The following is an email I got from an old friend of mine from film school. The last time I'd heard of him was a couple of years ago when he went into a doc production as a DoP. He had sent me an email then, mentioning that he could be coming to my city to shoot some footage. He never did and I completely lost him until now...
Dear Pyke
as you probably know I'm photographing this doc for some years now. It's a project for a doctorate anthropologist and in the beginning what we tried to do is reverse Rouch. A new (?) notion of ethnography or urban ethnography if you like that would take us in busy cities around the world to watch the melting pot of modern society. I remember discussing a similar project with you so I thought you'd be interested. First, I started to realise that the anthropologist (don't get me wrong he's a good friend and a remarkable man) is almost overpowered by the image. I should have warned him, I know. Simply put, he creates an academic formula through this film by trying to manipulate the people he's interviewing. Subsequently he's not recording reality he's making it happen pulling the strings. In doc history this is all but rare but this is not a Broomfield or Michael Moore doc. If scientists (and of that particular discipline) are 'cooking' up human behaviour just to make an impression and get a Uni chair, we can't say a word no more about the colonial (fascist) imagery of the giant networks.
Through digital technology practically anyone can shoot a video but tell me what ever happened to subjectivity? Call me naive, but what ever happened to Jean Rouch's idea of ethnography on film? Technology liberated us only to be drown again into this gigantic pit where everyman's an island. Images are so plenty that we're sick of them. Disposable, out of any historical context, snapshots of the huge 'Nothing' thtat surrounds us. The images I'm producing they're not mine anymore even if I did shoot them. Edit them anyway you like and they become the complete opposite from the truth I tried to freeze. Truth becomes a big lie with a click of a button.
Now either I disown what I've spent two years shooting and go on making my own docs (creating yet another remote island) or stop right here and go to work in another field! Not much of alternatives, right?
Louis
Paris, August 2007
(video excerpt from "Les Maitres Fous" by Jean Rouch)Through digital technology practically anyone can shoot a video but tell me what ever happened to subjectivity? Call me naive, but what ever happened to Jean Rouch's idea of ethnography on film? Technology liberated us only to be drown again into this gigantic pit where everyman's an island. Images are so plenty that we're sick of them. Disposable, out of any historical context, snapshots of the huge 'Nothing' thtat surrounds us. The images I'm producing they're not mine anymore even if I did shoot them. Edit them anyway you like and they become the complete opposite from the truth I tried to freeze. Truth becomes a big lie with a click of a button.
Now either I disown what I've spent two years shooting and go on making my own docs (creating yet another remote island) or stop right here and go to work in another field! Not much of alternatives, right?
Louis
Paris, August 2007
Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding, I asked Louis before posting his email. And he told me that TrashcanLullabies has been shown to the filmmaker-anthropologist he's talking about who not only thought it was ok but also agreed to what his Director of Photography says!
ReplyDelete