Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Difference Between Documentary and Film



In an attempt to archive some academic papers I've written over the past few years (relying on the hard drives of sometimes faulty PCs has left me tired and frustrated), I will be uploading some of my old work to this blog over the next few weeks. Here is one I wrote for a class on New Directions in Documentary in the Spring of 2012.

 
     A digital recollection of a filmmaker's undeterred passion and need to share stories, Jafar Panahi's much acclaimed, microcosmically distributed This Is Not A Film makes a political statement by challenging the boundaries of his artistically-castrated sentence. Described by some as a home movie of sorts, This Is Not A Film is perhaps more enlightening given the background information you bring to it. Panahi, a successful Iranian filmmaker known for challenging narrative films about the common man, has, as the film begins, recently been put on house arrest for speaking out against his native government. With that comes, of course, a plethora of additional restrictions and do-nots: given an impending court decision, Panahi could be withheld from making films for up to twenty years, as well as being forced to carry out a six year prison sentence. Although it goes without saying that the government wants to increasingly limit Panahi's output, they also are doing greater personal damage; by being cut off from using his collaborative art-form (and by being kept in the dark as to the information on his near future), they silence the man's voice and deaden his spirit. For the first time in the prime of his career, Panahi's tentative verdict issues undesired unemployment.

      The documentary form of narrative filmmaking is something more of a style than a genre, using a supposed snippet of reality in which to extract a greater sense of the ideological and methodical problems a director faces when crafting his story. An "objective artifact" can be considered a death of a description for a documentary striving for personal integrity. In her book, "Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction," Patricia Aufderheide, an academic at American University in Washington, D.C., notes that "a documentary film tells us a story about real life, with claims to truthfulness. How to do that honestly, in good faith, is a never-ending discussion, with many answers. Documentary is defined and redefined over the course of time, both by makers and viewers. Viewers certainly shape the meaning of any documentary, by combining our own knowledge of and interest with the world with how the filmmaker shows it to us." Aufderheide's description serves as a good "definition" here, admitting that a documentary is as much about audience's expectations as it is its own onscreen content. When moviegoers see a film listed as a documentary, they typically expect and demand much of the same they would of a feature fiction film. They are attracted to plot, characters, drama, and accessibility, all with the added benefit of being guaranteed that what they are witnessing is a series of real events, life uninterrupted, unfolding effortlessly and without outside forces imposing onward. Documentaries are supposed to make a promise to their audience and uphold their end of the bargain. 

      This common belief stems from, as Aufderheide points out, marketing purposes. Why alter audiences’ expectations of documentary filmmaking and risk the chance of upsetting and turning them off all future nonfiction works? Better to supply for the masses, repeat the style and expect repeated business. This Is Not A Film is thus unconventional in that its story is not of the commercial documentary variety; the film is not a problem of the week melodrama. The fact that it was released in theaters (and debuted in France at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival) may prove to be more of a defiant political mode of expression than the events depicted in its seventy-five minute running time. Viewed side by side, the making of the film and its distribution stand together as a cultural event, a moment that represents the ability of a documentary not easily categorized.

      This Is Not A Film was shot with two cameras contrasting in size, one an expensive HD device manned by Panahi’s reliable friend, and the other being Panahi’s phone — the film features numerous Apple products, including a Mac, Iphone, etc. The equipment used is suitable for this impromptu production, as Panahi, once able to get his hands on the finest professional cameras and film stock, now finds himself bound to the nearest technology available to him. High production values matter little to a production that Panahi eventually doubts people will even want to see. On the surface, This Is Not A Film is not necessarily trying to actively promote change to the Iranian government. There is never an off-screen narrator providing additional information on the political hegemony of Iran, and rather than criticize the authoritative higher-ups directly, Panahi’s apparent on-screen boredom, anger, and personal sadness with the anti-art sentence bestowed upon him are made apparent via a mere means of observation. The film’s setting never changes because, well, how could it?

      By editing the footage obtained by the two available video devices into what ultimately makes up This Is Not A Film, the feature’s aesthetic value plays a central role in acknowledging Panahi’s exclusion from the outside world. This is a man who still retains a mind for filmmaking but who can only do a limited amount with what he has (or at least one gets the sense that what he has is limited). Setting up the shots for an unproduced screenplay — of which we will get to shortly — he wishes to act out, Panahi has humorous concerns about the lighting available to him. Too much? Too little? He also sticks to his natural leadership tendencies, announcing “Cut” when he wishes for his friend to stop filming. He understands the need for a particular flow to a scene, even when no script is readily apparent. Surprisingly, Panahi’s adjustment to being in front of the camera provides This Is Not A Film with some light-hearted moments, and his incessant need to film while being filmed comes full circle near the documentary’s conclusion as the two men capture a shot/reverse shot exchange between each other in Panahi’s kitchen; the Iphone’s video quality serves as quite a contrast to what we had previously been exposed to in the film’s first half.

      The film's primary issue and question of concern, heavily promoted as the film's tagline on posters and other marketing materials, stems from an attempt to to define the limitations of Panahi's restrictions. Lawfully unable to make a new film, Panahi is nonetheless credited as co-director of This Is Not A Film, a documentary he stars in, while also serving as co-cinematographer and being the sole reason for the work's touted existence. Is this not an illegal act, a show of defiance against a system which has tried to theoretically stop him from producing art? When does the craft of motion picture-making declare itself as a separate — and in Panahi's predicament, legal — entity from still photography and hand-constructed examples in the fine arts? Must a film be defined as a piece of fiction? Of possessing a recognizable narrative? Lacking details, Panahi decides to record his life and work out the staging of an unfilmed screenplay in the confines of his living room. As long as he doesn't make that film, should the recording of his one-man rehearsal act constitute government discretion? While he does act out the moments and blocking of the piece, he is not a professional actor, has not been hired by anyone, and does not intend to widely distribute the footage. He is documenting what would ideally be his next film by making one about his present struggles.

      Free to let his mind wander, Panahi's storytelling impulses get the best of him when he is alone and his family is out for the day. Taking place primarily on a native holiday known as Fireworks Wednesday, This Is Not A Film opens with Panahi sitting down and preparing lunch. He calls his friend, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, and tells him to come over right away (although he cannot mention why over the telephone). Panahi's wife and children have gone to visit his mother for the day, and he has been assigned the thankless tasks of having to water the plants on the porch and to entertain the family's consistently active, sharp-nailed iguana. A few cigarette breaks help to break the monotony. Panahi's interest in acting out his cherished screenplay thus serves as a therapeutic, self-referential practice, becoming ever the more clear when the work of fiction's plot becomes thematically apparent. In many ways mirroring his own woeful predicament, Panahi's screenplay is, at its core, about an artist under lockdown, having to come to terms with being cast as a punished outsider and being refused a communicative connection with the world. Neither is respected nor heard out by their prosecutors, and both are refused time and time again to establish an engagement with their passions. 
 
The lead character, in essence embodied by Panahi, is a teenage girl wishing to attend an arts university in Tehran. Refused by her parents to take the upcoming entrance exam, the girl is placed under house arrest (the home is locked from the outside) while her parents go out of town. Depressed and suicidal, the girl stays in her bedroom and uses a nearby window as her personal vantage point. When her grandmother, the only person other than her parents to possess a key, decides to visit, the girl is given a cellular phone, which ends up thrown on the floor and destroyed out of frustration. Teen romance rears its head as she notices a boy outside her window developing an attraction. The two will not be allowed contact, and Panahi's concoction seems equal parts Romeo and Juliet and Rapunzel. Later, when her sister comes by to talk, the two girls sit on opposite sides of the gated door, separated by steel but connected by their words.

      As the parallels begin to be drawn, viewers may start to question the convenience of the similar plot conventions. Panahi's moment sitting on the floor looking at his Iphone (representing the destroyed phone of the girl's) provides the director with a dramatic moment of reflection. Almost on the verge of tears — or on the verge of a profoundly sophisticated discovery — Panahi again goes back to the idea of defining filmmaking. Perhaps This Is Not A Film is a cry for help and clarity.

      Assuming this to be the case, some viewers may begin to question the documentary's authenticity. A late third act character, a family oriented student interested in the arts, working a few days as a custodian in Panahi's building, appears to also represent Panahi, albeit with one crucial difference: He is a free man. Young, intelligent, and enamored with Panahi's creative allure, this artistically-centric student serves as a Panahi surrogate, much like the young girl did in his screenplay. In a recent class discussion on the film, some students expressed concern over the likeness of these characters in relation to the Iranian director, claiming that it felt too artificially set up. The plannedness of the situation, a work of fiction (This Is Not A Film perhaps) in a very reality-based situation (Panahi's house sentence), does not necessarily detract from the plight of the filmmaker, however. Much like the young girl, Panahi finds himself by the conclusion of the documentary separated by the outside via steel; as the student/temporary custodian goes outside to discard of tenant trash, Panahi remains behind the gated door, just out of sight with his camera in hand.
Writing for Artfourm, film critic J. Hoberman wrote on the film, “This Is Not A Film redeems the welt-worn cliché that modern art should be largely concerned with the condition of its own making. Not that it is a straightfoward recording; although the action appears to unfold on the noisy eve of the Persian New Year, which coincides with the first anniversary of Panahi's arrest, it was actually shot over a ten-day period, and hence is nonsequential." Sure to anger some real-time appreciating purists and bring confirmation to the non-budging skeptics, this production information is sure to prove worrisome to a number of viewers. Returning to Aufderheide's belief that documentaries should show off “claims of truthfulness,” Panahi's no frills presentation would seem misleading. Fireworks Wednesday plays a memorable role in the documentary, with sounds of evasive blasts and deadening explosions harkening back to familiar sounds of warfare and innocent causalities. 
 
      This Is Not A Film would appear to take place almost completely on this single day, and the film provides viewers with basic narrative information which seems placed for them to assume as much. We start the film early in the morning as the fireworks are heard in the distance. We conclude with the sun having gone down hours ago, people still actively starting fires and lighting fireworks to soar beautifully across the sky, some right past Panahi's high-rise apartment. His family has yet to return home from his mother's. Once his friend grows tired and promises to contact the director tomorrow, Panahi is saddened to see him go. During their goodbyes, Panahi encounters the custodian, directing the work towards an extended, one shot sequence which concludes the film. And yet, while we are viewing pieces of a day in chronological order (sun up, sun down), we are not being shown pieces of the same day in the order in which they necessarily occurred. As A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote in relation to the film, “cinema is both a transparent lens and a distorting mirror, and using it as a tool to examine the facts of human existence makes it possible to take any of those facts for granted."

      Panahi is very upfront about his unwavering need to tell stories, and ironically This Is Not A Film allows him to put forth another. Billed as a documentary, the filming of the movie was planned out and did indeed take more than the alleged twelve or so hours to shoot. There are also some questions about the phone calls he receives, calls which would appear in retrospect to be dishonestly portrayed, as they too imply the passing of a single day. Did Panahi request that they call at specific times or did he place the phone calls in key scenes by means of undetected jump-cuts? Certainly going for a day in the life narrative rather than a fragmented week of careful maneuvering, Panahi creatively uses style to enhance content. 
 
      The documentary also cleverly finds a way to incorporate a series of recurring characters, the most humorous being that of a woman living in the building with her obnoxiously loud and confrontational canine. Attempting to find a way to celebrate Fireworks Wednesday in person, the woman — never seen, only heard — pleads with Panahi to watch her dog for a few hours in his apartment. She is relentless. The director eventually agrees, but he is quick to change his mind before she heads off to party. As the evening wears on and the woman remains determined to persuade an unlucky sap to play babysitter, she asks the custodian for help as he comes to collect her trash. When we hear her voice in the second encounter, our vision restricted to Panahi's camera in the elevator, we laugh out of habit. Here is this poor woman who will stop at nothing to get out of the apartment; in an ironic twist, her dog appears to have sentenced her to house arrest as well. Were the two scenes involving this woman staged or predetermined? Did Panahi, ever the notorious celebrity in the complex, get his actors from within his confined space? Although one can never be completely sure, her reemergence towards the conclusion of This Is Not A Film reinforces the concept of a seamlessly twenty-four hour or less constructed narrative. She is a welcomed inclusion of comic relief and her presence opens up the film to include a life outside of the Panahi family apartment (although not outside of the apartment building). 
 
      The reason Panahi opts out of looking after the dog is because its unlimited energy frightens the Panahi family iguana, another character which seems to represent an entity restricted to a limited environment. Quite often, dialogue scenes involving Panahi and his friend are intercut with footage of the lizard, climbing up a tall bookcase and making the most with the little it has (one of the film's key themes). It too longs for companionship; as Panahi checks his laptop, the creature climbs up on the couch and onto its master. As its nails dig deep into Panahi and the director pushes him off, the pet simply lays perched on the couch beside to him. The two seem to bond over the day as Panahi develops a sense of solace with the creature. Being fed over old head-shots of famous actors like Charlie Chaplin and Al Pacino, the iguana represents less of a burden than a sense of momentary peace.

      In allowing itself to be more personal, This Is Not A Film also indulges in the technicalities. In his review for The Wall Street Journal, critic Joe Morgenstern touched on one of the documentary's most revealing and deeply reflexive sequences. “On a brighter note,” Morgenstern wrote, “Mr. Panahi talks about how actors — especially nonprofessional actors — can steer a film in unexpected directions; he makes the point with clips from his own features." David Edelstein of New York Magazine further describes, “....Panahi plays DVDs of his other films to show where an actor’s instincts took over or the location, he says, became the director. Now he has no actors, no locations that interest him." Ignoring Edelstein's interpretations of the film for a moment, this sequence nicely serves as another form of documentary, that of the historical overview, a retrospective of an artist's documented oeuvre. As Panahi uses DVD copies of his film to reflect, reanalyze, and reminisce, he is also shining light on his current feature. One scene which Panahi chooses to play involves a woman running frantically out of a building. Pausing it, the director notes that the vertical lines of the wall surrounding the woman do all all the acting for her. In another, he speaks about the happy accidents that occur unexpectedly by casting the right people. Filmmakers can take a person or space's individuality and incorporate it into the narrative, and Panahi's admission seems to stand, according to the filmmaker, for all of his work. It certainly doesn't seem to imply that he not longer has “locations that interest him.” If anything, his current location has inspired this latest venture and has forced him to incorporate a number of mediums into the result. Even detractors of the film would be hard-pressed to downplay the significance of its mise en scene.

      The line between fiction and reality has a right to be blurred in This Is Not A Film, as the documentary is essentially grounded in truth and wishes to show the confined space in which Panahi is held. It creates a story out of being unallowed to tell one. By showing a man going through the motions, often unhappily reliant on others, Panahi is consciously contextualizing his situation, at one point informing us that his screenplay is based on a work by Anton Chekhov. A terrible opportunity but an opportunity nonetheless (and with several plot elements not withstanding), Panahi's documentary faced serious consequence — in a bit of trivia that is becoming rather widespread in film circles, This Is Not A Film was transported out of Iran via a USB device placed inside a birthday cake. Alerting his readers to the fact that the controversy had yet to die down, Richard Brody of The New Yorker recently wrote that “the entire movie is an expression of freedom, and, as you watch it, you sense it will lead to more trouble for both Panahi and his friend (and it did: Mirtahmasb was jailed for three months and is currently out on bail." And even though the film implies that Panahi is well aware of the overwhelming support he has received from notable directors in the United States (and that the support could pressure the government into taking time off of his sentence), the director's nervousness is palpable. By making this new film, or video essay, or digital document, Panahi's creation is, if a stunt, one with purpose and gravitas.

      It should come as no surprise that much has been written about the film's mysterious title, its various meanings providing critics with the the daunting task of placing a genre label on the film, and thus what is required from it. Here is a film which purposefully invites rather than defies description. It is a documentary that may remind some of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North for its retelling of realistic situations and Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop for its playfulness of the real. Is it a coincidence that on the corner of Panahi's DVD shelf stands Rodrigo Cortes' Buried, a one-location film about a man trapped inside a claustrophobic wooden box possessing nothing more than a barely working cell phone? The character in Buried had the extra disadvantage of having been buried under feet of soil, his reach of the outside world even more dim. At the end of that film, right before the weight of the dirt above him proves too drastic and takes his life, the man sends out a video message to the media using the cellphone, a last ditch effort to remind the world that he exists. Jafar Panahi's This Is Not A Film may have served a similar reason for being.


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