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In search of a definition for documentaries

Filmmakers Godfrey Reggio (USA), Coco Schrijber (Netherlands), Luis Ospina (Colombia) and Mexicans, Juan Carlos Rulfo and Yulene Olaizola, presented their ideas about the topics of dividing fiction and documentary films, and objectivity in documentary cinema.

Documentary vs. Fiction
?We shouldn?t have to make a difference any more between documentary and fiction, both are films and should be seen as such,? Yulene Olaizola said. ?To many people it is surprising that documentaries and fiction films are nominated together in the category for Best Movie, but it shouldn?t be. It is as if they are telling us that documentaries don?t have the quality to compete with fiction films.?

?Before all else, cinema is a business, and that is where the main difference lies,? Godfrey Reggio said. ?If you want to make fiction you will have a big budget provided by sponsors and probably a high return in the box office. If you want to make a documentary you will have a low budget and a smaller audience.?

?It is very difficult to define what a documentary is,? said Luis Ospina. ?I compare it with some literary genres. It can be an essay, a diary, a memoir, a poem? therein lies its richness. The biggest difference between fiction and documentaries is that in fiction everything is controlled. In documentaries, one depends almost entirely on luck.?

?We shouldn?t watch a film wondering if it is fiction or a documentary,? Coco Schrijber said. ?We need to stop judging cinema. Why don?t we sit down, let the movie roll and wait until, with time, an image or the memory of a certain dialogue comes to us and tells us what it had to say??

?In fiction and documentary films the same thing has to be achieved: to tell a story,? said Juan Carlos Rulfo. ?I have found that the most important thing in making movies is to learn to love people, find the main flavor of what they are telling you and feel the sound of time with which they tell their stories. These are the things that guide my movies, the flavor to tell and the time to tell. Cinema is about finding characters, feelings, landscapes, words, to find the shell where things fit.?



About objectivity
?Films are about passion, sensibility, finding that unique way of telling things,? Godfrey Reggio said. ?We should be impassive hunters of a certain point of view. The beauty of life is our own subjectivity, it?s our own unique vision, no one can hear the voice that is inside you. You have to find it and let it out.?

?When you start a project and look for economical support and approval from an institution or a school, we filmmakers are always told to be objective and explain why the movie is viable,? Yulene Olaizola said. ?We have to make a synopsis, an argument, a premise, a script. Developing a project can be frustrating because we have to make so many decisions that probably will change in the future. However, we have to do it and share it with other people to get their approval. But at the moment of creation we have to cast them aside and let ourselves be surprised by whatever happens along the way.?


?The script emerges from economic necessity, starting with Grffith?s films, of what is needed on a set,? said Luis Ospina. ?It is a deformation of fiction. It is a straightjacket that they want to impose on us to develop an idea that doesn?t need a script. When I do a project for a documentary everything is false, so if we are going to tell lies when we present our project then we should do it from the beginning. Cinema, documentary or fiction, is fake, everything is created. It is a succession of lies that search, in the best of cases, for a moment of truth. Even the Lumiere brothers? films, that for years we thought were the most ?documentarish,? today we know that they were staged. In films the only thing that is objective is the camera?s lens.?

I don?t know what objectivity means, I don?t believe in it,? said Coco Schrijber. ?The few moments that are truly objective that have been filmed are still not believable. However, it is very important that everything that is shown in a documentary seems real.?

?Cinema first started by being documentary: the camera, reality and the feeling of reality,? said Juan Carlos Rulfo. ?I think that in schools, filmmakers should go to the streets, deal with reality and try to tell something; let each student discovery reality and learn how to tell something.?

In conclusion, Yulene said, ?There is great confusion between documentary and fiction films, but the answer is not to impose a definition or create a new one like docufiction, but to eliminate all definitions and just make movies. There are festivals where that distinction is not made any more, documentaries and fiction films compete on equal grounds nowadays.?



Speakers:
? Luis Ospina (Colombia) created in the seventies the Cine Club de Cali and the magazine Ojo al cine. He has directed two long film fiction movies: Pura Sangre and El soplo de vida as well as 30 short films and documentaries such as La Desazón suprema, which tells the story of Fernando Vallejo, and was shown in FICM 2003. His recent film, Un tigre de papel (which mixes fiction and documentary), has won several awards in Miami, Toulouse, Lima, Quito and La Habana.

? Juan Carlos Rulfo (México) studied at CCC and has won many awards, internationally and nationally. His films El abuelo Cheno y otras historias, Del olvido al no me acuerdo and En el hoyo (winner of three Ariel) have been recognized in Sundance, Bacifi y Karlovi Vary. Los que se quedan, premiered in FICM 2008, was recognized in the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.

? Yulene Olaizola (México) won an Ariel award for Intimidades de Shakespeare y Víctor Hugo, shown in FICM 2008, for Best First Work. Olaizola won in 2005 a FONCA scholarship for the development of her documentary which has been awarded several prices, in Buenos Aires, Transilvania, 9th Latin American Film Festival de Polonia, Huesca and San Sebastián.

? Godfrey Reggio (EUA) is a documentary filmmaker known for his Qatsi Trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi), films that show the destruction of nature by the modern world. In 1993 Reggio was invited to create a new school of artistic and technological exploration and production called Fabrica founded by Benetton in 1995 in Treviso, Italia.

? Coco Schrijber (Netherlands), whose first long film documentary, First Kill, was selected in 2001 to compete in Joris Ivens of the IDFA, also won the KNF Award in the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht. With Mooie Wereld, she has won six awards in international festivals.