The two most recent modes of documentary that have been discussed in class are the participatory and reflexive modes. The main characteristic of the participatory mode is that it emphasizes interactions between filmmaker and subject. The filming may be an interview or other forms of direct involvement that show interaction and conversation. As Bill Nichols describes, sometimes a participatory documentary involves archival footage in order to examine historical issues (31).
A prime example of a participatory documentary is Photographic Memory by Ross McElwee, a film in which a majority of the filmmaker’s time is spent interviewing (arguing with and bothering) his son, Adrian, in hopes of reaching some conclusion about their relationship. The film is proof that technological overload renders communication. Throughout the entire film, Adrian is constantly on his phone and/or computer, unable to fully communicate with his father and causing the “interviews” to take much longer than they should. His father complains that his son’s addiction to the virtual world via technology is an ultimate distraction and puts a wall up between the two of them. The irony of it all is that Ross is essentially doing the same thing – his camera has been between himself and his son for Adrian’s entire life, and he is using it now to try to get closer to his son and pull information from him, when I think all Adrian really wants is for his father to put the camera down and just talk to him because he wants to, because he enjoys it (instead of for some filmmaking purpose).
In a participatory documentary, relationship between filmmaker and subject becomes much more complex and personal. Nichols explains it very well in saying that a viewer can sense that the images they are seeing are “not just an indexical representation of some part of the historical world but also an indexical record of the actual encounter between filmmaker and subject” (157). In this mode, the filmmaker is entering into the social actor’s world and does so through conversation, interview, provocation, etc.
I really enjoyed Chronicle of a Summer, a participatory documentary that does an excellent job of pulling information from complete strangers by confronting them and engaging with them in the middle of the streets of Paris, posing the question: “Are you happy?” It is very interesting to see how the camera can cause people to react differently.
On the other hand, the reflexive mode, the most self-conscious and self-questioning mode, “calls attention to assumptions and conventions that govern documentary filmmaking” (Nichols 31). This mode is known to increase our awareness of the way a film is constructed to represent reality in some way. Man with a Movie Camera and Stranger with a Camera are perfect examples of this mode.
Stranger with a Camera, as Nichols puts it, prompts a reflexive awareness, one of sociological assumptions that involved fieldwork – research on the film’s two main subjects – Hugh O’Connor, filmmaker who travelled to film Appalachian residents, and Hobart Ison, the local resident who shot and killed him. Filmmaker Elizabeth Barret instinctively questions how misunderstandings and stereotypes across cultures can potentially lead to unnecessary deaths. She does an excellent job of taking away viewer’s assumptions about the poor and disadvantaged residents as well as the “entitled” filmmaker, and instead, stimulates a deeper contemplation and reflection of any and all underlying issues.
As mentioned before, Man with a Movie Camera also fits into the reflexive mode. It places attention on the filmmaking process and how a filmmaker can cinematically create an individual perspective. I think this is one way the reflexive and participatory modes may be similar – though in different ways, they both have the ability to create an individual perspective. Participatory does this by means of conversation with others and how the filmmaker chooses to portray their subject (distortion and misrepresentation sometimes occur, depending on the morality of a filmmaker), while the reflexive mode does this by engaging the filmmaker with his or her viewers. Because the reflexive mode attends to a filmmaker’s engagement with us, the viewers, it differs from the participatory mode in that it does not follow a filmmaker in his or her engagement with others (social actors).
Another aspect to point out about reflexive documentaries is that they challenge the techniques of realism as a style. Surname Viet Given Name Nam is a perfect example. This film relies heavily on interviews with Vietnamese women who describe their oppressive conditions since the end of the war. However, as the film progresses, the viewer learns that they were staged interviews with women who are actually immigrants to the U.S., and they were reciting accounts that had been transcribed and edited by someone other than the filmmaker herself. This goes to show that documentary filmmaking, depending on the filmmaker (and morality of a filmmaker), can cross a line and make itself out to be something entirely different than what it’s portraying.