Truth Through Documentary
My acts of provocation and heresy are a way of flushing out these frightened ones who are not interested in the expression of an ultimate, indefinable idea of truth with all of its messy and upsetting ramifications. They prefer a more palatable truth, which is their fantasy of it (and which they want to prescribe for the rest of us). I think of their fantasy as something like the truth in a box - giftwrapped and with a nice satin ribbon on top. You only need to delicately pull that ribbon and peek inside in order to get at it - to have the truth. Exploitation and the truth Do we really need to gaze to discover truth? ... Are documentarians really doing what they should finding truth bringing it to the masses-or is the real truth that no one wants to know what is really happening, and the “gods” or masterminds are the people who figure out a way for us to watch it and to actually be enternained-as much as we may scrunch our eyes we find it marvelous-genious-and that is the truth. To me documentary is another form of entertainment-we would not watch it if it wasn’t done well- bad lighting or poor sound- would not be considered beautiful film work- how can you make beautiful the suffering? ... The truth to me is a film that brings knowledge-show us what is happeing- how and why –and what can be done-a folk singer Ani Difranco puts it best- “if your not doing anything to change the world, your just in the way.” As truth in documentary film could be dissected in multiple fashions I intend to explore it through exploitation- the truth to me is that every documentary is exploitative, every film that gazes at another is using that person to help their film-deliver their message-there is no altruistic act-no filmmaker seeks to spend years and years working on a piece and then to receive no recognition- O’Rourkes comment “These days, I feel more rewarded when certain sanctimonious critics are upset or outraged by my films, rather than when they smugly praise them,” is not truth it is elitist.