Documentary Fictions - Reading Response
This reading response comes after reading + digesting the "Documentary Fictions" sections (pp 180-197) in Documents of Contemporary Art: DOCUMENTARY
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This section of the book consists of interviews with different documentary makers, regarding their overall thought processes behind their films. While each one was different in their approach, they all seemed to want to share the typically unshared truths, such as the point of view of a landscape, a movie extra, or a civilian during war.
The idea of fictional aspects being used to create a documentary is appealing to me. In a nutshell, everything is a bit departed from the actual truth, and every documentary put together carries the bias of those who made it. Even a photographer takes time to compose the shots involved, which can alter the "truth" of the image depending on what is shown and what is left out. Setting up the shot causes every picture to be the truth as it is filtered through someone else, and my truth may be different from your truth, even if we're shooting the same thing. While dissecting the editing techniques of the Soviets, it's become more apparent that differences in editing can completely change the meaning of something.
It makes sense then that clearly fictional aspects can weave their way in and out of a (truthful) historical documentary with ease. There seems to be a blurry line between when this can be used, with its effectiveness resting on the ability for the fictional to blend in with the historical truths. One way to utilize fictional elements to present a truth of history is to create hysterical documents. These are a created truth based on the stories and memories from different people. In one example, Walid Raad documents the wars of Lebanon (not the Lebanon Civil War) by using this very technique. Another way to fictionally represent the truth is to set up a shot: take the landscape, nearby items, and people and arrange them in an artistic way. This uses all aspects of the "true" history (all the things that are there at that time), but it is curated to show or not show certain elements, thereby asserting a certain meaning as presented by the photographer.
What then, is the truth? It's all about perspective, and that's the truth.
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This section of the book consists of interviews with different documentary makers, regarding their overall thought processes behind their films. While each one was different in their approach, they all seemed to want to share the typically unshared truths, such as the point of view of a landscape, a movie extra, or a civilian during war.
The idea of fictional aspects being used to create a documentary is appealing to me. In a nutshell, everything is a bit departed from the actual truth, and every documentary put together carries the bias of those who made it. Even a photographer takes time to compose the shots involved, which can alter the "truth" of the image depending on what is shown and what is left out. Setting up the shot causes every picture to be the truth as it is filtered through someone else, and my truth may be different from your truth, even if we're shooting the same thing. While dissecting the editing techniques of the Soviets, it's become more apparent that differences in editing can completely change the meaning of something.
It makes sense then that clearly fictional aspects can weave their way in and out of a (truthful) historical documentary with ease. There seems to be a blurry line between when this can be used, with its effectiveness resting on the ability for the fictional to blend in with the historical truths. One way to utilize fictional elements to present a truth of history is to create hysterical documents. These are a created truth based on the stories and memories from different people. In one example, Walid Raad documents the wars of Lebanon (not the Lebanon Civil War) by using this very technique. Another way to fictionally represent the truth is to set up a shot: take the landscape, nearby items, and people and arrange them in an artistic way. This uses all aspects of the "true" history (all the things that are there at that time), but it is curated to show or not show certain elements, thereby asserting a certain meaning as presented by the photographer.
What then, is the truth? It's all about perspective, and that's the truth.
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