Anti-doc

When I am asked to define the type of videos that I am making it is easy to say that I make documentaries but in truth I don’t actually believe that, nor do I have much interest in doing that. I will, if the party is interested, refer to the idea of an Anti-documentary. This is not to imply that I am making videos that are opposed or opposite to a documentary. Narrative and experimental films would suitably cover that criterion. What I am thinking about is capturing and utilizing “documentary footage” which is to say, unscripted moments in time and presenting them in a traditional documentary style but to a very different end and different viewing experience.

Stylistically, documentaries run the gamut from seemingly “fly on the wall” objectivity where little evidence of the camera or crew’s influence on the situation is revealed to greatly subjective and opinionated work where the original moments are all but shrouded in stylized editing and postproduction effects. Either is equally valid as “documentary” because the former can really only convey an illusion of being more objective than the latter. The truth of that objectivity is always up for debate for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the simple fact that having the camera in the situation changes that reality, but for my purposes I am borrowing this illusion of objectivity from the “fly on the wall” approach to further suggest that I am making what should appear to be a documentary even though my intentions diverge from there.

What the ant-doc does is to define what the film is intrinsically about or what the viewer should assume that it is about but instead of addressing that subject or calling it by name, instead it diverts the attention elsewhere, omits relevant information, denies the presence of the assumed subject matter or otherwise pretends to be a film about something else altogether. Names and faces may never be revealed. Obvious topics, important information, locations and seemingly relevant facts may never be discussed. The “Elephant in the room” is relegated to B-roll shots and cutaways while people talk about anything but.

Interestingly, only the keen observer seems to recognize that this is happening, that their attention is being diverted elsewhere, that their questions are going unanswered. In a sense, what the process of making anti-docs in a number of different ways has illustrated is that it is possible to be even more revealing about a subject, to tell a richer story about a person or place by revealing it’s influence and the details that surround it than by confronting it head on. The viewer is forced to interpret the assumed subject through other means and the lack of facts or even faces are either ignored or they are seen as stylistic elements.

I’m currently furthering this concept with some new project such as World of Products and Mainline. A good example of this line of thinking is illustrated with Shadow World. Never once is the actual location addressed in either the multiple interviews or something as simple as lower thirds. Opinions and especially facts and information about the location, under the Philadelphia El tracks (which is the assumed subject of the project as a whole) are never revealed or addressed. In fact “Philadelphia” is never spoken and “Kensington” only once in 30 episodes. The single consistency between all the videos and the things that forces attention onto itself in almost every vignette is the tracks trains that persistently interrupt the action and dialogue. Since these trains are never addressed except for with patient upward glances, we are left to interpret their influence on everything else that is happening.

The Anti-doc while easily viewed as documentary acts more like a photograph or series of photographs or a painting. Both of these mediums have longer traditions of remaining ambiguous and mysterious. If documentary video can be seen as an artistic medium in its own right and not only as a means of storytelling or informational then it could be appreciated on the same terms as a painting would, for it’s formal properties and its universal themes and abstract concepts and for its ability to pose more questions than answers and see through information directly into character.