Frederick Wiseman)
DOX 50 is a celebration of every filmmaker who has put everything on the line
- some have even risked and are still risking their lives, others 'just' their
money - to bring us new perspectives on the world we all live in; to provide
us with intense sensory experiences, to get us to laugh and to cry - to create
great films. We are very grateful to them for continuing to create that special
magic which documentaries are capable of, a magic best described by some of
the authors:
"
Courage, rage, humility and tenderness. They're all here. Real poetry, poetry
that makes people listen, surrounding our daily lives, barging into interpersonal
encounters, just waiting for us to stand still and look. Profound, all-encompassing
humanism. Which says that there is no such thing as 'Them' and 'Us'. They are
Us." (Margreth Olin about A Decent Life by Stefan Jarl)
"
What I see is not just a group of ordinary Armenian shepherds who save their
sheep from death, but infinitely deep and, at the same time, universal images
of Man and Creation. Simple, beautiful and inexplicable as life itself." (Sergey
Dvortsevoy about Seasons by Artavadz Pelechian)
"
They challenge our attention span, rewarding our patience with gentle epiphanies,
making us feel like we discovered something all on our own. They pleasure us
with a fine aesthetic sense one moment, then confront us with a veritable crudeness
the next. All the while they present a story - about being." (Peter Mettler
about The Long Holiday and Amsterdam Global Village by Johan van der Keuken)
The above quotes are appetizers for what this issue has to offer, clever observations
of and reflections on the documentary - and then, of course, there are also
the films. The texts will take you on a first date or be a reunion with 51
documentary
film classics. We are grateful to the authors who took up the challenge and
contributed their expertise and personal experience. Thank you, all of you.
Ulla Jacobsen, Editor, D0X