Life becomes increasingly difficult with each passing day, and there is no end to the war in sight. The Distant Barking of Dogs unveils the consequences of war bearing down on the children in eastern Ukraine and, by natural extension, the scars and life lessons this generation will carry with them into the future.
When the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military in , small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals. Some nations with histories of similar crimes against humanity have created truth and reconciliation initiatives and even jailed perpetrators.
In Indonesia, the perpetrators are still in power, and death squad members are honored for their patriotism. Their choice: to dramatize their brutal deeds in the style of the American westerns, musicals and gangster movies they love—with themselves as the stars. The result is a nightmarish vision of a banal culture of impunity in which killers joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows.
For more information on the film and additional background on the Indonesian genocide, download the Discussion Guide for The Act of Killing. Repeating her traumatic story to the world, this ordinary young woman finds herself thrust onto the international stage as the voice of her people. In On Her Shoulders , filmmaker Alexandria Bombach follows this strong-willed young woman, who survived the genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq and escaped the hands of ISIS to become a relentless beacon of hope for her people, even though at times she longs to set aside this monumental burden and simply lead an ordinary life.
For more information on the film and additional background on the Yazidi genocide, download the Discussion Guide for On Her Shoulders. AMC Filmsite. If the tables were turned, God forbid, I would never allow them to make a film about my tragedy. I am keenly aware of the hypocrisy of asking someone for access that I myself would probably not grant. What ethics should govern putting someone else on film? The awareness of a power differential also leads filmmakers sometimes to volunteer to share decision-making power with some subjects.
Notably, this attitude does not extend to celebrities, whom filmmakers found to be aggressive and powerful in controlling their image. Most subjects signed releases allowing the makers complete editorial control and ownership of the footage for every use early on during the production process. The terms of these releases are usually dictated by insurers, whose insurance is required for most television airing and theatrical distribution. Perhaps because the terms of these releases were not their own, filmmakers often provided more leeway to their subjects than the strict terms provided in them.
Filmmakers often felt that subjects had a right to change their minds although the filmmakers found this deeply unpleasant or to see the material involving them or even the whole film in advance of public screenings. The informal basis upon which they operated also reflects the ambivalence they have about ceding control and their wish to preserve their own creative interests.
The ongoing effort to strike a balance, and the negotiated nature of the relationship, was registered by Gordon Quinn:. Our code of ethics is very different. We will show the film before it is finished. I want you to sign the release, but we will really listen to you. But ultimately it has to be our decision. Some also believed that seeing material in advance helped make their subjects more comfortable with the exposure they would encounter, thus avoiding problems in the future. We showed her the piece first.
Then she was okay. In one case, a subject who had signed a release asked Stanley Nelson not to use an interview. The interview was important for the film, Nelson said, and he believed the request was motivated by desire to control the film. I felt that my obligation was fulfilled.
Ultimately, the Center for Media and Social Impact concluded that filmmakers shared three general ethical principles that they attempted to balance in their work:. Thinking more deeply: In circumstances where filmmakers are working with vulnerable subjects, how can they ensure that the subjects are able to provide informed consent? What other options did the subjects have? Were the subjects able to entrust their stories to this filmmaker because they were the best option or were they the only option?
What rights or protections should be provided to subjects who are survivors of violent trauma? Should their stories be handled any differently than those of other subjects?
Why or why not? Should subjects reserve the right to withdraw consent? Under what circumstances? When children are the subject of a documentary, how can consent be fairly given? What responsibility, if any, does the filmmaker have to the future adult who will live with the decisions made on their behalf when they were young?
Further Reading: Rogow, Faith. Arthur, Paul. Aufderheide, Patricia. Dentino, John. These suggested questions are starting points for that type of analysis. It is not just about recording what is there; it is also about selecting and presenting and editing in such a way that we see present conditions as wrong and begin to look for alternatives that should be brought about.
Documentary film- making - and also the reception of documentary films - is all about ethics, politics and an aesthetic approach, and as such it is a highly subjective or personal matter, it is now argued. To counter this I can ask whether we could not say the same about most fiction films: are they not all very personal, do they not have some sort of moral or even ideological viewpoint built into their characters, action and location, and are they not intended to qualify as artistic and aesthetic products making the world a little better and the audience a bit more enlightened about human life?
Definitions and definitions At this point I have usually caused a lot of confusion in the classroom - and in my own mind as well - about the nature of documentary films. Can the concept be defined, or is it just some slippery term that we happen to apply in many different ways. Well, I still think it is important, at least as an academic exercise, to try to pin down what we mean by "documentary. We seem to know quite well and instantaneously what a documentary is and would probably call it ridiculous and feel cheated if someone labeled the recent Disney production Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest a documentary.
But why so? After all there were pirates in the Caribbean once, were there not? Definitions can be of many sorts, depending on how strict we want to be. A proper definition or a definition of essence would characterize exactly what it is that makes up this group of films, and would spell it out in such a clear way that it would be easy to assess whether a specific film belonged or did not belong to this group or genre. What are the necessary and sufficient features?
How does this type of film differ from other types of film? Reality, representation and presentation The example above with the surveillance camera indicates that "recording reality" is too vague a criterion, and not just because "reality" sooner or later becomes a very difficult concept to narrow down just think about "reality-TV" programs in which almost everything is a construction.
The continuous mechanical recording of a raw tape lacks the touch of someone selecting and editing for the purpose of expressing or communicating something to someone. Both fiction and non-fiction films differ markedly from a simple mirroring or duplicative function. This is among other things revealed through the camerawork, i. Time may be condensed and the chronology changed, music, subtitles, or voice-over added, shots may be interlaced or interrupted by wipes, etc.
As a rule of thumb, a film is hardly a film without camera work, cuts or editing, and it is neither a fiction film nor a documentary if it is nothing more than a "re-presentation" of what happened to be in front of a lens and a microphone. A film is not a mere representation, but a willed presentation of something made by someone in a specific way and for someone. The phrase "representation of reality" is utterly mistaken as a definition of documentary, because the idea of film as mirroring is a false one and a very misleading ideal.
Also the term "reality" is confusing: it may have the straightforward positive connotations of facing reality and seeing things as they really are, but often enough it is interpreted by students in theoretical discussions as just filming "normally" in an "objective" way without being creative or manipulative. To believe that reality is made up first by objective facts and secondly by subjective or personal sentiment is to make you yourself blind and deaf to the prevailing power structures and ideologies of this world.
Truth and creativity This however does not mean that it is all right to disregard facts or to tell a lie in a non-fiction film. But it must be noted that the "truth" of a film can be understood in other ways. A lot of facts or statements about facts that can be verified may be present even in a fiction film. The whole story may be pure fantasy, the characters fictitious and the behavior of the actors may consist of incredible stunts - but still the film may be striving for "truth" in another sense of the word: true emotions and perhaps even to illustrate some more general truths about human life.
Lacking a good definition of its essence, it could be an idea to look at the etymology and history of the term. The word documentary has its root in the Latin word " docere " which meant to teach or instruct. We also know the more modern and common phrase that something is "a document" e. Within film history, the term seems to have been used first by John Grierson who wrote about Robert Flaherty's film Moana that it had "documentary value.
John Grierson, known as the founder of the classic British documentary movement in the 's, coined the phrase "creative treatment of actuality.
They generally assume that that is a modern invention. They also discuss "intimate human stories that help explicate broader societal issues" and how "documentaries are valuable tools for helping us better understand the strengths and weakness of what it means to be human. As time allows, invite students to share with one another what they learned from the interviews about the purpose and the truth of documentaries.
Guide them to explore:. Part 3: 30 minutes in class plus out of class research a To expose students to the views of many filmmakers, have each student search the POV archive of filmmaker interviews and locate a filmmaker who interests him or her. To ensure that they don't all choose the same filmmaker, you can divide the class into groups and limit each group's choices to a part of the alphabet so group one can only choose filmmakers whose surnames begin with the letters A-F, the next group G-L and so on.
Teaching Tip: Most of the interviews include film clips. Several are also transcribed. If your purpose is to have students practice listening skills, you may want to insist that they watch their interviews rather than reading them. As a class, discuss the portrait that emerges of documentarians and what makes documentaries unique sources of information.
Using the topic search on the POV website, choose a documentary related to what you teach. To narrow the search, you may want to use the subject search tool under the Educators tab. To prepare students for viewing, ask them how they might be able to determine whether or not a documentary is telling the truth. What questions would they ask?
Have students use these questions, along with their own, to do close readings of the documentary. Pause the film every 10 to 15 minutes to conduct a group analysis of what students have seen so far.
After viewing, ask students whether the film seemed more like fiction or non-fiction. Be sure to ask them to provide evidence for their opinions. Advanced students may be asked to describe the point of view of the film and explain how a documentary differs from propaganda. Then connect the film's content to your curriculum and explore how students' answers to questions about the film's methods and perspectives provide insight about both the subject of the film and the subject that the class has been studying.
As time allows, invite students to discuss how news coverage of the film's topic would have differed from the approach taken by the documentary. What do they learn from this comparison about what documentaries do well that news does not and vice versa? Write or create a multimedia essay supporting the idea that documentary films tell a truth, but not the truth. Include and discuss at least one of the filmmaker quotes below as part of your essay:.
That's been my definition for most of my life. We take something from journalism and something from the essay. But our work isn't scientific, it's a form of artistic work, so it's subjective, a matter of ideas, intuitions, comparisons and the juxtaposition of interesting things.
They need to know that there's a person behind the camera, that there's a person who cut the story together, that it reflects a perspective. It's important that we make programs that push people to ask questions and then come to their own conclusions or choose how to respond. More than anything, it's important to ask people to think.
I think it's a disservice, in a sense, when we make media that doesn't ask people to think but just tells them how they should feel and what they should do. Watch a documentary and a news report from a mainstream television news source. Using the News Story and Documentary handout PDF , ask students to complete the grid and write a one-page summary of their results that explains the major differences between a news story and a documentary.
For advanced students, you may want to include categories such as Hollywood film, reality TV show or instructional video in addition to or in place of news report. Advanced students may also be asked to add a paragraph or two explaining what a documentary achieves that news cannot and vice versa.
If students are not already familiar with media literacy, explain to them that media literacy education is based on the premise that the following things are true about media:. After ensuring that everyone understands what each concept means, assign students to explain, either in writing or in oral presentations, how the filmmaker interview they listened to provided evidence to support one or, for advanced students, all of these concepts.
Invite students to produce--or storyboard--a short documentary. As students plan, have them consider how their story would unfold differently if they were creating a news report rather than a documentary. Invite them to reflect on how their production choices have been influenced by what they learned from the filmmaker interviews and class discussions.
Aufderheide, Pat. New York: Oxford University Press, Juel, Henrik. National Association for Media Literacy Education.
Scheibe, Cyndy and Faith Rogow. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Students cite specific evidence when offering an oral or written interpretation of a text.
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