16.9

Today we officially started on the new, or rather our first, unit: documentaries.

There are three major types of film making: documentary - non-fiction, about true events, depicting 'real' people; narrative - fictional; and experimental - uses only highly stylized images and sound to create a visual landscape, often has no clear story, manipulates reality. I've never heard of something called experimental films before and it seemed very abstract, because it seemed to have little meaning to it other than to create stylized images. It started from the avant-garde movement in Europe during the 1920's. It aimed to push the boundaries of what was considered the normal, or the status quo. I don't think there are much proper or professional experimental films because most of the time when a film is made, a story is told or an opinion is given or a message is given across. People want to make it just a little bit realistic, even if it's a narrative, so that the audience or the viewers can feel more connected to it.

We looked at two documentaries; Bowling for Columbine, directed by Michael Moore and No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese. Bowling for Columbine is about the 1999 Columbine shooting, and it poses the leading question of how and why did this event happen. No Direction Home is a biopic about musician Bob Dylan, and I think the leading question of this film would be "What was his impact on 20th century American pop music and pop culture?". Bowling for Columbine was praised for talking about an issue that was slighted by the mainstream media at the time. I think what Marilyn Manson said in the interview in the documentary, about how instead of talking about gun control and violence in our country, instead of focusing on how the President is sending bombs overseas, we should focus on these boys, this kind of relates to that idea.

I think it's really nice how we are constantly learning new things and gaining new insights to things we had thought about one way before, and now think about it another way, from another perspective. I used to think documentaries weren't as interesting as narrative films, because well, who doesn't love fictional storytelling? I think that by really understanding how documentaries work, learning about them, watching documentaries and sort of analyzing them, there's a whole new world to them. Although documentaries depict real events and 'real' people, there are still many careful considerations gone into the editing and compilation of the clips, as it is still a film meant for the viewers. Just like in No Direction Home, when the first section of the opening part transitions into the second, it's very abrupt. It's a sudden transition from dark to light, a noisy environment to a silent one, from a hand-held camera like quality to a still image. That was done deliberately, possibly to convey innocence, purity, starting fresh or "going back to the beginning of the story" in a sense, because the film is showing clips of the past.

"You can't handle the truth!" - A Few Good Men