who's story is it?

I'm in a documentary of social practice class, in which we had to do a short portrait of a fellow student. I was assigned to a guy named Alex Culter, a native New Jerseyan, turned LA actor, turned UCLA grad, turned law student, turned Australian film producer, turned history teacher, turned grad student. Alex calls himself a "career career transitioner." I agree.

It was a short project but I learned a lot because not only was I documenting Alex but someone was documenting me. A sort of documentee-documentor drama unfolded. The person doing me had a lot of technical issues with tapes and editing. I had a lot of storyline structure issues with length and precedence.

We screened all the short films today and I saw the same struggle with all of the other students. Some with sound issues, some with storyline. The guy I documented's piece was 20 minutes long. The assignment called for 3.

It made me realize that documentary can be done is SOOO many different ways. I was surprised to see some very artistic renderings and some very cinema verite pieces. It has all to do with the subject AND the author. It is a two way street.

So now I see it as, a project can be very much driven by a subject matter but it has everything to do with the documentarian and if you are pitching it as social practice whose to say what you are trying to portray?

We had a short discussion about whether to narrate, or to have titles, or to have a sort of "host" of the documentary like Michael Moore. I had said you shouldn't "star" in your own documentary. My professor disagreed and said there needs to be more documentary "stars." Her reasoning is it brings more awareness to the medium. She encouraged me to try it.

She is no slouch. My professor did a documentary on her father. “Doc” is the story of H.L. Humes, a famous writer, talker, literary thinker, and troublemaker of the 60’s, a contemporary Don Quixote. Chased out of New York, Doc moved to France to start the “Paris Review” a literary magazine devoted to the thoughts of authors. Writers writing about writing. Doc experimented with a lot of drugs at the time and began accusing the CIA and FBI of following him. He was put in a mental hospital but later released by his family due to the prison like conditions.

His family moved away from him back to New York to get on with their lives.

Full of paranoia Doc stopped writing and moved back to New York a few years later. He showed up on many ivy league campuses (to a sort of cult following) to “preach” about big brother, marijuana, massage, among many many other things. He died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 83. My professor, Immy, filed a freedom of information act request and received a large file. It turns out the US government was keeping tabs on him from 1948-1977.

You can see a clip of the Film here.

The documentary was looking at some major issues of loss and abandonment, as a daughter and as a father, mental illness, drugs, government control. It ran the gamut. It was fascinating.

Immy was the documentor and had complete creative control over her subject but I also feel "Doc" had this story. It was his story to tell. It just so happens he had a film making daughter to tell it.