The Documentary Interview

Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010) Directed by Banksy, here...

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:59:28 -0400

Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010) Directed by Banksy, here interviewed to help set up the complex structure of the film.”Uh, well, the film is uh the story of what happened when this guy tried to make a documentary about me, but he was actually a lot more interesting than I am. “
If you look closely you can see the black mask over the hoodie hole ensuring that the director/star reveals zero facial information.

Portrait of Jason (1967) Directed by Shirley Clarke....

Sat, 04 May 2013 10:00:43 -0400

Portrait of Jason (1967) Directed by Shirley Clarke. Cinematography by Jeri Sopanen. The whole film is one extended interview, punctuated by reel breaks. But it’s much more complicated than that - it’s really a performer’s series of autobiographical setpieces that eventually break down under the withering pressure of camera, drugs, and interview questions.

Here the eponymous Jason Holliday sets up the central tension of the film. “What I really want to do is what I’m doing now is perform.”

Zoo (2007) Director Robinson Devor. Director of Photography Sean...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:47:52 -0400

Zoo (2007) Director Robinson Devor. Director of Photography Sean Kirby.
This is the one on-camera interview in a film that’s defined by disembodied voices and gorgeous reenactments dancing around an infamous death-by-bestiality case in Washington state.

Michael Minard, one of the actors in the film, here describes his feelings about the case and his willingness to recognize the tragedy of the death. “The cold harsh brutal reality is a man bled to death. OK? And as I researched my role and revisited some articles I had read a year prior and also some new information, you know, I thought about, I thought about what was going through this man’s mind as he was bleeding to death.”

Wonder Women! The Untold Story of America Superheroines (2012)....

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:34:00 -0400

Wonder Women! The Untold Story of America Superheroines (2012). Director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan. Director of Photography Gabriel Miller. Airing April 15 on Independent Lens.

This is cultural historian Jennifer Stuller summarizing the significance of Wonder Woman after the character’s many permutations. “Wonder Women became associated with feminism and has been this recognizable icon of female power for decades after. Regardless of what’s happened with her character, regardless of what stories are told about her, she is a symbol of female power.”

Zizek! (2005). Director Astra Taylor. Cinematography by Martina...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:41:21 -0400

Zizek! (2005). Director Astra Taylor. Cinematography by Martina Radwan and Jesse Epstein. The film is a sampler of the incomparable Slavoj Zizek. You won’t understand most of it, but you’ll understand just enough to want to learn more.

Here Zizek has an appropriately remarkable backdrop for his explanation and dismissal of psychoanalysis. “You cannot set yourself free to enjoy. Pleasure is not accessible to you. It is accessible to you only in pathological forms of feeling guilty and so on. So then the idea is psychoanalysis allows you to suspend overcome this internalized prohibitions so that it enables you to enjoy….The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.”

Colony (2009). Directors Carter Gunn & Ross McDonnell. Shot...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:32:31 -0500

Colony (2009). Directors Carter Gunn & Ross McDonnell. Shot by McDonnell. Backlight, layers, smoke in glass.

Here is biologist Randy Oliver providing the film’s most convincing theory on the possible causes of CCD - Colony Collapse Disorder. “What we may be seeing right now is because of the inbred stock of honey bees… tremendous genetic bottleneck. Well, if you have that narrow gene pool and a new pathogen comes in, you expect to have very large losses.”

Charlotte Rampling: The Look (2011). Director Angelina...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:36:53 -0500

Charlotte Rampling: The Look (2011). Director Angelina Maccarone. Director of Photography Judith Kauffman. This film is structured around movie clips and conversations between Rampling and some of her key collaborators. But the heart of the piece is Rampling’s own words, as she waxes poetic on her theories of performance, life, beauty etc.

“The camera has to be the most intimate friend when you’re filming, or when you’re being photographed. The camera is always going to be there watching you. So you need to get into a space where everything, everything that can happen is OK, so you can go really, really, really far, but it’s going to be OK because it’s a friendly space that you’re in.”

Whores’ Glory (2011). Directed by Michael Glawogger....

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:58:35 -0500

Whores’ Glory (2011). Directed by Michael Glawogger. Cinematography by Wolfgang Thaler. This “cinematic tryptych” is almost as dark as it sounds. It veers between the shocking and the banal in the lives of whores, pimps and johns in three brothel districts around the world.

That uneasy balance is especially clear with this unnamed john in Faridpur, Bangladesh. He describes his consumer act while he shaves a man’s entire face. “When I have a break I go to the bazaar and fuck, to enjoy myself. I go at least once or twice a day. It’s all I think about. Without the Faridpur brothel district, women couldn’t go out on the street without being molested. Men would be so horny they would rape them. Without those women, men would be screwing cows and goats.”

Beyond (2012). Directed and shot by Cale Glendening. This is a...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:26:55 -0500

Beyond (2012). Directed and shot by Cale Glendening. This is a travelogue about still photographer Joey Lawrence shooting in Varanasi, India. It’s orientalism at it’s finest. The photographer might not appreciate that categorization, and he makes a point of saying in interview that his modern techniques situate his subjects in the 21st century.

Here is Magesh, one of the Aghori sadhus of the area, referring to the human skull, which they incorporate into their rituals. “We are all going to become this. Death is something everyone is scared of. All the people are scared of death. One way or another, they are going to die.”

Frontline’s The Suicide Plan (2012). Directors Miri...

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:18:00 -0500

Frontline’s The Suicide Plan (2012). Directors Miri Navasky & Karen O’Connor. Director of Photography Ben McCoy. I love the color palette and portraiture lighting in this most intimate of interviews.

This is Art Butterstein fighting back tears as he describes his wife’s imminent death by suicide. “I don’t think any of us will be fully prepared. We’ll make the effort. We’ll steel ourselves to the point of no return and we’ll make sure that we go through it. And once it’s complete, I’ll hold her, and I’ll kiss her… “

Indie Game: The Movie (2012). Directed by Lisanne Pajot and...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:52:21 -0500

Indie Game: The Movie (2012). Directed by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky. He gets the DP credit. The two of them did virtually everything on this film, including a meticulous edit and a self-distribution campaign that made this a bestselling documentary on iTunes.

The cinematography is simple but careful, pretty, and naturally lit. Here is Ron Carmel, one of the developers of World of Goo, setting up some backstory. “The one major thing that made this possible is the rise of digital distribution. It used to be that retailers had a lot of power over every game creation company because that was the only avenue available to sell games.”

A Very British Gangster (2007). Director Donal MacIntyre....

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:17:31 -0500

A Very British Gangster (2007). Director Donal MacIntyre. Cinematographers Nick Manley and Mike Turnbull. This is a profile of a Manchester gangster named Dominic Noonan with shocking access. There’s a lot not to like about this film, but the cinematography, which feasts on the film set that is Manchester, is kind of amazing.

Here is Dominic with his young thugs on guard in the background, describing the reaction of one prison guard during an escape disguised as a kidnapping. “He admitted in court that he pissed his pants. He said I just pissed me pants in the back of the car. I could hear him pissing anyway. And I remember saying to him don’t let ‘em take me. Don’t take the cuffs off and he said I can’t. I can’t stop ‘em. I can’t stop ‘em. Cuz they had the gun pressed against him, saying take the cuffs off.”

The Arbor (2010). Director Clio Barnard. Director of Photography...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:22:00 -0400

The Arbor (2010). Director Clio Barnard. Director of Photography Ole Birkeland. It’s a bit of a cheat for me to call this a documentary interview, but it’s too pretty to ignore. It’s a filmic take on verbatim theater, wherein audio interviews are lip-synced by actors. It’s a concept I always associate with The Laramie Project, and it’s used to great effect here to tell the story of playwright Andrea Dunbar and multigenerational tragedy in a slum of Bradford, England.

Here is Christine Bottomley playing Lisa Thompson, one of Dunbar’s daughters. “I can remember Lorraine setting the bedroom on fire. And I were only young then. I were probably only about five. But still to this day if you talk about it to me aunties and stuff and this they’ll say ‘We don’t know which one of youse it were.’ And I’m like ‘It weren’t me’ because I can actually remember it to this day. She were messing with matches and the mattress caught fire.”

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010). Directed by...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:09:30 -0400

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010). Directed by Craig McCall. Cinematography by Ricardo Coll. A Technicolor camera spins slowly in the background throughout the interview. Coll tells me that the single, diffused key was inspired by Cardiff’s stories about lighting his subjects without overwhelming them with hot lights.

Here Cardiff, the cinematographer of The Red Shoes, describes his very first job as a runner on a film set. “The director had some kind of flatulence problem. He had to be given some Vichy water [apparently nature’s Alka-Seltzer]. And I had to hand him fresh cold Vichy water any time of the day, so I had to sort of have it all ready.”

The Island President (2011). Director and Cinematographer Jon...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 10:56:00 -0400

The Island President (2011). Director and Cinematographer Jon Shenk.

Mohamed Nasheed, while president of The Maldives, recounting the political torture carried out by predecessor Maumoon Gayoom. “I’ve seen it many times, the beatings. I’ve felt the beatings many times. I know how you would feel when you have, you know, when death is just right around the corner.”

Into the Abyss (2011). Director Werner Herzog. Cinematography by...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 23:30:26 -0400

Into the Abyss (2011). Director Werner Herzog. Cinematography by Peter Zeitlinger.

Here is Charles Richardson recalling the moment when he learned of his brother’s death. The depth of field and the layered composition keep the interview as riveting as its subject. “My first thought was, you know, Jason was just driving being stupid the way he normally was and had wrecked. And then she told me no. Jason shot my brother over a car. I just fell out. I fell out.”

Project Nim (2011). Director James Marsh. Cinematographer...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:50:19 -0400

Project Nim (2011). Director James Marsh. Cinematographer Michael Simmonds.

All the interviews are shot in a studio with layered neutral backdrops. In the wide shots you see the paper rolls hit the floor. The text graphics bring to life the breakthrough described by Laura Ann Petitto, a student while she trained Nim Chimpsky and now a neuroscientist and psychology professor.

“Herb started seeing the signs grow on that little graph, every day, every other day, every three days. Laura taught him another sign. Laura taught him another sign. And I just went hell for leather.”

They Were There (2011). By Errol Morris, no cinematographer...

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:00:05 -0400

They Were There (2011). By Errol Morris, no cinematographer credit. IBM shelled out for an industrial by the best in the biz to mark its 100 year anniversary, complete with a Philip Glass score. It’s a little too on-point with messaging to make for an interesting film, but it includes this particular frame and facial expression, so in my mind it’s a film worth watching.

Barry Franz recounts IBM’s presentation to the committee that created the UPC code. “The door opened and if I recall right three people came in. One was a very unique IBM individual. He didn’t look to me like the kind of IBM people I’d been associated with. If I recall right, his suit may have been brown.” Apparently this brown suit could sell widgets, because IBM got the contract and now there are UPC codes everywhere on our planet. It’s even become one more clichéd option when customers choose a tattoo, a UPC code as an act of rebellious irony. Or maybe they’re just sci-fi fans.

Thanks to John Shand for suggesting this film. It’s a good one to illustrate Morris’s signature style. May we all deliver such artistry to our corporate clients.

Waste Land (2010). Director Lucy Walker. Director of Photography...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:35:00 -0400

Waste Land (2010). Director Lucy Walker. Director of Photography Dudu Miranda. The color palette and lighting and wardrobe all help turn this into a glamour shot, that just happens to be set at the world’s largest landfill. To match the image, Magna explains her dignity in working as a catadore, or trash picker.

“We would get on the bus and people would go like this. [sniffs] It got to the point where I’d say: excuse me ma’am, but do I stink? Do you smell something bad? It’s because I was working over there in the dump. It’s better than turning tricks in Copacabana. I find it to be more interesting and more honest. It’s more dignified.”

Inside Deep Throat (2005). Directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Inside Deep Throat (2005). Directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Cinematography by David Kempner and Teodoro Maniaci.

This is one of several interviews with Gerard Damiano, director of that most legendary porno. It all just gels in this frame, replete with bowling shirt, leopard print bedspread, high-waisted pants, and a rear reflection reminiscent of ceiling mirrors. Here Damiano waxes nostalgic. “All of a sudden there was a new word. It was called ‘film-maker’. You became an independent filmmaker. We were actually doing it, and we couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t believe it. And thank God there was such a thing as sex.”