The Art of Documentary Filmmaking – Episode 1
I’m joined by Stuart Tanner, who is now in South Africa, a documentarian, and Matthew Kalil, who is a regular guest on Talking Movies. And we are talking about The Art of Documentary Filmmaking. Welcome, guys.
ST: Good to be here.
MK: Thanks, Spling. Yeah, it’s very exciting to be here. Stuart’s visiting from the USA, and he’s just completed this documentary called Seeds of Sovereignty. Very important subject matter. And him and I are involved in an MFA in documentary filmmaking that’s starting at the Maharishi International University back in the USA.
Yeah, it’s a field of filmmaking that often doesn’t get the due credit. I really love the social impact aspect to the filmmaking. It’s filmmaking with a moral compass. It’s filmmaking with a fixed perspective on positive change. Well, at least most of the time.
ST: If you’re interested in the world around you and the events going on and people of other cultures and issues and their situations and so on, something that’s with you from an early time, usually that interest, then making documentaries is a really good way to engage with that interest because it takes you to those people, to those places, to those situations. You witness them firsthand yourself, as well as making a film, as well as bringing that to other people. So I think on the experience level, there’s not a lot that’s quite like it in that respect, because you do travel, you do go to places, but you stay there. You don’t pass through. You just, you don’t go and see the sites so much. You actually engage with the people. You spend time with people. You learn about their situation, their culture, what’s going on, what they say, and so on. And you’re there to facilitate that. And it is a very powerful experience to have.
And you’ve been doing this for many, many years now. What led you to documentary filmmaking in the beginning?
ST: I was always doing photography. I love cameras, I love the feel of cameras and lenses and looking at them, engaging with them.
And, you know, it’s the kind of right level of tech for me, where, you know, I’ll never be a computer code writer and everything, but something about the physicality of holding a camera and having lenses and looking through it and composing pictures was always really engaging for me. But I like the moving image more than the still image I found once I started playing around with cameras. And then I liked engaging with the subject as well. So, you know, from just initially being attracted to the whole experience of taking pictures or bits of video, and then you become more interested in actually what you’re filming and the subjects and the people and so on. So one thing evolves into the other. And the amazing thing about documentary or film in general is how many things that are involved in it is sound, picture, story, people, animation, graphics, music. So you can really express yourself across a wide range of creativity, and it all has to come together in some grand design in the edit room, where you can be creative and pull it all together into a piece that hopefully makes sense, is compelling, as well as engaging, visual in the case of documentary, that you feel is an important story that needs telling.
Speaking of stories being told, Seeds of Sovereignty, I think that is your latest work.
ST: Yeah.
A film that I’ve seen recently, and I really enjoyed how surreal it is. It really is like a film that you kind of go into, and you immerse the viewer. It’s almost like you’re floating to begin with, because you’re seeing these aerial shots of Mexico, of this very vibrant culture. And I think you’ve done such an amazing job of piecing that all together and just really showing what’s so special about the culture, about the people, about the natural resources they have. This is a story about seeds. It’s about farming.
It’s about people. And it’s about a sort of David and Goliath story. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?
ST: Yeah. So one of the things I think is, you know, sort of a revelation kind of part of the story is the difference between a culture where food has become a mass-produced corporate enterprise, and where you’re so far removed from the food, where in a way it’s still important, but a lot of cultural value, a lot of things that used to exist around the growing of that food and the celebration of that food have disappeared. Where I live in Iowa, we have a monoculture of, you know, GMO corn and GMO soy, none of which is for eating. It’s for either making ethanol or going to feed farms for beef and so on. So there’s a huge disconnect between what’s growing in the fields and you. And then you go to a culture where the food is being grown in the fields, but it actually goes into the local cuisine. And it’s actually part of traditions that have spanned 9,000 years, where a huge variety in Mexico of maize, different types of maize has been evolved. They all have their unique qualities. They all have their unique tastes, flavours, and they all add to the local cuisine. They’re all highly nutritious and don’t do the kind of damage to the environment that industrial farming does. So there’s a story to be told there about these opposing models and really key choices to be made about what we want for ourselves, what we want for our children, what we want for the future.
For more movie reviews, interviews and features, visit splingmovies.com and remember don’t WING it, SPL!NG it.
