Three Documentary Filmmakers , livre ebook

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255

pages

English

Ebook

2009

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Publié par

State University of New York Press

Date de parution

05 mars 2009

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9781438425160

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

5 Mo

Film study has tended to treat documentary as a marginal form, but as the essays in Three Documentary Filmmakers demonstrate, the films of Jean Rouch, Ross McElwee, and Errol Morris call for, and reward, the sort of criticism expected of serious works in any medium. However, critical methods that illuminate what makes Citizen Kane a great film are not adequate for expressing what it is about Rouch's The Funeral at Bongo: The Old Annaï, McElwee's Time Indefinite, and Morris's The Fog of War that makes them—each in its own way—great films as well. Although these filmmakers differ strikingly from one another, their films are deeply philosophical and personal, and explore the paradoxical relationships between fantasy and reality, self and world, fiction and documentary, dreams and film, filming and living. It is a challenge to find terms of criticism capable of illuminating such works, and the essays in this book rise to that challenge.

Introduction
William Rothman

Part 1. Errol Morris: The Fog of Film

1. Errol Morris’s Irony
Gilberto Perez

2. Errol Morris’s Forms of Control
Ira Jaffe

3. The Philosophy of Errol Morris: Ten Lessons
Carl Plantinga

Part 2. Ross McElwee: I Film Therefore I Am

4. Coincidence in Ross McElwee’s Documentaries
Diane Stevenson

5. Reflections on Bright Leaves
Marian Keane

6. Drifting in Time: Ross McElwee’s Time Indefinite
Jim Lane

7. Surprise and Pain, Writing and Film
Charles Warren

8. Sometimes Daddies Don’t Talk about Things like That
William Rothman

Part 3. Jean Rouch: The Filmmaker as Provocateur

9. Jean Rouch and the Power of the Between
Paul Stoller

10. The Pause of the World
Daniel Morgan

11. Jean Rouch’s Les maîtres fous: Documentary of Seduction, Seduction of Documentary
Alan Cholodenko

12. Petit à Petit and The Lion Hunters
Michael Laramee

13. Jean Rouch as Film Artist: Tourou and Bitti,The Old Anaï, Ambara Dama
William Rothman

Works Cited
List of Contributors
Index

Voir

Publié par

State University of New York Press

Date de parution

05 mars 2009

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9781438425160

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

5 Mo

Film History of film Película fotográfica

Three DocumentaryFilmmakers

Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch

William Rothman, editor

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Three Documentary Filmmakers

Also in the series

William Rothman, editor,Cavell on Film

J. David Slocum, editor,Rebel Without a Cause

Joe McElhaney,The Death of Classical Cinema

Kirsten Thompson,Apocalyptic Dread

Francis Gateward, editor,Seoul Searching

Michael Atkinson, editor,Exile Cinema

Bert Cardullo,Soundings on Cinema

Paul S. Moore,Now Playing

Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, editors, Ecology and Popular Film

Three Documentary Filmmakers

Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch

∂

Edited by WilliamRothman

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Three documentary ﬁlmmakers : Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch / edited by William Rothman. p. cm. — (Suny series, horizons of cinema) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-2501-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4384-2502-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Morris, Errol—Criticism and interpretation. 2. McElwee, Ross, 1947—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Rouch, Jean—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Documentary ﬁlms—History and criticism. I. Rothman, William.

PN1998.3.M684T47 2009 070.1'809—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2008020818

Introduction William Rothman

Contents

Part 1. Errol Morris: The Fog of Film 1. Errol Morris’s Irony Gilberto Perez 2. Errol Morris’s Forms of Control Ira Jaffe 3. The Philosophy of Errol Morris: Ten Lessons Carl Plantinga

Part 2. Ross McElwee: I Film Therefore I Am 4. Coincidence in Ross McElwee’s Documentaries Diane Stevenson 5. Reﬂections onBright Leaves Marian Keane 6. Drifting in Time: Ross McElwee’sTime Indeﬁnite Jim Lane 7. Surprise and Pain, Writing and Film Charles Warren 8. Sometimes Daddies Don’t Talk about Things like That William Rothman

11 13

61 63

103

Contents

Part 3. Jean Rouch: The Filmmaker as Provocateur 9. Jean Rouch and the Power of the Between Paul Stoller 10. The Pause of the World Daniel Morgan 11. Jean Rouch’sLes maîtres fous: Documentary of Seduction, Seduction of Documentary Alan Cholodenko 12.Petit à Petit andThe Lion Hunters Michael Laramee 13. Jean Rouch as Film Artist:Tourou and Bitti, The Old Anaï,Ambara Dama William Rothman

WorksCited

List of Contributors

Index

123 125

139

157

179

197

233

239

243

Introduction

WILLIAM ROTHMAN

DESPITETHEINCLUSIONOFACCOMPLISHED documentary filmmakers in so many university ﬁlm faculties, ﬁlm study has tended to treat documentaries as if they were marginal to its concerns. In the past few years, of course, a number of documentaries have attained such an unprecedented degree of popularity that the ﬁeld has belatedly taken notice of documentary’s political, social and cultural inﬂuence. Even today, however, there remains a dearth of serious critical studies of documentary ﬁlms and ﬁlmmakers. Ten years ago, I argued in the preface toDocumentary Film Classics(1997) that the scarcity of critical studies of documentary ﬁlms was indica-tive of ﬁlm study’s more general neglect of criticism, a consequence of the revolution the ﬁeld underwent when it began to accord precedence to what it called theory. As I pointed out, there was also a special animus in ﬁlm study’s resistance to devoting sympathetic critical attention even to the most signiﬁcant works within the documentary tradition. It derived from the claim sometimes made on behalf of documentaries—less often by their makers than by their detractors—that documentaries are capable of capturing unmediated reality, or “truth.” From the standpoint of the ﬁlm theories that dominated the ﬁeld for many years—theories that take reality to be an illusory ideological construct—such a claim seems intolerably naive or disingenuous and in any case pernicious. Now that those theories have loosened their grip over ﬁlm study, it has become clear to most scholars and students in the ﬁeld that, although documentaries are not inherently more direct or truthful than other kinds of ﬁlms, it does not follow that they must repudiate and

Introduction

subvert the traditional documentarian’s aspiration of revealing reality. Of course, great documentary ﬁlms—great ﬁction ﬁlms too, for that mat-ter—are capable of revealing truths about the world. What revelations documentaries are capable of achieving and what means are available to them for achieving their revelations are questions to be addressed by acts of criticism, not settled a priori by theoretical ﬁat. Therefore, what critical approaches, what terms of criticism, do documentary ﬁlms call for? How are we to acknowledge what separates what we call “docu-mentaries” from what we call “ﬁction ﬁlms” without denying what they have in common? (What they have in common, ﬁrst and foremost, is their medium: ﬁlm.) The papers inThree Documentary Filmmakersdemonstrate, singly and collectively, that the ﬁlms of Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, and Jean Rouch call for, and reward, criticism of the sort that is invited and expected by serious works in any medium. They are works in which, as the philosopher Stanley Cavell puts it, “an audience’s passionate interest, or disinterest, is rewarded with an articulation of the conditions of the interest that illuminates it and expands self-awareness” (Cavell 2005, 335). As these essays also demonstrate, documentary ﬁlms pose special challenges to serious criticism. Critical methods that enable one to illuminate what makesCitizen Kanegreat ﬁlm may not be adequate a for articulating what it is about, say, Morris’sThe Thin Blue Line orThe Fog of War, McElwee’sTime Indeﬁnite orBright Leaves, or Rouch’sLes maîtres fous orFuneral at Bongo: The Old Anaï (1848–1971)makes that them—each in its own way—great ﬁlms as well. It is a challenge to ﬁnd terms of criticism capable of illuminating such works. The writings in Three Documentary Filmmakers—each, too, in its own way—aspire to rise to that challenge. The American documentary ﬁlmmakers Morris and McElwee, although contemporaries, differ strikingly from each other in their styles and their approach to ﬁlming. And they both differ in almost every imaginable way from Rouch, a trained anthropologist whose ideas were formed in the intellectual ferment of post–World War II Paris and in West Africa. Because of the magnitude of their differences, the ﬁlms of Morris, McElwee, and Rouch pose different, if related, challenges for criticism. They also have afﬁnities so deep as to make it fruitful to devote to the three ﬁlmmakers a single volume of criticism, even though, as this volume illustrates, their ﬁlms call for modes of critical writing no less different in tone, mood, and approach than are the ﬁlms themselves. I ﬁnd a key to these afﬁnities in the eloquent remark by the anthro-pologist Paul Stoller, who observes, in “Jean Rouch and the Power of the Between,” that Rouch’s greatest contribution was to have created a

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