The Art of Documentary Filmmaking – Episode 3
Welcome to Talking Movies. In episode 3 of The Art of Documentary Filmmaking, we continue the conversation with international documentarian Stuart Tanner, who directed The Seeds of Sovereignty, and Matthew Kalil, who is a regular guest on Talking Movies.
ST: It’s not sexy to talk about and doesn’t seem to be the subject of documentary in a way, but that’s what I’m interested in doing more, is to expose the systems that are creating the problems.
And would you say there’s like a trend in terms of your specific brand of storytelling?
ST: I always get drawn back to issue-based documentaries, but secretly, of course, most documentary filmmakers want to do observational documentary, or character-driven documentary, or something more experimental, and so on. It’s hard, it’s a lot of work, and takes a lot of time to put together because of all the interviews you have to do, and partly because the particular documentary path that I went along was broadcast journalism with documentary and current affairs, so it’s been in my DNA as a documentary filmmaker. So, I mean, documentary is quite an interesting field because the ethical quagmire is in a constant state of evolution.
I wanted to find out from you if you’ve ever been on the fence about an issues-based documentary, where you feel like you’re trying to maybe have more of an objective standpoint. Have you ever felt like you were unsure, or compromised, or something like that?
ST: Yeah, I’d have a very strong view on that, which is that it’s fine to have an authored piece. If you, as a documentary filmmaker or journalist, you look at an issue and you see the different sides of the argument, but in your estimation, as a journalist, an author of the piece, you feel the argument comes down in this particular way, which is weighted to one side, and that really makes those points very strongly. I think that’s fine. I don’t think that’s the same as activist piece, and it’s a long way from being propaganda. It’s fine, as long as you give fair representation to what those other arguments are, and also you do your due diligence about everybody’s claim, whoever you interview, then it’s fine to do an authored piece, where, as you see in Seeds of Sovereignty, it’s pretty strong in its statements and conclusions on the merits of either system, but it does give room to opposing statements by the EPA and others about their claims of safety for GMO products, or the benefits of it for farmers, so it’s very important to have that balance in there. What I will say about that documentary, you don’t see in there direct claim that a GMO causes direct harm to human health, as in, if you eat GMO corn, it will cause you specific problems, because in my estimation as a journalist, that kind of very strong correlation is as yet not something I personally think you can be 100% confident in. Cause for concern, yes. Research that suggests you should be concerned, yes. Need for more regulation or more research into long-term effects and so on? Definitely. You as the filmmaker, as a journalist, you’ve got to feel what you put out there is solid and can be scrutinised.
I think a lot of people will think of documentaries as being quite a cerebral chronicle, something to obviously get the audience thinking, to challenge them, to persuade them, and in some cases with more sort of biassed opinions, trying to maybe even manipulate. In the field, when you are conducting these studies, and doing this research, and putting together this perspective, have you ever been confronted by people that are really not wanting you to actually say what you’re saying as a documentary filmmaker? Has it ever led to you feeling like there are threats or factions that are trying to shut you down?
ST: Yeah, I’ve made, just to rattle off a few, I mean I did a documentary about the persecution of the Falun Gong in China, and the Chinese government is certainly not going to look kindly on you covering the story of the persecution of the Falun Gong, which was extensive, brutal, unrelenting, and terrible. You know, that was for a BBC series called Correspondent, and I also did a documentary and a news feature on the plight of the Uyghurs in northwest of China, and we had to pose as tourists in the area. There’s no way that you can get permission to film in those areas, and to tell those stories, and anyone who talks to you on the ground, or is part of that, is taking a risk by speaking out. So the ethical complexities of those particular documentaries were really quite tough. After we’ve been filming to a certain amount of time near Urumqi, and around the Silk Road, in the Taklamakan Desert area, we had to fly someone in, and they were, it sounds like something out of a movie, which it kind of is. So we told them to go to a specific restaurant, and they’re just sitting at a table, and we are eating their meal, and we’re just like briefest of glances, and literally walk past the table, and do a drop of all the tapes, because it’s tapes at that time, and they pick up those tapes, and fly them out of the country. One of our people on the ground, the police were circling in on his family, and starting to ask questions, and get closer and closer. The heat was getting pretty severe, so that was a very tense few weeks that we went through there.
