!VAR HAGENDOORN

Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary

I have written before about the amazing site of the National Film Board of Canada. If you get public money do something good with it. The microsite for Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary is yet another example. I'm afraid I have some catching up to do.

Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary is a documentary about documentary film making in the form of interviews with 38 film makers, including Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Nick Broomfield and Heddy Honigmann. I think it premiered at last year's IDFA but I didn't see it. The website appears to be a good proxy though, with short excerpts from the various interviews that can be searched by filmmaker and subject.

In one clip Sylvain L'Espérance explains why for him Dutch film maker Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001) is the greatest filmmaker. He tells how he started out with experimental film, but felt dissatisfied because it wasn't anchored in the real world. And so he began looking for a way to make film as an artist, while at the same time being involved in reality and to make films directed towards reality. He tells how liberating it was to discover the work of Johan van de Keuken because it showed to him that you could be both an experimental and a documentary filmmaker, that you could adhere to a view of the world without denying form.

It is almost as if I hear myself speaking, because this is one of my primary concerns and dilemmas. I only happened upon the site for Capturing Reality by chance and it was also only by chance that I discovered the clip in which Sylvain L'Espérance talks about Johan van der Keuken. But what a lucky coincidence, because suddenly some things fall into place.

The work of Johan van der Keuken is in my genes. This may be why I have never been fully aware of his influence on my own work and thinking. Many of his films were shown on Dutch television and his photographs were regularly exhibited. Paris a l'aube (1957) was his first short film (if I'm not mistaken). It's little more than a collage of still frames, but what I still find wonderful is the choice of frames and the lighting. Van der Keuken included numerous seemingly haphazard scenes, zooming in on the water of the Seine such that it fills the entire screen, zooming in on building facades, the reflection of cars in a café window and so on. Nothing stands out. Yet because of this the film feels very real, it captures the essence of an early morning sun rise in Paris.

Links

Through the Lens Clearly, microsite for a 2001 Johan van der Keuken retrospective at MoMA. Unfortunately no film excerpts, but a collection of interesting essays.