Performative documentary
The pictures depict a small town girl named Isabel Wenzel who is seemingly independent minded, outgoing, has a passion for travel and exploration of cultures, is fashionable and fitness conscious. The documentary is an onscreen picturization of the transition of this twenty something girl to a free spirited girl who follows her dreams of living it up. In the first picture the subject, boards a train as she sets out on a journey to fulfill her desire of traveling to new places.
As she embarks on this unknown journey, she has mixed feelings of leaving her hometown, family, and all the old memories behind and starting on an unknown yet exciting voyage of exploration and freedom. There are butterflies in her stomach, and the way the filmmaker portrays her naivety, and innocence onscreen, often diverts the subject from her firm intentions and resolute aspirations. The girl is sharp, tenacious, and very adventurous. She seems to have a sinking feeling as she lets go off strings aka her precious family ties, in search of freedom. The scenes seem like reconstructions on the film sets and the subject plays the part of her role as an actor. Despite this early move into a drama-doc territory, at times shifting towards fiction, the pictures are classified as performative documentary.
The emotions of the free spirited, adventure, loving girl is symbolic of a new generation of young women who live on life on the fast lane. This social group wants to break free from all bondage and constrictions society imposes on them. This is typical of the performative documentary style. In fact, a consistent feature that marks a performative documentary is that of treating a social group as a whole. In this depiction, the girl Isabel belongs and personifies a social group and performs her story to the filmmaker. Her story is not uncommon to the social group she is a part of. Because she is directing the story to the filmmaker, instead of the filmmaker directing the story to the girl, this type of filmmaking is called a performative documentary.
Performative Documentary always entails direct cinema and is a narration of the story of a subject. Here the camera is up close and personal with the unfolding of the girl Isabel’s personal life, and various events associated with it. The second picture is shot right up on the girl Isabel when she is taking a dip in the cool water of the pool. As the girl travels on her journey of exploration, she lands in the tropical land of South America. Here she soaks herself in the natural beauty, flora of the place, experiments with the local attire, and braces their culture and traditions. These camera shots make the scene look very natural and personal. A refreshing and rejuvenating feeling washes her negative emotions and past scars as she soaks her skin in the fresh waters.
In the third picture, she rediscovers herself and celebrates her new found freedom as she is physically revived and mentally recharged. The burst of happiness and love for life is clearly captured in this picture as she leaves behind all the emotional baggage of the past and is ready to embrace life and fall in love. She looks relaxed and content. This is an example of direct cinema that strikes an emotional chord with the audience. In the last picture, the audience sees Isabel mingling with the indigenous tribal culture of the new place as she decides to make New Mexico her home. The native Americans and Isabel share common traits such as love for antique culture, arts, crafts, dance adventure, community bonding and nomadic living. In the last picture, she is dressed in the authentic Native Indian clothing and is about to perform an Aztec dance with her new found mates. The simplicity of the culture of the Native Americans wins her heart and Isabel’s life is now filled with adventure, love, color, and excitement. As we can see from the above story, Performative documentary is a cool style of documentary filming.