“Stories We Tell” was such an odd documentary. There were people who felt kind of tricked when they see that most of the old footage wasn’t actual footage, it was just reenactment, and I was one of those people. I completely assumed they were real home video clips.  I’m assuming a lot of viewers had a negative feeling towards the director doing the documentary in such a way when the film first came out, but at the same time, I feel like you need to do certain things to make your film different. In the beginning of the film, the filmmaker’s sister asks why she is even making a film about their “stupid family”, who would be interested in watching it, and she’s right, if it was a film about just her family, perhaps it would be boring. I feel like her “tricking” the audience was one of the most memorable parts of the film, and isn’t that what most people want, something they made to be memorable, for people to keep talking about it? Another thing I wanted to point out was when her dad was narrating, or reciting the voice over script, she would have him repeat himself only on certain lines. Maybe some people thought she didn’t like the way he said the lines, or he didn’t say it clearly, but based on the specific lines she made him repeat, plus her facial expressions, I feel like it was more of a personal reason behind it. I feel like she really wanted her dad to feel certain emotions and think about the lines he was saying, she didn’t want him to just do a voice over, but also have him open up to her without directly doing so. My favorite part of the film was the ending, when her mother’s co-actor admitted to sleeping with her mom, it was like icing on this mad family cake.

After watching The Thin Blue Line, I understand Werner Herzog’s point of view towards styles of documentaries and their purposes, and I also understand the Minnesota Declaration now. When the professor was first asking us the difference between fact and truth, I had no idea what she was talking about, and then when we were asked to explain what Herzog meant by his lessons of darkness, I was even more lost, but after watching The Thin Blue Line it’s easier to answer those questions. I always assumed fact and truth is the same, but it’s definitely not. In the movie, they presented many facts about the case and incident, but that doesn’t mean that the facts were the truth. Facts are something that can be proven, where truth is something you shed light on. When someone does observational documentaries, they’re capturing whatever’s happening as it’s happening, which seems like a good idea if you want to show viewers how it is, but when you do documentaries where you are involved, you bring the truth out of people, you are interviewing them, you are showing viewers their facial expressions, their behavior, their tone, that brings a lot to the table. I feel like it might have a stronger effect on people, and due to the impact of it, you can bring changes with your documentary, the way Errol Morris’ documentary helped Randall Adams be released earlier. It’s crazy to think if this documentary wasn’t made, Adams might have still been in jail for something he had nothing to do with. This documentary helped him receive his freedom, I didn’t think documentaries can be so powerful. No wonder Werner Herzog is so passionate about this type of documentary. Personally I don’t think other styles of documentaries should be belittled, I think each type is great for different purposes, but I think Herzog would definitely disagree with me and find this type to be superior, which I guess in a way I can see where he is coming from. This documentary honestly got me so angry! These are things we always hear about, an innocent victim serving time for a crime they didn’t commit, but to see it in depth, you think to yourself how idiotic and mentally unstable are the people in power, in higher authority. The judge, the cops, they all seemed extremely corrupt, it was definitely not a “mistake”, they knew exactly what they were doing. The other guy, I forgot his name, but the one who actually committed the crime, he is a textbook definition of a sociopath, watching him was scary, and to know there are people like him in this world, is even more scary.

I absolutely loved the documentary The Gleaners and I by Agnès Varda! It was such a metaphorical documentary and I loved that. The following is some of the things that stood out to me in the film. The rap in the film was so unexpected, not to be ignorant but I wouldn’t expect rap in an elderly French filmmaker’s documentary, but throughout the film I learned how cool the filmmaker’s personality is so it would’ve been expected if I have known about her prior to watching this. The lyrics of the rap were also very good and relevant to the film’s content. Restaurants buying some of the potatoes from the gleaners was very surprising to me, I would assume restaurants to buy the best quality produce but for them to buy from gleaners is crazy to me, especially because of the price they charge consumers for their dishes. One thing I was surprised no one brought up in class was the filmmaker showing that very dark painting of “The Last Judgement” and right after showing a man who doesn’t allow gleaners to pick the grapes but lets them rot. I guess some people found no relation between the two, but I definitely think her showing the painting of people’s deeds being weighed in order to go to hell or heaven and a man who lets his produce rot instead of helping the poor right after was for a reason because we know she probably would consider that man a sinner. There was a scene where she shows where she lives, and on the ceiling there was a leak/damages which she started to see the beauty of. I feel like there was a strong common message of “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” throughout the film, and that was one of the parts that was an example. She kept bringing up her age throughout the film, her grey hair, her hands, but I think she found the beauty in her aging which most people dislike, such as the gleaners, who found beauty in things that are no longer wanted by most people. A common assumption amongst people is that the rich are stingy and the poor are generous and this film really proved that. There was many scenes where they show gleaners helping other gleaners, and the rich letting things go to waste rather than letting others consume/use it. Only thing I would have preferred is for her to end the documentary in that scene where she shows the clock without hands, I think that scene would have been such a creative and poetic way to end the film, but that’s just my preference. I know this is just a blog and not a film review, but I would definitely recommend this to others.

Last time we had class, we watch the documentary film Harlan County, USA which was about the coal miners’ strike. The film was made by a woman, Barbara Kopple, and the film showed the roles of the women as very dominant and determined characters throughout the strike. I was really surprised that no one in class made a connection between the director being a woman and the strong characters of the film being women. I would assume someone, especially one of the guys in class, would say or think that maybe she was being biased towards the women, as a woman she wanted to present the women as very strong beings so maybe she made sure to include scenes where the women seemed dominant and valuable, and didn’t show many scenes where the men are seeming to be strong. I really appreciated the guys in the class for not having that type of mentality and instead, discussing in class how they also thought how essential these women were in the strike. Personally, I don’t think the director was biased, I do think many of the women were truly very supportive of the strike and helpful and the director captured just that, but I was just surprised no one else thought otherwise. Although, it does make me wonder if a man made this film instead of Barbara Kopple, would it appear to be different? Would a male director allow to show how strong and essential women were during this strike, but I guess that depends on which director it is. A particular scene that I really liked in the film was when the “gun thug” asked the filmmaker for her identification, and she asked him for his instead. That scene really made me fond of the director. You can sense her courage and also her support of the coal miners and their families. When I searched about this film, I also learned that even when the director would run out of film, she would pretend to keep filming because it prevented the violence a bit. I don’t wish for workers to be in such bad conditions again where they have to strike, but if that time does come, I do hope everyone is as unified as the coal miners and their families were.

After watching “Night and Fog” in our last class, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It is one of the most powerful documentaries I have seen. It’s so hard to believe that there are human beings that are sick enough to do this to other human beings. People talk about hell in the after-life, but this was hell right here, on our Earth. While watching it in class, I kind of forgot we were watching a documentary, I truly felt like we were watching a horror film, but after class was finished, it was hard to tell myself that these things really happened to people. I felt like it helped me become more appreciative of my life. Sometimes we get caught up in minor problems and day to day inconveniences, we forget how good we have it, how blessed some of us are. The victims in that documentary got everything taken away from them, the fact that they were human beings were even stripped from them. I feel like there would be much more compassionate human beings if every person seen this. When the professor said it would be graphic and disturbing, I honestly completely underestimated her warning, I thought maybe because she is a professor, she felt like she should say this to the students just to be safe, but NO, her warning was definitely accurate. There were scenes I had to cover my eyes, especially the scenes of the bulldozers and all those corpses, I started feeling sick. It shocks me that the guards and workers just did their horrific job with no remorse. I understand they would have most likely been killed if they refused to do their job or if they tried to help the victims, but personally I’d rather die than to do this to another human being. The saddest part is I feel like some of us don’t learn from history and let it repeat. There are human beings on the other side of the world who are crying for help, such as the people of Syria, and a lot of us are blind to it, including myself. I’m not sure if it’s as bad as what happened in this documentary, and I won’t know because I feel like the media tries to hide it.