Llik Your Idols/Advocate for Fagdom director Angelique Bosio (interviewed below and in our upcoming zine about her second feature) has spent the past year or so shooting a film about Parisian lingerie designer Fifi Chachnil, and is looking for funds to complete the project.
This pledge-based funding model (used so effectively recently by Summer Camp in funding their debut album) is a really interesting one, and one with huge implications for filmmakers if it does take off. The target is €4200, and there are plenty of goodies on offer for your euros. You can read about the project (in French) and consider your pledges here. Well worth your time and diminishing single european currency.
has produced some of our favourite documentaries of the past decade. You’ll most likely know her from DiG! (2004), the odyssey of Anton Newcombe and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their friendship and jealous feud with The Dandy Warhols as both bands struggle to make it (or struggle against making it), and from last year’s We Live In Public, the story of internet pioneer Josh Harris.
Harris was one of the first to cotton on to the potential of the internet, and set up a series of pre-broadband web TV channels, before launching an auspicious Big Brother style project called “Quiet: We Live In Public” in which 100 artist residents were denied all personal space save an open bunk, filmed around the clock on myriad webcams and able to watch eachother 24/7. The results were chaotic, fascinating and occasionally depraved, as self-control was abandoned, positions of authority were abused and the experiment began to disintegrate under it’s own conditions. Harris followed this by rigging his own house with hundreds of cameras and putting his daily routine and relationship with his girlfriend under constant surveillance, broadcast to the world via the internet, and allowing the world to interact and chat with the couple. Harris’s relationship collapsed under the strain, his fortunes soured, and eventually he fled the country to avoid his financial woes. Ondi’s film follows Harris from the glory days at the turn of the millennium to the present, ultimately asking powerful questions about our use of the internet and the extent to which we share our private lives online.
Ondi Timoner’s documentaries are very much about time, accompanying their subjects through years of their lives and witnessing these lives unfolding. Join Us (2007) follows the intimate story of a group of families as they grapple with the emotions and crises faced when attempting to leave a small-town cult and un-do years of brainwashing. The families are candid in revealing their experiences – their horror at their own blindness, their feelings of loss and loneliness, their compulsions to return - and Ondi’s camera is open and sympathetic, yet when meeting the cult leader, the Pastor of their church, the film does not assume a position of judgement, allowing the Pastor to voice his own seemingly heartfelt, if delusional, side of the story with equal emotion. The disappointment and confusion of the Pastor’s faithful wife is particularly affecting.
In spending such lengths of time with her subjects and immersing us in their world in such a direct and honest way, Ondi has created a series of unique and fascinating films, each one bringing to the fore the larger questions and implications of the story, while remaining at the same time intimate portraits, films about groups of people who are at turns lost, obsessive, misguided, driven, destructive and brilliant. We recently had the pleasure of speaking to Ondi about her own journeys and obsessions.
The Pictures: How did you get into filmmaking and what did you make of your early work, did you enjoy it?
Ondi Timoner: My early work? What do you mean, do you want to talk about the very beginning?
TP: Yes, I do.
OT: Starting at the very beginning. OK, well I was 19 and I asked my parents if I could have a you know little consumer video camera for Christmas or the holidays and they said yes and they gave me a camera that I ended up calling Flo, that was her name, and I took her on the road and first thing we did, me and my brother was go across the country and we interviewed people in toll booths and convenience stores about what makes them happy and what they fear the most and what they think of gays in the military cos those were sort of the questions of the day and I quickly learned that my camera was this bridge into worlds that I could never otherwise enter, and that it was in fact you know, a way to learn, and, in an extraordinary way that I had never had access to before and I’m not the kind of person that, I’m not like a book learner you know? I’m a, more of a people learner, I learn from other people and from interaction and, even at Yale where I was, at Yale at the time, I would get so much more out of the lectures you know than I would out of the books and so this camera became like this way in and by my senior year I only took classes where the teacher would agree to let me make a film instead of write a paper for my final project.
TP: Oh cool.
OT: So by the end of school I was making a film about women in prison called Voices From Inside Time for a class called Transgressive Women in American Culture and it was really quite, quite an incredible way to learn and so when you know I graduated, a lot of people graduate from Yale and go on to these very high paying jobs and everybody was kind of looking at me when I said I was gonna go be a documentary filmmaker but I felt like it was just the perfect yin-yang because I would go out into the world, say I went to the prison, I would have this access to speak to these women you know and really humanise them and find out why they were in there and that they loved their children and break down the stereotypes you know? And learn myself and be there for as long as it took and give myself over to the muse, and then I got to go to the edit bay, and Yale had no production facility so we did everything at this public access station, ha, and you know, thank god for the public access station but I would go to the edit bay and be in this quiet room, in all that I had learned and sorted out and figure out a way to communicate it for other people you know? So that they could learn and so it was like to me a perfect yin-yang and to this day you know the editing process is where the writing happens and you know I followed these films, these stories over a long period of time and it’s absolutely incredible to… to give, to basically work for 21, you know the first time on my movie Join Us I showed up at the cult treatment centre and shot for 21 hours that day, and I was blown away that these people who had just been through a mind control situation where their lives and their privacy and money and everything had been taken, their children had been beaten and yet they were opening up to me, and I just followed the muse you know and then you just, you put yourself in these situations where it’s not about you at all, it’s totally about life and capturing the serendipity of life and capturing the nuances of human experience and then, you know, then you go to the edit bay and it’s all about private time, quiet time, sorting it out and figuring it out and that’s where the revelations come a lot of the time, and so anyway it’s just been a beautiful process but I’m also moving into narrative films now.
I hate the word narrative, I’m sorry. Documentaries, my documentaries have narratives, ha, they have stories and they’re also dramatic so what I say is pre-scripted films with actors is what I’m moving into.
TP: Yes, fiction? So you mentioned that the films have very long stories and you have all the time to get to know the subjects, and I think that makes them really satisfying as well, that you can see everything unfold over such a long period… How do you tend to choose subjects, and is it always the case that the story goes on for a long time and you’re around for a long time, or does it sometimes cut short or… do you tend to try and find stories where there’ll be that length to it?
OT: No these stories find me. I can’t even take credit for finding them per se, I just have a strong intention, like for Dig I was really intent on exploring the intersection of art and commerce cos I’d made this film about this one woman in prison after the one I mentioned to you and that was called The Nature of the Beast and I had this woman’s life rights to go try and get it… I realised that people weren’t watching documentaries in the early ‘90s, and so I tried to get it to you know a larger audience by turning it into a TV movie or what have you, something to get 2 million housewives to write letters, and I quickly realised that you know the integrity of the story was being threatened by the industry, you know so here I am 21 years old and they’re like ‘this is a great story, you’re a producer, now get out of the way’, basically and so I started filming bands on the verge of getting signed to look at what would happen to me, and I was filming 10 bands over a year, that was my goal, and then I met Anton and he’s like ‘forget about those other bands, I’m taking over your documentary’ and I thought yeah right, and then he did, he did you know because I had my eyes open and he was, he was so compelling because he had such an antithetical relationship to the business and he was much more of a hyperbole than a lot of the other artists and musicians that were cowering in the shadows of the industry, do you know what I mean?
So he was quite, you know quite exciting, and then he actually said go meet the Dandy Warhols, we’re gonna start a revolution together, and I thought well I’ll go meet them and I did and they had no idea that he was planning to head up there to make a record with them and I thought well this is incredible, here they are, totally on the verge of getting a record out on Capital Records, ready to play the game, comfy cosy, totally stable band in Portland and this guy’s coming and they don’t even realise it, he’s coming to like start a revolution with them, haha, so… So eventually really I realised that I could look at everything I was looking at with the 10 bands with these 2, and then the story just kept going you know, and it’s not like I chose it as much as I just sort of you know stuck with it, I have tenacity and a sense of you know, I have tenacity and a sense of where to show up.
TP: Do you see yourself as… How involved are you in what actually happens in the films, like do you see your role as kind of a journalist-investigator, or are you more of a participant, or do you think it’s somewhere in between?
OT: I believe I’m an Interloper, it’s like what my company’s called.
TP: Oh, I see!
OT: Yes, I’m in the group but I’m taking notes at the same time.
TP: I didn’t notice that, the name of the company.
OT: Heh.
TP: But you’re in, briefly, a couple of the films, I think you’re in..
OT: Yeah, I’m in the bunker.
TP: What was it like staying in Quiet? Were you there the whole time? It looked pretty crazy…
OT: It was somewhat like playing dress up or something, it felt like this totally artificial community where we were supposed to be, you know all of us together and friends and you know it just kind of felt really, I don’t know how to describe it. It didn’t feel real and it felt uncomfortable and then it also kind of felt fun sometimes, like cereal bars, I expressed in the movie, but it was uncomfortable to be around these people that you didn’t know who they were, what was gonna happen or what they really were thinking about, you know like that woman attacked the other woman and there were people there, there was not a feeling of security to the place. It’s kind of amazing that it came out, that Josh got off as easy as he did.
TP: It looked like it had the potential to be pretty disturbing…
OT: Haha, it was, it was loud too, it was anything but quiet. He called it Quiet: We Live In Public and it was, you know, loud.
I was only there to direct it more than anything. I do believe that I should try to experience and be a part of what I’m filming to the extent that you know it’s good for the film, so I was there and I had a pod but I also had a hotel room and I also, you know, my thing was I had a walkie talkie and I had four camera people besides myself and I had a multiplex system where I ran the 110 surveillance cameras into one machine and then recorded to 12 different VCRs so I could record 12 different individual cameras and then one that I could do 9 screens or 4 screens so that was part of the art to me, was to record the pod situation or the virtual box situation as a metaphor for the virtual boxes that we’re all sort of in now and also use that as a way to monitor the place and know where the action was and be able to deploy real digital cameras with people behind them, you know what I mean?
TP: Going back to the way that the stories are very long and also that they have a lot of different film formats within them- I don’t know if that’s done in post, or if you experiment along the course of filming, but it gives a collage effect to the whole thing. Is that conscious and were there any particular influences on that style of filmmaking, or is it more just about experimenting with it as you go along?
OT: What was the original… experimenting with what? I think I missed…
TP: The look of the image, and the different formats that things are filmed on, like I don’t know if that’s done during filming or it’s a post-production thing.
OT: In all my films?
TP: Maybe not so much in Join Us, but in DiG certainly and in We Live In Public…
OT: Yeah, well in Dig, what happens is you end up filming over time and then technology changes, so you know I was filming on Hi-8 cameras and then me and my brother, back when my brother and I were following the bands in the early, mid ‘90s we had those kinds of cameras, then I remember the Hi-8 camera got stolen and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me probably because it forced me to upgrade to digital and thank god because the avid wouldn’t read Hi-8 and we always had to transfer the Hi-8s to digital, and when we transferred the Hi-8s to digital they went through sort of an effect where they started to look different and then you know we had Super-8 which we always loved to shoot and then we had 16mm and 35mm by the end, so there was just a lot of time going by and the ability and financial resources changing and technology changing and then at a certain point with Dig you know it’s all about putting it in a washing machine basically and making it look like it sort of fits together, like a quilt or something you know? And I love that, I think it’s totally appropriate because I think the goal of any film that, I mean certainly a documentary film and probably any film, but it’s easier with a pre-scripted actor film to create an environment that makes people feel like – people meaning the audience – feel like they’re there, they’re immersed you know. When you’re doing a documentary my whole thing about filming stories over time is that time provides the greatest narrative, and because suspense, even the slightest not knowing what’s gonna happen next, allows people to interact with a film in the way that a historical looking back film cannot do. Just does not happen. So that’s why... Hang on that’s my phone. Hold on OK? … OT (returns): …I had to talk to her, she’s my producer.
TP: Oh don’t worry about it. Umm…where were we? Talking about a quilt, and Dig, and….
OT: Quilt? Oh yeah yeah yeah. So it’s a very organic process of just kind of you know, whatever works. The form should follow the content. It’s very important that the film feel like what it is, so with We Live In Public it’s more of a silver bullet kind of film and even though some of the footage may look degraded cos it was recorded on a VHS, it’s still put inside a graphic motif that looks like today, it looks like our lives with the internet today and it feels like you know the music and the images and the graphics all feel like a combination of the cold steely technology and the kind of warmer humanity breaking through or trying to break through or how the virtual and physical worlds interact, you know I feel like all of that is in the look of We Live In Public, and so I’m quite proud of that and I feel like, or you know not proud but I’m happy that that’s how it turned out, then Join Us, same thing, Join Us feels very pastoral and is slower and quieter and it’s not as many formats because all that worked for that film was digital because it had to be extremely low impact because we were in on these therapy sessions, we were running into the cult leader’s house or we couldn’t really do anything more than that and then there was some surveillance when they go to the church, and then there’s Super 8 because it’s appropriate for them, you know?
But as soon as I put John Lennon – God in, on the credits, it was like no way, no way that the film could, the story could handle a big song, it needed like you know, it needed to have Iron and Wine and it needed to have Sufjan Stevens, whereas We Live In Public could have Jane’s Addiction and Nine Inch Nails and needed to have that, so, yeah, hope that makes sense.
TP: It does, and I think it’s a good parallel to draw between the music and the type of film it is cos in that type of documentary it can often feel quite musical, the image and film itself can feel quite musical, I mean especially in your films I think-
OT: Yeah, music’s really important, to me music’s the most powerful art form, hands down. It has the power to infiltrate your soul and your mind and your subconscious in a way that even film can’t do it in the same way, any visual medium can’t, you know it’s just, you’ll be able to listen to a song and the lyrics will go into your brain because of the beat, because of the rhythm of life and how that interacts and how the music actually is that, you know?
TP: Yeah, it’s really personal, it’s talking to you as you listen…
OT: Yeah and so you don’t even realise sometimes, you can be asleep and listening to music and wake up and have the lyrics in your head, that just doesn’t happen with any other art form, so it has the power of osmosis and it’s crucial to film.
TP: It is… I had three more questions, um, two of them fairly heavy, one nice
OT: Uh-oh.
TP: So… it seems like a lot of the subjects in the films are really driven people, but a lot of them in two directions at once, so they’re looking for very positive creative and producing very creative things, but often in a very self destructive way.
OT: Yeah.
TP: Like somebody in Join Us mentions their paths leading to death, I think the people in Dig talk about Anton’s house smelling of death.
OT: Yeah, well that’s cos he was on heroin you know?
TP: Yes, not so good.
OT: Haha.
TP: So is that dual path something that interests you in particular, or is it something that just tends to exist in the types of subjects that you look for?
OT: Um, you know… I’m not clear on why it is that I have been sort of swept up, I mean Josh Harris called me and asked me to document the bunker, Anton said he was taking over my film, you know with Join Us it was more of Bush won the election and I thought there was some kind of mind control in America and I ended up at a cult treatment centre and once again sort of a megalomaniac male, person who can’t help himself at the crux of the story. I don’t know why that is but I think the films are really all about us, and not only because these people are hyperboles of characters that have some relatability to all of us, you know whether it’s feeling like, it’s really man vs. system you know as a central conflict, even my film about prison and about this woman in prison it’s just kind of like, they’re all like that, and right now my first scripted film, pre-scripted film is about Robert Mapplethorpe and him like you know, busting through with this imagery that made people go crazy over here, freak out and say oh it’s pornography, is it art? And he couldn’t help himself. He was a catholic and he couldn’t help himself. I don’t know if that’s just what appeals to me but I wouldn’t make, really I wouldn’t have made for example the film about Josh if it wasn’t about us. We Live In Public is really only in existence because of Facebook because I saw the Facebook status updates and went holy shit, I get it now, I get why this is, as opposed to Josh being Bill Gates or something, he’s not. So it wasn’t like I was like let me make a film about this crazy man who sets up this bunker, who’s like a web pioneer, I didn’t think it was that important for the world to know about Josh Harris until I realised that he was this big huge walking cautionary tale and also had some visions that have, that he created, whether he knew it or not, a physical metaphor for life online that is, you know granted, a fun house mirror but still food for thought for all of us at this crucial time, and so yeah, I don’t know if I’ve answered your question but… there’s more information haha.
TP: Yeah, you kind of answered the next one as well, it was, I put it in different terms, but it was about how the kind of male, almost religious leaders tend to be these central characters and they do tend to get people following… I mean obviously the most literal example of that would be Join Us, but in Dig there’s that bit where they go up and somebody says “are you in a cult?” and they say “oh, I don’t know” and, yeah, I think you kind of answered that.
OT: Well there is this idea, it’s about what we’re willing to give up to have our lives matter, that’s what the films are all about, every single one of them. They’re not about those leaders because- I mean they are to some extent but the real, the real point of interaction between the audience and the material is around the person’s life themselves… Like, I make these films for all of us, not because I think those people are extraordinary, not because I’m obsessed with cult leaders, but what these kinds of charismatic leaders do and you know charismatic and conflicted and misguided and inspiring and you know gruesome characters do is they somehow compel people to give up their privacy, their freedom, their you know whatever the hell else they were doing to follow them you know? And it’s like what are we missing that we need that, and why, and what are we doing every time we go and post something on Facebook because that’s not one person but we’re giving stuff up all the time now, cos we need our lives to matter, we need to feel significant, we need to feel like we did something on this planet, even if it’s post a digital photo and have somebody say “you look so cute!” you know?
TP: It’s true.
OT: It’s like a phenomenon that I think is pretty compelling.
TP: You really don’t realise who stuff is going out to either, I got an e-mail this afternoon from someone working for a TV company saying that they’d read a story that I’d posted on a forum about two years ago about almost being mugged and fighting the guy off, and they wondered if I’d be up for being interviewed on camera and I thought how the hell did you track me down from a post on a forum two years ago? It never crossed my mind…
OT: It makes you wonder if Josh was right, that actually the computers are gaining consciousness. I’ve got to admit that I’ve wondered this myself now because I have this Google alert on my name and on We Live In Public and literally the internet generates these stories, it’s pretty wild, like they’ll come up with something from two years ago and re-post it and it’s like who’s doing that? I can’t imagine someone sitting there doing that you know?
TP: No, it’s strange. OK, the last question – what are you working on next?
OT: I’m leaving for the Sundance Lab on Tuesday to workshop my first feature film about- hold on I have to write one thing really quick… OK. So I’m taking my film, my first pre-scripted film that I intend to make, that I’m producing and directing and writing with another writer Bruce Goodrich who generated the project originally like 8 years ago, and we’ve been developing it ourselves for two years and me and Eliza Dushku are producing it together, and it got into the Sundance Lab which is an incredible workshop for directors that is just amazing, it’s highly competitive but it’s just incredible, they’re basically investing in my film school education and I’m going there and shooting a bunch of scenes and it’s gonna be awesome.
TP: Sounds like a lot of fun.
OT: Yeah, doing it on Tuesday, I’m going to Utah for three or four weeks, they’re flying me in and putting me up and we fly in actors and we shoot, we then work on the script and you know make a movie, so we’re doing that and that’s gonna help a lot and then also I’m completing a documentary right now about climate change and the climate change debate and that as the sort of debate around it and then Bjorn Lumberg the very controversial climate or political scientist-economist who is sort of at the centre of a lot of this climate change debate, and I’ve been shooting that for a year and that’s what I was on the phone about and we’ve got editors here, and I’ve got to get off this Skype thing and start paying attention to that, but that’s gonna come out in September, October, so another documentary. One last one for now and then my first pre-scripted actor film which I’m just absolutely thrilled and excited about doing. I really think that you know I’ve taken documentary about as far as I can right now, We Live In Public, and that it’s time for me as an artist to stretch my wings and tell stories in a different way and I think I can bring all the authenticity and all the knowledge that I gained from these incredible 17 or 18 years in documentary to really help me with the narrative films, or the pre-scripted films, and then motherhood, I’m mother to an incredible young man named Joaquin who is six years old, and it’s a full time job. So I’ve got three full time jobs, haha.
TP: Ha, that sounds exhausting.
OT: Yeah, it’s very exhausting but I live a very rich and full life, I’m honoured and glad and please send me a link to this when you have it done, I do have to run Garry but I wish you the best of luck.
makes mystery documentaries, short time capsules of clues and artefacts that unfold enigmatically through the duration of the films, arriving at the spectres of answers to their own intuitive questions. They’re full of ghosts and and family tales captured on video for posterity. They feel old in the sense that they feel wise, rooted in family history and old painted portraits and maxims from generations past. The films are about religion, ritual and affectionate details of living, death and memories and relations.
Rita’s first film Tia is about her Portugese grandmother, shot in her home as she lays in bed recovering from an unspecified operation, then goes through her house singing, reflecting, telling stories. There’s a sense of wonder in the house and in Tia, as she eats from a box of chocolates named for planets in the solar system or sings about suffering. You get the sense that these details we see and the tales she tells are at the surface of a much deeper pool of memories, and that the house is filled with old and hidden things. Tia opens a secret door and enters a dusty room where a locked case contains her mother’s wedding dress. She takes out the dress as if it’s the answer to the riddle of the film, and holds it to camera - a still portrait that feels more like a painting than a photograph. It has that much more weight.
Both Tia and Being Mother revolve around women in Rita’s family, and both films are composed of interviews and observations. Both films look at the details in the way their subjects live, picking out decorations and crockery, the routine of making tea. Being Mother begins with a wall mounted painting and then Rita’s mother discusses the purpose of her life. She jokes about being constantly busy. Both films are touchingly affectionate, light-hearted even, but at the same time in both there are hints of illness and inescapable reminders that time is passing away. The family dog needed an operation to remove a giant tumour. The father is prescribed pills. Rita’s mother talks about a ritual in which wax replicas are made of a person’s body parts where afflicted by disease or injury, and that the wax models are then kept so that their bearer is healed through faith. She presents a pair of wax hands, but whether these are esoteric curiosities she has come into, or that they belong to herself or her husband, is left open ended and unknown. We get the impressions of stories and of the past through pieces of evidence that speak only for their own existence and their being kept, held on to. Like the wedding dress, the hands feel like an answer, but it’s a subtle and intuitive one that completes the portrait of the film’s subject, and not a central point or big reveal.
The Fire is Rita’s longest film to date at 15 minutes, building on this technique in a much more ambitious way. Through fractured, non-linear footage of a family gathering at a farm in Rita’s Portugal home town, the film tells the story of a huge fire that tragically led to the death of a baby. The film opens again on an object – a lamp that has a small burn hole on its shade. Shots of the generations of the family are again suggestive of painted portraits – in The Fire, some of the family are filmed next to old family paintings (this paralleling of the film screen and canvas is revisited in Rita’s Still Films series of atmospheric landscapes). Photographs and heirlooms are picked out around the house. The rich sense of history lying in the individuals in Tia and Being Mother is multiplied into a whole extended family with pets and children and reminisces. Elderly relatives take turns at telling the story of the fire as children play outside. The film fades to black frequently so that often only their conversation or laughter is heard. The story can only be brought to life when all are assembled here. There is a strong sense of ritual – the family are very religious – in the atmosphere, storytelling and the invocation of the shared memory of that traumatic night. The documentary captures and evokes it perfectly.
Religion and belief are central to Heaven, Rita’s first film not to focus specifically on a single family, although it is equally funny, personal and emotional. It was inspired by the death of her family dog. The film was made in Abney Park cemetery, and is a series of snapshot portraits of dogwalkers and their dogs. The owners speak in voiceover from separately recorded interviews about whether they believe pets go to heaven, how they feel about their dogs. Almost all say they feel like the animals are family members, and their loss would be just as devastating. They meander off into reflections on lost loved ones and life after death, made all the more poignant by the Hackney beauty spot graveyard setting. As with all of Rita’s films there’s a sense of loss, things passing from physical, familial presences into stories, memories and video.
THE PICTURES: What drew you to filmmaking, and documentary filmmaking in particular? Would you say you have any strong influences?
RITA RIBAS: My earliest connection to filmmaking were my father's home-movies and slideshows. Whenever we went on holiday he would make these strange films that were more like experimental/art videos - they always focused on random details, and didn't make much narrative sense - but managed to capture the moments, that often go unnoticed, in a very special way. I guess this is where I started to form my appreciation for observing the world around me and understanding the camera's power to capture the sensations of atmosphere and memory. Other influences: Werner Herzog (his choice of subjects and approach to documentary), Ulrich Seidl (his juxtaposition of real-life comedy and horror), Errol Morris (specially 'Gates of Heaven' and 'Vernon, Florida') and David Lynch (what would a documentary look like in his hands?). And one film that's recently stuck in my mind is Nikolaus Geyrhalter's documentary 'Our Daily Bread' (for its hypnotic depiction of industrial food production and surreal Kubrick-esque cinematography).
TP: How do you choose the subjects for your films? Do you have a concept in mind and then find a subject, or is it more organic than that?
RR: The film itself is rarely clear in my mind when I'm starting out. It's always a process of feeling in the dark. It starts with an interest in a subject, place or person (things I come across in my everyday, on travels or on the internet), and expands through observation and interaction. Often I only start to make out where the film is going and how it will be shaped after I start interviewing people. So in a way its a bit of a scary process but also very rewarding - I like feeling like a detective, connecting bits and pieces together to make a story - and learning along the way. There is a good quote by Errol Morris; "If you know exactly what you're going to say before you say it, why bother?"
TP: There's a lot of humour in your films, as well as a lot of quite touching elements. They're a lot more emotional, in a very personal way, than a lot of documentary films can be. Where do you think that comes from? Would you say that personal element is really important to your work?
RR: My films explore subjects that are close to me and represent my own perception of the world. I am less concerned with creating an accurate representation and more with evoking the subtleties of lived experience - the sensations and emotions - so this is quite a personal take on documentary and sometimes means 'reality' is treated in a malleable way. I think there's a lot that documentary can learn from fiction. The process of filmmaking is also very personal - discovering new places, meeting people and observing different ways of life - this is what I enjoy the most about making documentaries and I think it shows in the type of films I make.
TP: Your films started off quite small (i don't mean this in a negative way at all) and intimate and have expanded in scope. Was this your intention? Do you find it comes naturally? Where do you hope to take things in future?
RR: My work has definitely evolved - previously I made films that only involved my family, but now I've been engaging with other people - people I don't know. There is so much you can get away with when you're working with family - you know they'll forgive you! Those earlier films were almost like my 'training ground' - I felt safe to experiment with ideas and now I'm ready to go out into the world. But I don't want to loose that sense of intimacy - its something you have to work harder at when you don't initially know someone, but I think its something that comes across when you really care about your subject.
TP:What are you working on at the moment?
RR: I've just received funding from IdeasTap to make a short documentary in my hometown in Portugal. It's about people's devotion to a 'saint' that is not officially recognised by the Catholic church. I will be spending a lot of time in the small shrine where the saint's body is displayed and where people go to pray and to give offerings. Amongst many other things the shrine has received over 6,000 wedding dresses donated by people praying for happy marriages. I'm interested in why they feel the need to pray to the saint and what they get out of it, and I'm also interested in the atmosphere of the shrine.
From The Pictures #4, available now / photo by Gretje Ferguson
“The end result has to feel like a gift to the public that they can receive without explanation.” – Executive Committee Member, La Danse
Frederick Wiseman is the greatest documentary maker in film history. If you don’t believe us, that only means you haven’t seen his films. In his almost 50-year career he has trained his film camera on institutions ranging from mental hospitals (Titicut Follies), welfare departments (Welfare), courts (Domestic Violence I & II) and hospices (Near Death) to New York Central Park (Central Park) and the Paris Opera Ballet (La Danse, UK released last month). In each film, through a series of stripped down, self explanatory scenes, he explores the minutae of life within an institution or system, taking in the activities, conflicts, distress and triumphs of the people who reside in and occupy the place. His films are marked by their complete lack of narration, title cards, interviews to camera or discernable characters, but are filled with situations, stories and drama and fragments of lives. In the same way the ballet dancers in La Danse are taught to place all significance on every minute movement of each individual muscle, each movement contributing to the dance as a whole, these fragments and scenes build up into a complex, immersive portrait of their subject. The presence of a filmmaker in any of these scenes is invisible, and the openness and intimacy on display is almost unmatched in documentary. No-one is acting up, nothing is staged, no complexities are removed for the sake of offering explanations to (patronising) the audience. The films feel honest and disarmingly real in a way that few documentaries (any film even) ever do. A film by Frederick Wiseman is a perfect document, taking the viewer inside the subject matter, letting us experience a place first hand as if we’re standing at his side.
In spite of his relative obscurity, Wiseman’s influence is widely felt. He is often called the godfather of documentary. The Wire/Treme co-creator David Simon describes himself as “working in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman”. Wiseman’s film about the marine corps, Basic Training, was taken, near shot for shot, as the basis for the first half of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.
His first documentary was instantly banned. Titicut Follies (released 1967) is bleak, a study of an American hospital for the criminally insane, the title taken from the macabre annual talent show put on by the residents. The film opens at this talent show as a group of patients, on stage and in marching band uniforms, wave pom-poms and sing “Strike Up The Band” in nervous flat unison. Wiseman’s camera moves in to look at the faces of the singers and each man is revealed, conflict written on every fascinating face. One is a mixture of nerves and distraction, nodding to himself as he counts his choreographed dance moves, still practising the dance as he performs it. One is a dead ringer for Fred Astaire, putting his heart into it. The sunken eyes of another man beam with pride as the song concludes, he smiles, oddly childlike with his cap tipped backwards, and the singers take a bow. A suited man, presumably one of the wardens, takes the stage and tells a couple of jokes before the next act, to roaring laughter from the crowd. The film cuts to a patient, skin and bones, undressing for examination.
The talent show is a sorry sight no doubt, but the men performing are not shown up as a sideshow spectacle, nor are they our characters - this is not the beginning of their journey to rehabilitation, we learn nothing more about them. This film is not their story. We see the men as part of the institution, and we can both identify with them and feel repulsed in this moment but, denied any continuity or development and onto the next one, moments are all we have, moments collaged by Wiseman into a deep and lasting impression of the film’s real character – the institution itself. We’re not here to pass judgements or draw conclusions on individuals, we’re here to experience every intimate corner of the big picture. There’s no linear progression and no talking head justifications distract us. Through his alert and wide open eyes, Wiseman simply presents us with the reality of the situation as he observed it, and that is enough. His great talent is in making us feel that we’re right there with him. This is documentary in its purest form.
So we see the abusive guards, the overworked doctors determined to help, the inmates masturbating in corners, the scores of sick men wandering in circles around a gym hall, mumbling, shouting, ticking nervously to themselves, building in one seemingly endless scene into something unbearable. Wiseman’s films have a musical quality – the filmmaker handles all of the sound design, and the editing is very deliberate. Hundreds of hours are often lost to the cutting room floor as the director shapes the material into what he considers a fair and authentic representation of his experiences, each film the story of a place. In this way his films are diaries, not unlike those of Jonas Mekas, chronicling his observations of each place or institute and the people within.
For Titicut Follies, these observations were deemed unseemly by the nervous medical and judiciary authorities of the time. Their concerns over the privacy of the patients were matched by concerns (particularly on the part of the institute used in filming) that the material in the film would cause a public outcry. However, while kept from the public, the film was screened in elite academic circles and to professionals with interests in the field, themselves not immune from the feelings of shock and anger that Titicut Follies inspires. The film played a large part in the wide ranging reform of the mental health system in America and, in 1991, by now a historical document, Titicut Follies was eventually cleared for public broadcast.
The film, like all of Wiseman’s documentaries, has been screened in the United States on the publicly funded PBS channel, which is also a frequent funder of his work. From Titicut Follies onwards, all of his films have been rigidly independent, all rights owned by Zipporah Films, his own production company (who kindly granted us the use of their stills archive for this issue) who also sell DVDs and distribute prints of his work, the takings from which fund future films. This strict independence aside though, Wiseman refuses to be drawn on the potential political implications of his films, preferring to present them as self explanatory and leaving any inference to the viewer.
This is an unusual position given the impact of Titicut Follies and the definitive way that many of his films, from his second feature High School onwards, are presented. They are named as definite articles – Law and Order, Hospital, Juvenile Court, Domestic Violence – so that this High School stands for any high school in the country; this Hospital is a representative, almost scientific, example for study, analysis and conclusions to be drawn. Within this wide variety of places, themes and situations often recur – injustice, abuse of power, poverty, suffering and sickness. So in Juvenile Court we’re party to back room barrister discussions and offender’s family conferences. In Law and Order we see police authority misused. Muddled beaurocracies and deliquents in High School. Equally though there are insightful, determined teachers and energised students. There are comic OTT hippies freaking out and vomiting on their first acid trip. There are repentant criminals and tireless nurses and loving marriages, all seen as moments within any system put before the camera.
To see only the altruistic, protest side of the films is to misunderstand Wiseman’s grand project and to ignore the fact that for every Domestic Violence there’s a Model, for every Blind there’s a Central Park. Any sense of discomfort and outrage arising from the films occurs only because it exists to be filmed in the first place, living under and on the surface of any situation or system, waiting to be manifested by a documentary lens. To call Wiseman a political filmmaker would undermine the scope of his work. Just as each scene in his films builds the larger picture of an institution, each of Wiseman’s films is a piece of a much larger picture and a much larger project, to experience and observe civilisation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by way of its institutions, its shared rituals and its rites of passage. In Near Death, the terminally ill say their last goodbyes. In Department Store, baby boomers flock in their optimistic thousands to buy their own little piece of progress. In Belfast, Maine, an entire town is put in front of the lens.
Often when audiences see his films for the first time they mistake the keen observation and quiet camerawork for something approaching objectivity. But watching Wiseman’s films in a linked light, the similarities and connections become all the more apparent, not just in the rhythms and style of filmmaking, but in the conversations and ideas picked up and noticed by the camera in every situation, in the values that he finds in each location. Seeing the films in this way, Frederick Wiseman is betrayed as the second character, after the institution, in all of his films. We experience his documentary through his eyes, his subjective observations. The fact that these observations are so nuanced, so insightful and relevant is testament to his skill and the harmony between the man and the medium. Wiseman is the silent storyteller, totally dedicated to his grand project. It’s why we call him the greatest documentary maker in film history. The man and the films are indistinguishable - Frederick Wiseman is documentary.
Re: Questions from British journalist
1. Having trained as a lawyer, what made you change course and become a filmmaker? Was it a longstanding interest, were you inspired by any particular contemporaries? Do you see parallels between documentary work and legal work?
I HATED LAW SCHOOL AND REACHED THE WITCHING AGE OF 30 AND DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING I LIKED. ABSOLUTELY NO PARALLELS FOR ME BETWEEN LAW AND FILM-MAKING.
2.Do you consider yourself a political filmmaker, in the sense that many of your films present places and situations that many people would not otherwise experience, and so would remain unaware of the issues affecting those places (Titticut Follies being perhaps the most obvious example of this)? To what extent do your personal views influence the context of the films?
I DISLIKE OVERT IDEOLOGICAL AND/OR DIDACTIC FILMMAKING. MY FILMS ARE COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE (WHAT ELSE COULD THEY BE?) BUT I TRY TO MAKE THEM FAIR REPRESENTATIONS OF MY EXPERIENCE AT THE PLACE WHICH IS THE SUBJECT OF THE FILM. I DISCOVER THE FILM IN THE EDITNG AND USUALLY ONLY TOWARD THE END OF THE EDITING.
3.Stylistically, your films are often labelled 'objective', 'cinema verite' and so on. Would you agree with this? How do you feel about the huge trend in modern documentary making for message-led films?
I BELIEVE IN THE WISDOM OF THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER SAMUEL GOLDWYN WHO SAID "IF YOU HAVE A MESSAGE SEND A TELEGRAM." THE POINT OF VIEW OF MY FILMS IS EXPRESSED INDIRECTLY THROUGH THE STRUCTURE.
4.You retain the rights to all of your films and use public funding to make them. Has this ever affected the content of the films, has there ever been an outside, funding related influence in the filmmaking process?
NO ONE SEES THE FILMS UNTIL THEY ARE COMPLETELY FINISHED. FUNDING IS ALWAYS DIFFICULT. I RETAIN THE RIGHTS.
5.How long does a film typically take? Is there usually an adjustment period for your subjects to become comfortable with the filming, or is it an instant thing? Is there anything you yourself particularly do to make people more comfortable with filming?
FUNDING MAY TAKE UP TO SIX MONTHS. IT VARIES FROM FILM TO FILM. PEOPLE ADJUST WITHIN NANO-SECONDS TO BEING FILMED. I AM ALWAYS VERY STRAIGHTFORWARD ABOUT HOW THE FILM WILL BE SHOT, EDITED AND DISTRIBUTED.
6.Have you ever had a negative response from potential subjects, even a dangerous reaction to your enquiries? Do you find that, in the modern, internet influenced world, with a lot of people projecting personalities onto social networking sites, image consciousness, that the people you film with are any more self conscious than they used to be, or make any more effort to project something other than their everyday selves?
IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN WHEN I BEGAN 44 YEARS AGO.
7.Do you ever develop a relationship with your subjects that continues once the film is completed? Where does Frederick Wiseman's experience end and the film begin?
THE FILM DOES REPRESENT MY VIEWS OF THE PLACE AND IS MEANT TO BE A FAIR REPORT ON WHAT I HAVE LEARNED.
8.Many of your films, including your latest, are made on 16mm.Is this purely an aesthetic choice?
I LIKE FILM BETTER THAN HD. IF I CANNOT RAISE ENOUGH MONEY TO SHOOT ON FILM, I WILL USE HD.
9.What prompted your interest in the Paris Opera Ballet?
I LIKEALLET AND I LIKE LIVING IN PARIS. THE PARIS OPERA BALLET IS ONE OF THE GREAT BALLET COMPANIES OF THE WORLD.
10.What are you working on at the moment?
I JUST FINISHED A MOVIE ABOUT A BOXING GYM IN AUSTIN, TEXAS. "BOXING GYM" WILL HAVE ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT THE DIRECTOR'S FORTNIGHT AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL IN MAY.
NB: Wiseman clips are difficult to locate online, owing to his reliance on takings from Zipporah Films' releases of the DVDs to fund future productions (Zipporah is Wiseman's company). Visit www.zipporah.com for details of how to obtain Wiseman's work.
Article originally published in The Pictures Issue 2
“I’m afraid I don’t consider myself a filmmaker, or anything specific for that matter.” Parisian Angélique Bosio does not like being tied to labels. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she made one of our favourite documentaries of the past few years. Llik Your Idols tells the story of the Cinema of Transgression, a moment in New York time when artists like Richard Kern, Nick Zedd and Lydia Lunch came together to form a loose movement of extreme filmmakers, their work inspired by poverty, nihilism, sex and drugs. At the heart of the film are a series of interviews with the main protagonists of the scene in which they paint a vivid portrait of their lives and loves in squalor and talk openly about that fertile period when some of the most shocking, gruesome and salacious scenes ever seen in underground film were committed to Super 8. Angélique’s open, almost naïve interview technique allows her subjects the ability to reminisce freely and undirected where a more experienced and routined filmmaker may have prompted the opposite effect.
“To be honest, I started work in the cinema abut 10 years ago now,” explains the quiet, unassuming young réalisatrice, “because I knew what I did not want to do – namely to work in music labels, publishing companies, galleries, banks etc. I didn’t know a thing about cinema, or not enough, therefore I felt absolutely free.” But if making Llik Your Idols was a labour of freedom, it was a far from easy process. She worked on it in what little time remained outside of what she calls her “official job” for the best part of 5 years in a production process fraught with difficulties.
“I started in the summer of 2002 and finished it in July 2007, then it ran festivals. The whole thing started quickly. I decided to work on the project in the spring of 2002, wrote a few e-mails, got a few answers, booked some tickets. I wasn’t even sure I was to meet with these people with I booked the tickets, it had to happen, that’s all. Then I got lucky, somebody gave me 1000 Euros and I went to New York in August.”
Angélique flew to New York and conducted the official interviews, getting on with her subjects “quite well” and returning over the following years to revisit, ask more questions, or interview new subjects, slowly but surely completing the jigsaw of the finished film. She befriended Jack Sargeant, author of Deathtripping, the Creation Cinema book about the scene, and modelled for Richard Kern. But as the project grew, funding became an issue, and it was here that the difficulties began.
photo by richard kern
“I tried to work with different production companies that would stop the shooting, waiting for financial support from a French TV channel, which never came of course. So I would alternate periods of shooting and periods of waiting, patiently.” Production continued on blind faith, and editing commenced in 2006 “at home with Aurelie Cauchy. Then another production company, and the editing was stopped.” The stop-start production process was almost enough to curtail the project altogether, but again naïve optimism won through and the film was eventually finished in 2007, “with people I’d rather not talk about,” That wasn’t all. Even with a completed project to hand, securing a release proved difficult - “a production company tried to block everything and it was a mess for another whole year.”
Finally in late 2007 the film hit festivals, and now, two years later, the DVD is available in several territories, with the European edition available October 20th, a welcome pay-off for Angélique, and one that more than compensates for the time and finance put in. “I will never earn any money out of this documentary,” she says, “on the contrary, I have lost some. But I had to do it anyway. I was not motivated by money, I really needed to create something. I never hoped that I would sell it.”
The finished film has proved a deserving hit with critics and the audience it has so far found, owing in part to its openness and accessibility, and has achieved another of its aims (that it has in common with this zine), to bring these works to new audiences. Unlike many documentaries on the subject of underground film, which are often abstracted to the point of being avant garde themselves, Llik Your Idols needs no foreknowledge. “I hope I don’t make films for myself,” she says. “I have tried to make Llik Your Idols a documentary that could interest people who wouldn’t know a thing about this scene. The idea is to spread the word.”
It’s an attitude in the film that chimes with Angélique’s overall outlook towards the creative process, particularly when coming up against production obstacles or negotiating such dark subject matter, as she did in this documentary and her upcoming portrait of Bruce LaBruce. She approaches her work and stays motivated by “being stupid, dreamy and pretending to be naïve…do I sound like Cinderella?” As seen in Llik Your Idols, this naïve, questioning, curious presence wading through stories of bondage, torture and hard drug abuse is more Lewis Carroll’s Alice. You get the sense that this kind of investigation, of involvement, is why she prefers documentary to fiction.
“I don’t think fiction is a natural penchant of mine,” she confirms. “I have had one single valid idea for a short film but gave up too easily when told there was a feature film doing the same thing already. Documentary, [though], allows me to work with music, play with the edit, travel, get into funny situations, meet some people. I can be the control freak I truly am and follow the tide at the same time.”
Angel’s investigations are about to yield two more documentary features, partly the result of a productive (in total contrast to her past experience) partnership with independent producers and distributors Le Chat Qui Fume – “amazing people to work with” – who have given her as free a reign as possible in their production. The first chronicles the work of controversial gay porn-art filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, and the second follows French designer lingerie icon Fifi Chachnil.
“I would like to spend more time trying to learn photography after I have finished them I think,” referring again to her reluctance to be any one thing for long. You suspect though that, even in a different medium, Angélique’s inquisitive world view will shine through. Any investigation is about making connections, and Angélique’s films to date show this particularly, her subjects as pieces of a large and slowly emerging picture. Richard Kern or Fifi Chachnil, “to me there’s a link between all these people.” In the five years of making Llik Your Idols, she proved she has the patience and the curiosity to never stop looking.
