Are Documentarians Imaginative? A challenging view of veracity and creativity in documentary filmmaking.

Reading the first section of Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning expanded on a lot of the ideas I gathered from reading Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice, and Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentaries and Ethnographic Films. While the two latter books focused on the theory and practices behind documentary media, Crafting Truth focuses on how documentarians form and create meaning. In particular, the first section extensively covers authenticity, evidence, authority, and responsibility in documentary filmmaking, challenging the future documentarian to reflect about how they are constructing meaning and truth (actuality), and also how their assertions of what is true effect what viewers receive.

In the Introduction, Spence and Navarro begin by setting the premise of the book—an analysis of how a “documentarian…translates knowing into telling” (Spence and Navarro Location 38). The authors’ premise, that “there is no value-neutral treatment of actuality,” provides a great framework for understanding their views on “crafting truth.” For the authors, the question is not whether what is presented in a documentary is true, rather how its meaning and truth are constructed and as a result presented to the audience.

As a writer, I am constantly aware of verisimilitude, so the authors’ discussion on authenticity in documentary was particularly important and insightful to me. The authors begin the chapter with a declaration that all represented realities are transferred realities, meaning there are no objective representations, of either others or ourselves. This argument is an established premise that should color the approach a documentarian takes to filmmaking (this is covered in both Documentary Media and Cross-Cultural Filmmaking), and I agree with it. However, the authors state,

            While documentaries and fiction films can share certain techniques, aesthetic

            qualities, and narrative structures, documentaries seem to depend less on

            the imagination of their makers than on the situations recorded by the

            filmmaking apparatus (Spence and Navarro location 160).

It seems to me the authors believe documentaries follow events/subjects, and because of this, there is little imagination on the part of the makers, who are reacting or capturing events/subjects. While there is some veracity to this, and in fact, it may be the case in some situations, I believe the authors have the concept-creation flow in reverse. When a documentarian finds themself concerned or curious about a subject, they are then pushed to locate the means of observing, understanding, and representing that subject/event to others. This process, as stated by the authors early on, is not an objective act, but one that is subjective and dependent on the meaning, value, and foreseeable knowledge the makers would like to impart.

Spence and Navarro posit that we are interested in documentaries because they are not dependent on the maker’s imagination, and are instead focused on the situations captured on film (Spence and Navarro location 160). I beg to differ. I believe we are fascinated by documentaries because we are interested in similar or differing ways of knowing and understanding the world around us, and as such, are drawn to the ways others make meaning, as well as present ideas foreign to us. The authors are correct in stating that documentaries present events as happening and show us people who have shared the world with us, but I believe our fascination goes deeper; I believe we are drawn to the meaning and impact of these events/people on our world—as understood by others. This does not mean that we will agree with a maker’s representation, it means that we are eager to engage with their representations. Essentially, what I am stating is that knowledge, meaning, and understanding is contextual—we create and receive knowledge and meaning in context to who we are, our position in society, and our positioning to others.

Perhaps I’m splitting hairs or nitpicking ideas, but this idea is one that snagged me mentally, and one I kept turning over in my mind.

In fact, the authors solidify my thoughts about the creative imagination maker’s employ in their films with their questioning of documentaries, asking “not whether documentaries are committed to telling the truth but what gives legitimacy to their truth claims—what makes a particular film or video worthy of our trust” (Spence and Navarro location 173). They believe what is tricky about this question is the notion that documentaries are not simply reproductions of experiences, but are the maker’s (re)positioning of the experiences. As I see it, this transformation of experiences is the crack a maker’s imagination flows in, and begins to influence the audience’s knowledge about the event/people presented. This is where a critical and discerning audience interacts and engages with the maker, positioning their personal ideas against what is (re)positioned in front of them.

In large part, I appreciated the authors’ discussion about authenticity in documentaries. For example, I never thought about the different modes or variations of truth. The authors present three different ways of understanding truth—factual truth, higher truth, and symbolic truth (Spence and Navarro Location 294). These different ways of understanding the veracity of a documentary impact the ways an audience experiences it.  Spence and Navarro suggests that in order to fully understand the story being presented to us, we must understand (and be presented with) the complex truth of a subject/event, which includes not only the factual truth, but also the higher and symbolic truths.

In totality, I agree with the authors’ discussion about veracity in documentary. Midway through the chapter they state, “neither writing nor painting can give us [the] certainty” of records, events, or people happening and existing we receive through film (and photography). As a writer and fleeting artist I have stated many times, “why aspire to paint a flower realistically when I can photograph it?” The idea being to not seek to arrive at some realistic certainty or truth, but to transform something received into something meaningful and authentic to my experience with it. By all means this is a biased approach to creation, especially the creation of documentaries, but I too believe, “all representation is transformation,” and as a scholar, a maker, I am most concerned in the transformation of things, and the arrival of the maker at a personal truth that edifies, challenges, or enhances my experience with world. I am interested in the responsible (re)creation and (re)presentation of meaning and knowledge.

 Works Cited

Spence, Louise and Vinicius Navarro. Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and

            Meaning. Kindle ed., Rutgers University Press, 2011.