A Trip to the Capitol

The Lone Star state boasts of a rich and fascinating cultural heritage that is a blend of American and Mexican history.  Austin as the capital city of Texas is the epicenter of various cultures and is a true melting pot. The downtown with its magnificent, stately buildings, museums, government offices, has a distinct identity and this is where we get to observe the difference between cultures, art, architecture, and lifestyles of past and the contemporary Texans. This part of the city has enticed many documentary filmmakers and photographers to engage in observing the daily life and natural sights on beautiful Lake Austin and documenting them with an unobtrusive camera. My idea of documenting this film based on the subject of touring the State Capitol was to present a realistic and informative view of the Texas history.  In this documentary, from behind the lens, I shot a college going duo out on an excursion to the State Capitol at the Congress Avenue. The idea was to capture aspects of political history, and bring to the audience a better sense of how the two spectators observed, explored, and viewed it.

The idea of documenting this film about the Texas State Capitol was to foster an observation in a natural way that stimulates the minds and emotions of the audience. The camera did translate my observations into a visual narrative. I started shooting on the capitol grounds and down Congress Avenue as this is where the landscape and architecture is Renaissance inspired. Being the tallest building in the nation, at one time, the Capitol Building is worthy and makes its presence felt to any visitor who comes to Austin downtown. The motto was to highlight the striking architecture and style that shows off many of the natural resources, which are so prevalent in Texas, such as limestone and the landscape.

As the two girls (unknown to me) left St. Edward’s on their road trip to Austin downtown, they stopped by the lush green fields and dense forests overlooking Lake Austin. This place is an excellent habitat to flora and fauna. The documentary captures this information in a natural form to give a visual effect of the roads traveled and how they gravitated towards the setting sun along the trip. The rays of the setting Texas sun at the horizon of the lake was especially attractive. The girls followed their instinct and continued to head southwest along 6th street as I continued to shoot them from behind my camera. The dusky colors of the twilight look surreal in the background. I wished to capture the lingering effect of the sunset from atop the hills of Lake Austin, and the breathtaking skyline and backdrop. Instead, I followed the girls who were oblivious of me and the camera shooting them. This scene was similar to the documentary Grey Gardens where “the two women are at ease with the camera and spontaneous in their interactions but seem to have no idea that others will judge their eccentric, reclusive, highly co-dependent lifestyle bizarre if not healthy” (Nichols, 174).

I wished I was up on a hill shooting some breathtaking landscape with the sunset I experienced that evening. Instead, I have captured images of traffic, commercial buildings, offices, and road construction as I did not want to disturb or dilute the subject that was about the girls trip to the Capitol. The path to the downtown portrayed the laid back, charm of the atmosphere in Austin downtown roads on a weekday evening.

The walk to the inside of the hallowed portals of the Capitol was impressive. The girls walked past groups of school children visiting on a school tour. The group was engaged in their shouting slogans. The girls were spontaneously engaged in their own interactions as they entered the Senate Chambers, which had beautiful paintings originally dated from the 19^th century. The tours of the inside are for free and are full of information about Texas history. The dome shaped interiors have high ceilings with amazing detailing. The state room walls dotted with presidents’ pictures as envisioned by the girls gets displayed.  These fixtures and Chambers are frequently flashed in news and it is interesting to reflect that the famous speeches were given in these rooms. While inside, at every step the girls experienced the presence of Texas history. “The door knobs have Texas stars, some lighting fixtures are in the shape of stars with the letters t-e-x-a-s between the star points, the door hinges are huge and say Texas capitol on them and even benches have stars carved into them.  Tour the grounds to see statues and memorial sites dedicated to all different types of Texans from Confederate soldiers to current day law enforcement officers” (TripAdvisor).

The return journey from the Capitol along the downtown path passes through retail stores and traffic signals. The documentary showcases the desolate roads after office hours and gives subtle hints about a vibrant student community in Austin. Two young college girls crossing the street at a traffic signal are testimony to this culture. Austin has witnessed a development of food trucks that serve wide-ranging foods that cater to the immigrant populations as well as the eccentric university youth. The two girls got down to get a taste of this new wave of food culture that is defining community identity in the city. These food trucks serving Tacos to trendier new age foods are hot in the city. The hustle bustle around the place is symbolic of the affordable pricing and taste of the food vending culture of Austin.

The smartphone has turned nearly everyone into a photographer.  While sometimes when I think about this, it makes my photos feel insignificant—the process, as a whole, is extremely significant and incredible.  The movement of people capturing nearly every hour of their lives has shaped technology, tourism, photography, and society in such a major way.  I can hop on instagram and look at most of my friends’ visual diaries, see what they were doing last week through their own lens.  More interesting, however, is doing this to myself through the photo gallery on my iPhone and seeing the photos I did not post to facebook or instagram, or show to anyone. 

In scrolling through my images to find something to write about for this assignment, I went back to almost a year ago—when I traveled to Europe.  I spent some time in London and while I was there, stayed with an old friend who lives in East London.   While she was at work, I had a lot of time to walk around the streets of East London and took pictures to keep me company.  I think that’s what people do now.  If you’re alone waiting on someone, if you’re walking by yourself somewhere, if you’re in a bathroom, it’s not unusual to take a picture—of yourself, people or places around you, anything.  In a city that you think of as being busy, with tall red buses, old buildings, the queen, etc., I took the most pictures of simple things—trees, parks, sidewalks, the canal.  I never posted any of them because I wasn’t in any of them.  Most of the things I post to facebook are pictures of me having a good time with friends and family—not a bunch of flowers I saw.

In recalling the moments when I took this photos, I realized that it creates a different image of London.  It seems like a neighborhood; it seems simple; it seems quiet.  I believe that these photos touch on the mode of anthropology, as it studies a certain place of certain people.  Even though there aren’t people shown in these photos, you can tell from them, the types of people that made the imagery happen.  In addition, I feel like it touches on the anthropology of the ease of smartphone photography.  Lastly, I feel that it is slightly autobiographical, as it touches on a personal story.

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.

Documentary filmmakers use different modes of representation. The various styles adopted in documentary history has intrigued the audience, made them more insightful about the subject and has altered their expectations about documentary films and their real purpose. 

The style of Reflexive mode constructs the nature of the documentary cinema in a way that it sometimes reconstructs the truth to be able to give a dramatic effect to the viewers about the subject of the documentary. Reflexive mode gives a more realistic picture of the hard facts, depicts not only subjects of historical importance but also highlights the issues pertaining to the representation of the subject and constructing the cinema.

The Performative mode on the other hand, involves emotions and social aspect of the cinema and its impact on the audience.  The performative mode focuses on the subjective matter and eliminates objectivity from the cinema thus altering the interpretation of the subject by the audience.  The two modes of cinema making are similar in a way that they encourage participatory form of interviewing by the filmmakers to gather information about the society.  However, they have a distinct effect of the audience perception about the same subject.

Trinh T. Minh-ha’s film Surname Viet Given Name Nam released in 1992, is a display of reflexive mode of documentary where Trinh portrays Vietnamese women and their culture through historical periods such as childhood, youth, adulthood, old age, rituals, and life events such as marriage, domestic events, and funerals. It is a complex representation of Vietnamese women shown playing important roles in the society with power, status and intimacy and who also hailed from different walks of life. In order to capture the real picture of the Vietnamese culture, off-screen interviews staged in the United States were conducted on actresses. Therefore, the reflexive interviews construct the truth and in many scenes the stages and real overlap to give the audience a perception of reality.

Documentary interviewing captures and frame objective reality of the subjects and presents it in a credible way for audience to have confidence in the facts and testimonies provided by the interviewees. In this film, there is no validity of the filmmaker’s subjective point of view that the audience can get emotionally attached to. Hence, it has a reflexive mode of documentary film making as opposed to the performative style. It is more of a realistic representation of information gathered by interacting with staged interviewees from various social-economic backgrounds sharing the real life experiences of women in post war Vietnam.

In the film, Trinh uses techniques of stopping the cinematic flow, in the end, and interviewing the actors about their experience as scripted interviewees. This helps the audience visualize the complexities of behind the scenes shooting and filming a documentary. Similar to Trinh’s Surname Viet Given Name Nam, in reflexive documentaries, filmmakers are involved in the inner construction of the film, by interviewing scripted actors to represent the truth with no display of any emotional involvement whatsoever. This is unlike performative films that are based on emotions of the filmmaker on the subject  that get passed on to the audience who perceives it as reality.

Through the use of interviewing staged actors, the filmmaker Trinh attempts at readjusting the preconceived opinions and reconstructing the assumptions of the audience about the subject. By altering the perception of the audience, she is able to trigger their minds to explore the truth behind the film’s representation and thereby enhance their awareness and expand their knowledge about the subject.

A day well spent at the Park            

This narration is based on an outdoor activity of a girl accompanied by her father. It was a sunny afternoon, when a little girl Emma has a day out at the park with her daddy. In the pictures, she is seen enjoying a swing ride with her daddy as he gave her one push after another. With only limited time with his four year old daughter, the dad is making every moment count. This picture shows the dad and daughter binding big time at the play scape.

Emma wore her curly hair in a ponytail. Emma gets to ride in the swing and careen up and down as her proud father stayed close by. The girl seems to be having fun looking at the surroundings and observing people around her at the park. The dad is making it fun by pushing her high with his strong arms until the little girl burst into peals of joy. At a spiritual level, this signifies how easy it is to find happiness. This is the true essence of life where a few moments of spending time with unknown people in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere can do a whole lot good to our lives. Ironically, in this madding world, people are so ambitiously chasing their dreams and goals of seeking happiness in material pleasures. In the process they are constantly grappling with stresses and pressures that are erode their peace of mind and happiness.

Coming back to the scene at the park, in one swift move, the dad lifts his adorable girl into the child’s swing and while she sits there apparently not knowing what to do next, he took over by propelling her forward with a push. Then the girl switches her position on the swing, this time sat in the opposite direction. In the picture, we can see an array of activities happening during a busy hour at the park. There is a stroller parked on the pathway which most probably belongs to Emma. There are children taking a truck ride around the park. There are a few others sliding or biking, walking in the park trail.

While he pushed Emma, her dad points at something at the park, adjacent the swings, probably a bird or another child familiar to the girl, playing at a distant slide.

They are I think trying to decide which other sport or play scape she is going to try next. As the dad encourages her to use the slide or take the toy truck ride as he shows the other children including her friend having fun riding the train and sliding down, Emma looks at the slide and the truck and thinks over what her next move will be.

In the last picture, the busy dad receives a text message on his cell phone and he responds back to the text. It was probably from Emma’s Mom checking on the duo. The father is seen responding happily to the text, describing the events of the day spent well with his daughter. While the dad is texting, Emma looks at some crawling creature or thing lying on the ground. She looks amazed and curious at the object she spotted on the ground.

Emma probably subsequently takes a few spins down the short slide, and goes for a train ride and the dad even allows her to roam around the sandy play area barefoot.

While in the park, the dad is at ease with himself, as he takes a break from his routine calls, personal and professional commitments, thoughts that bind our conscious minds every day and mechanically predetermine our activities and decisions. This is the best aspect of spending time at a park with your kid as it’s a place we associate with the spirit of relaxation and harmony with the nature. The crisp air and fresh smelling flowers, chirping birds, and marvelous sceneries genuinely help us relax by simply walking around, playing with our kids or sitting on a park bench singing a cheerful song. All in all the dad and daughter spent an afternoon filled with fun, frolic and had a blast at the playground. The spirit of relaxation at the park is so indulging and pampers our soul and the above observation is the proof of this statement.

Riefenstahl was without doubt the mother of Nazi imagery, motifs and aesthetic cinematography. The documentary Triumph of the Will was truly an epic cinema depicting the heroism and patriotic pride, strength and conviction associated with the powerful Nazi regime in Germany. She sets the trend for using imagery to narrate tales of hardship and oppression. A few striking examples that have been influenced by her style of documentary cinema include the Black Pride salute in the 1968 Olympic Games or the Unknown Rebel in Tiananmen Square, 1989. She was the first woman to revolutionize documentary filmmaking adopting unique cinematic techniques that attracted a sense of respect and adulation from the audience. She truly redefined the landscape of documentary filmmaking by introducing aerial photography making her contribution to documentary cinema remarkable.

Her style of capturing each shot was unique and in the film she has been able to show imagery that has never been seen before such as vast landscapes and military formations. The emblem of swastika or Hitler’s token of freedom, the rifle, hand gesture with minimal use of dialogues comprise a powerful essence that even words couldn’t have described.

In the film, Riefenstahl’s has painted Germany as a resurrecting nation during economic depression and war. This film is a testimony of Riefenstahl’s ability to control the audience with images, exemplary oratory skills of Hitler exhibited by his speeches and footage featuring marching infantry, saluting workmen, and state mobilization.

In the movie Triumph, Riefenstahl has portrayed the spirited side of the Nazi military camps displaying a mix of duty and fun and perks of joining the camp. The film is characteristic of the relationship between soldiers displayed through football playing scenes and youth play that strikes a chord with the audience. The scenes are presented in a very methodical, alert, and constructive way so much that the narration almost dims the effect created by German flags waving in the backdrop and children shoving and wrestling to get noticed in the crowd, the grim buildings or statues, the wails of valedictory of the soldiers. By providing a warm and well poised she is able to temper the tyrannous acts of Nazi Government without stymieing it. It’s a warm proximity between mass assembly and pensive calm.

The film succeeds in covering up all the heinous crimes by Hitler, and validates the German dictator’s fan following in his country. Through the employment of sharp camera techniques, aesthetics, Riefenstahl is able to portray the greatness of Hitler’s visit to Nuremberg to attend the Nazi Party Congress, I say this, because she succeeds in making Hitler not only handsome, but someone who looks to be in charge of his people. The representation of Hitler in Triumph of Will is a reverse of Hitler’s real public image in the civilized world making Riefenstahl a mere pin up girl of the fascist Nazi army and their narcissist ideology. This revolutionary attempt of documenting the political aspects of the Nazi party was demobilized as a politically motivated propaganda and it didn’t work for her career as it was pro Nazism.

Robert Flaherty and John Grierson both were pioneers of documentary movies and lend immense credibility to the root of the documentary filmmaking. Though both are equally important in the documentary cinema landscape, Flaherty is known as the first “father of documentary.” In the classic documentary “Nanook of the North,” the producer of the film Flaherty has attempted to showcase the struggles of an Intuit hunter, Nanook braving the brutal cold conditions at the Hudson Bay region in Canada. In the travelogue he captures the intimacy and communication between the people of the primitive culture in Canada and their indigenous life, and work of the native transcending the picturesque journey to fill a realistic image of the details of the lives and challenges of people thriving in parts of the cold frontier. The film appealed to the audience in Hollywood strongly as it was a source of entertainment and provided them with eye catching images representing the process of human involvement and the natural things of their daily lives. While Grierson applauded the work of Flaherty and acknowledged him as the father of documentary cinema, his approach and style of presenting social and political issues was more dramatized but in a meaningful way. The idea was to showcase situations that are based on the roles of communication and its patterns in modern society.

In “Night Mail,” John Grierson aimed at bringing forth to the audiences’ eye from all parts of the earth to the story, his own story, of what was happening under his nose…the drama of the door-step.” While Flaherty’s representation of the primitive age characters and their way of life in the documentary was more light-hearted, Grierson delved into serious social issues of the modern society. Flaherty often portrayed close-ups of a group of people far from an ancient era in an amusing, and playful manner using staged scenes. He has exhibited a similar approach in the Nanook of the North in 1922 which has no voiceover, but permits the audience to go on an exploration of the intuit culture and its primitive yet human habits in an entertaining way. The movie received unparalleled recognition and some amount of criticism from modern and realistic cinema producers such as Grierson who slammed it for being regressive, fictional and an exaggeration of the truth. If Griersom would have produced the movie Nanook it would have outlined the social issues. This representation would make the documentary more political in the context of modern society rather than focusing on an earlier period.

In “Night Mail,” Grierson depicts the true account of the life process and difficulties of postal service working class chronicled at the time of the Great Depression in Britain. The movie is more issue oriented and less impersonal about its characters that focusses on generating a mass awakening to deal with social and economic problems during the Great Depression through their skills. Flaherty ignored the social aspect of a culture and the socio-political context of the struggles of its protagonist. His style of filmmaking in Nanook was in capturing the beauty, essence, personal account of kinship of an ancient world. John Grierson on the other hand changed the spectrum of documentary cinema by aiming to address contemporary issues with a more realistic and non-fictional approach rather than making films for pleasure which is Flaherty’s style and genre.

Both filmmakers have contributed significantly to a realistic representation of two different cultures in time and have shown techniques and examples of creating a balance between realism and social issues and a touch of joy and intimacy among people and cultures in documentary films today. Both films however depict realistic inner workings of both the societies for audiences to view. In “Night Mail,” the scenes like the bags of mail exiting and entering the trains, Grierson highlights the details of the postal service.  In a similar fashion, Flaherty’s scenes gives realistic insights into prehistoric Arctic culture and lifestyle such as igloo construction, hunting, fishing, etc.

I feel that filmmakers today can contribute aspects of both Grierson and Flaherty’s techniques to teach the audience about a social issue while also capturing a personal account and intimate culture of the scene. Grierson and Flaherty have contributed an important balance of aspects to filmmaking in which modern day artists still use today.

The documentary movie by Robert Flaherty, Nanook of the North was the first full length anthropological account in cinematographic history that received wide recognition for its outstanding ideas that remain nearly incomparable for filmmakers even today to execute them. It was innovative in the sense that it brought to light the details of an unknown primitive culture, the struggles of an Eskimo Nanook and his family braving the brutal cold conditions at the Hudson Bay region in Canada for his survival that Western audiences weren’t much aware of and that charm them thoroughly. The daily acts of trading, hunting and fishing of the inhabitants barely touched by modern age technology. The exotic examples such as the reference to “happy-go-lucky Eskimos,” staged walrus and seal hunts, and the encounter with the gramophone, were all an attempts to preserve the fleeting traditions of the life of the people in the Arctic in the hearts of the contemporary world. As a harbinger of depiction of an alien, mysterious civilization it was unique as compared to other movies of the same genre and age. It underscored a primitive period in history and the subject of the native life, and work of the native transcending the picturesque journey to change a realistic image of the details of the lives and challenges of people thriving in parts of the cold frontier depicted in the documentary was based on the prevailing situation that intrigues audiences. The treatment of the movie was based on realism and was portrayed with honesty. At the crux of the documentary are the two themes that captivate the audience even today namely- the representation of the process of human involvement and the duration of executing things inherent to the daily lives of these people such as fuel generated by burning moss, shielding their kayaks, negotiating ice floes, hunting animals, and rearing their children. For instance the portrayal of the remarkable intriguing igloo building scene that reveal the fruit of human labor and team effort. It also sheds light on the exemplary dexterity of Nanook and is a cinematic treat of surreal beauty and spirituality. The classic images of the inside of the igloo in the film were actually shot in a special three-walled igloo for Flaherty’s bulky camera so that there would be enough light for it to capture interior shots. The creation of shelter, followed by warmth and light streaming through the window all depict the power, skills, and artistry of humans who despite the unfavorable condition and odd are able to create unparalleled buildings and structures for survival.

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