Intro to Documentary-Anna L.

I enjoyed reading today’s prompt from, “Introduction to Documentary.” Just after the six different voices of documentary film were introduced, I thought that surely any given film is a combination of multiple voices, and then the author confirmed this idea; “A film identified with a given mode need not be so entirely. A reflexive documentary can contain sizable portions of observational or participatory footage; an expository documentary can include poetic or performative segments.” (100) This reminded me of when I studied the rhetorical triangle and the three different kinds of appeals –ethos, pathos, and logos. Similarly, one can take any work and analyze how the argument may use one primary form of appeal, but it is enriched by drawing from the others as well.

Another aspect of this reading that interested me that I felt one could take the characteristics of documentary film, in my mind a very specific genre, and apply it more broadly to any lens-based media. Photography was perhaps first to establish an ethos of truthfulness-that it is a pure index similar to the question addressed of the observational voice “What if the filmmaker were simply to observe what happens in front of the camera without overt intervention?” (109) My study over the past year has emphasized themes that the representation of truth is always skewed. The mere act of framing inn film/photography means selective exclusion. This is further complicated by questions of subject behavior is changed with the presence of the camera. Recently on vacations I have become interested in taking candid photographs of families interacting on the beach- because wielding a camera means wielding power, the ethical boundary of consent is fuzzy. However, it is also universally understood that posing for a camera not only makes subjects self-conscious, it is inherently staged and thus may feel less genuine. This issue, of how much or how little control and its correlation to representing “truth” is difficult, as stated by the author, “That such debate is by its very nature undecidable continues to fuel a sense of mystery, or disquiet, about observational cinema.” (115)

The documentary that I chose to include as an example is The Story of the Weeping Camel.  It is a slow-paced, but beautiful and mesmerizing docudrama about a nomadic Mongolian family who lives in the Gobi Desert. When a white camel is born and rejected by its mother, the family tries unsuccessfully to reconcile the two and then resorts to enlisting the help of a musician to perform a healing ceremony. With the exception of an introduction (which I’ll address later) I would argue that this documentary is primarily observational. Initially we are introduced to the members of the family by seeing their daily routine from a distance. Throughout the film the only speech is the family’s occasional dialogue, the camera movement places us in the scene without drawing attention to itself, and the overall effect is a convincing portrayal of snippets of the family’s daily life. Events depicted such as the birth of one of the camels, inherently cannot be staged, and in reality would be so crucial to the family's livelihood that their focus would be on the animals, not the camera.

The only portion of this film that I see breaking this mode of observation is a brief introduction. The grandfatherly figure is seen at first from a distance as he gathers firewood, and then he directly addresses the audience (via direct eye contact with the camera) as if they were children listening to his passing on of the legend of the birth of the camel.  In addition, while I don’ t think that this film would fit the characteristics of the poetic mode specifically, there is certainly a simple but moving beauty to the film created by editing choices that makes it a work of art that goes beyond dry, “unbiased” observation.  

Here's a link for anyone who might get a chance to watch part of this film: https://archive.org/details/TheStoryOfTheWeepingCamel