Documentary Final: Helix

One of the potential strengths of any documentary, is that the process of making it forces the maker to reflect more deeply on the concept they are illustrating than they may have had cause to using other mediums. In the process of constructing an intentional metaphor, the many creative decisions that fall to the filmmaker are also positioned to ask the filmmaker many difficult questions about what they are trying to communicate.  Bill Nichols[1] noted,  “One… generalization about recurring topics in documentaries is that they involve those concepts and issues we need metaphors to describe.” This common use of the medium, to use images, subjects, juxtapositions, and audience expectations to initiate a discussion about otherwise abstract ideas, is inherent in the nature of storytelling, and doubly inherent in the nature of telling “true” stories. 

As was discussed by Nichols and by Broderick Fox[2], there are a number of fluidly categorized ways – modes – that filmmakers regularly use to present these stories or ideas to their audiences.  For this project, given the logistic constraints (mainly of time) involved in the undertaking, it seemed to be in my best interest to make as many decisions before shooting as possible.  This pre-meditated approach lent itself to an essayistic mode, combining elements of the poetic, reflexive, performative, and autobiographical modes.  

The poetic mode is perhaps an unavoidable component of essayistic documentary.  Nichols said that in poetic mode, “The filmmaker engage[s] with the film form as much as or more than with social actors.”  This prevalence of form over subject was also a component of the essayistic mode insofar as it was explored in class.  The subject, in this case myself, becomes less important than the idea, or affect being emphasized by the filmmaker’s creative decisions. 

There are reflexive moments in this project where the presence of the camera and its operator are acknowledged, as well as a certain thematic reflexivity, wherein “Reflexive documentary sets out to readjust the assumptions and expectations of its audience, more than to add new knowledge to existing categories.” (Nichols)

Large portions of this project became performative, largely out of necessity.  In order to capture the appropriate tasks and actions for this essay, many of them had to be staged.  They were all things that happen regularly without the camera present, but because it was my own life, there was no way to enter the space and capture those tasks in an observational style.  In some cases I was able to turn a camera on to capture something that was happening anyway (making my bed) but in other cases I had to stage actions, because capturing them otherwise proved prohibitive. (The laundry basket being filled was clearly staged.  Leaving my camera set up in the hall to capture an actual time lapse would almost certainly lead to the death of said camera.)

But the performative mode isn’t employed merely because of staged tasks, it’s also relevant because the staged tasks are illustrating a hypothetical idea that would be difficult to convey without some kind of embodied subject.  But given the nature of that idea and the way it is communicated, the fidelity of the featured actions has little weight to the validity of the complete piece. In this case, performative documentary “demonstrate[s] how embodied knowledge provides entry into an understanding of the more general processes at work in society.” (Nichols)

The Autobiographical elements of this film are pretty overt.  The voiceover is my voice, my words, speaking in the 1^st person about my own experience.  (Though through the process of recording it multiple times and never liking how it turned out, I’m finding out how subjective and constructed that can be.)  I am the subject of many of my shots, and nearly all of the content comes from the context of my day-to-day life. I think this piece imperfectly fits Fox’s parameters for Autobiographical documentary, that ”baring one’s self to the public is at the heart of the autobiographical mode. The emotional and personal life experiences of the producer become the documented reality.”  I don’t feel that I was able to be as raw or vulnerable as the “best” autobiographical documentaries defined by Fox, wherein “the autobiographical mode not only closes the gap between photographer and subject, but also the space between filmmaker and audience – brought together through a subjective familiarity and an invitation to know the “I “ behind the camera.“

Because of that, I feel comfortable describing this piece as primarily essayistic.  Fox said that essayistic mode is “an active one, in which a proposed idea or question is tested by a range of means and intersecting lines of argument.”  This film does not entirely fit the template of “an experiment” as outlined by Fox, but it does explore an idea thematically, rather than a story chronologically. 

If the “written or documentary essay hinges upon integrating personal experience, history, and social critique with taut, kinetic progression toward a synthesizing claim.” (Fox) then I think that is where this piece ultimately fits best.  The synthesizing claim made here is a pretty abstract idea, and a lot of the nuance of it is communicated non-verbally. But ultimately, the entire film progresses to support a reflection on it.  (At least that was my intent.)

My intent, if it is relevant for a viewer, was to compose a media essay about how and whether there is value in repeated, prosaic tasks.  Such endeavors make up a majority of my days and this created for me a meaningful way to reflect on content I had suitable access to for filming.  This project allowed me to further a democratizing idea that acts don’t have to be extraordinary to be worth telling a story about.

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[1] Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Print.

[2] Fox, Broderick. "Movements and Modes." Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2010. 40-44. Print.

Documentary: Mode Activity 3

This doc mode assignment consists of the exposition for my final project.  The modes I was trying most to embody were autobiographical, performative, and essayistic.  There are also moments of observational mode, and a few reflexive moments, so if the ultimate result succeeds in being essayistic, then I’ve successfully embraced the marriage of modes that Fox attributed to essayistic documentaries.

The autobiographical elements are obvious.  The content for these shots come from my real-life.  About half of them are reenactments of things I actually do on a normal basis, and the other half are me turning the camera on things that were going to happen anyway, although they inevitably happened differently with a camera rolling, if only because we had to pause to set it up and press record.

Also, I feel that because the images here become subservient to the voice-over, that the shots take on a performative mode within the context of the whole piece (this may become more apparent in the final film, where there are more whole-heartedly performative elements).  The shots of daily tasks become more about an essayistic idea being conveyed than about my particular unique experience.  At least I hope I ultimately manage that.  I’m trying to emphasize the universality of my experience, rather than the singularity of it.  The voiceover feels like the element that ultimately renders the essayistic mode dominant for this piece, though that may be a stronger thread running through the finished piece than it is through this exposition.

I did find the autobiographical mode, turning the camera on myself, to be an intensely tricky endeavor.  When I’m the one authoring the piece, and I’m also the one providing almost all of the social acting, figuring out both what I want to capture and how I’m going to provide it for myself, there is an internal conflict of interest in everything I do. With limited control over my environment anyway, to be torn between my embedded social acting -trying to manage how I am perceived - and my need to portray myself as a character - having less concern about how I am perceived than about how best to tell the story – was an exercise in extreme discomfort and awkwardness.

Documentary Online Response #8: Essayistic Mode

Today (June 6th) being the anniversary of D-Day, I had a very dear friend, whose grandfather was present at and medalled for June 6th on the beaches of Normandy, proclaim to the world we ought to be more reflective about the forgotten details of WWII, and she suggested that the best point of entry was Ken Burn's documentary The War.  Burns, being generally perceived as the conservative king of expository documentary, covers his material very carefully, but his use of voice-of-God voiceover always masks the subjectivity of his filmmaking voice.  I suggested a few other WWII films I knew of that ventured into other modes, but wasn't aware of much that wrestled specifically with D-Day.

Fast forward 12 hours, and a link lands in my inbox that points me toward A Fuller Life, a documentary about Samuel Fuller, made by his daughter Samantha Fuller.  From the articles, clips, and trailers I was able to dig up, it seemed to me like a perfectly postmodern approach to a very personal account of how WWII (and Normandy in particular) came to define the identity of a single human being, and how he wrestled with his war experience as a terrible muse.  Samantha Fuller uses multiple modes here - performative readings of her father's autobiography by other filmmakers (a reflexive move), mixed with archival WWII footage shot by Samuel Fuller, with several shots that remind me of the techniques described by Barnouw(1) as being used in the film The Titan about Michaelangelo.  Human-less shots of intimate spaces made meaningful by their connection to the context of the film and its subject.


A Fuller Life teaser from Samantha Fuller on Vimeo.

While it may not ultimately prove to be a perfect model of the Essayistic Mode; when comparing Samantha Fuller's approach to Ken Burn's, it was easy to sense that she had explored an unconventional mix of modes in telling this personal story.  It's an approach that fits several of Fox's (2) descriptions of essayistic mode.  "(The essayistic) mode is an active one, in which a proposed idea or question is tested by a range of means and intersecting lines of argument."  And Tim Roth's face and voice as he reads Samuel Fuller's words about Normandy ("I saw a man's mouth. Just a mouth for Christ's sake, floating in the water.") is far more nuanced and open to multiple interpretations than the authoritative voiceovers typical of Burns.

Fox proposes that the"art of great written or documentary essay hinges upon integrating personal experience, history, and social critique with taut, kinetic progression toward a synthesizing claim," yet he also allows that "quite often an essay does not arrive at a finite conclusion, yet the ideas discovered during the process may reshape and reinform the initial query in unforeseen ways."  Certainly this was true of Ross McElwee's 6 O'clock News.  McElwee weaved his way between personal experience, social critique, and historical events in a manner that felt cohesive, but never conclusive. He remained firmly reflexive about his role as the person asking the question, but never became more than momentarily autobiographical, the film wasn't about his personal quandary. It was about the larger idea of his quandary, as a tension universally experienced by parents, but coped with in a spectrum of ways, none of which he went so far as to endorse with his film.  As opposed to an expository voice, prone to saying "This is what happened and why," McElwee's films seems to say, "Let's look together at what is happening, perhaps you can make sense of this... I certainly can't."  It is a much more transparent, reflexive combination of moments.


Ultimately 6 O'clock News nails Fox's criteria for what Essayistic mode does "at its best."  It fits a complement that Fox paid to Varda's The Gleaners and I, "Initial curiosity about a painting (or in this case about television news) weaves outward in an ever-widening investigation to form a surprising humanistic tapestry, the documentary whole far greater than the sum of its parts."
(1) Barnouw, Erik. "4. Clouded Lens; Chronicler." Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 202-05. Print.
(2) Fox, Broderick. "Movements and Modes." Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2010. 40-44. Print.

Documentary Online Response #7: Autobiographical Mode

Our in-class conversations about the Autobiographical Mode had my mind regularly revisiting the writing of Dr. Brene Brown, who specializes on the mechanics of vulnerability and shame, which are hot spots that an autobiographical film seems destined to have to deal with.  In her book Daring Greatly Dr. Brown wrote “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.”

When crafted with care, it seems that an Autobiographical documentary is ideally constructed to foster the kind of empathy and understanding that would counter or destroy the threat of shame that might make such a vulnerable enterprise become too vulnerable to undertake.  Describing Vanalyne Green’s Saddle Sores: A Blue Western (1998), Fox(41) says that “Putting her own face (and body) onto the taboo subject of sexually transmitted disease, Green disarms us, makes us laugh, and ultimately prompts us to think… exploring public taboos about venereal disease and perception of the diseased…”

This process described by Fox seems like a template for effectively approaching a topic typically judged harshly or dismissed.  First, the filmmaker disarms their audience through the transparent subjectivity of their story.  By completely foregoing any “voice of authority,” the filmmaker disarms the audience from their prejudices of what is and is not “knowledge,” rendering friction between opinions moot, because the filmmaker is not sharing their “opinion” per se, but rather their “lived experience,” which is not so easily argued against.   This disarmament was also prevalent in 51 Birch Street, where Doug Block’s premise of telling about his own family of origin set the stage for exploring more universal frictions.

Secondly, Fox credited Green with making her audience laugh, which has been a key to constructing a sympathetic character throughout most of the history of narrative.  Once an audience is primed not to resist the filmmaker because of the filmmaker’s claim of subjectivity, they are then helped to invest in the filmmaker’s subjectivity as the character of the filmmaker in their own film becomes a sympathetic one.  The usefulness of this tactic was well illustrated in McElwee’s Sherman’s March, as McElwee several times dwelt on the humor of his situation through visual irony, timing of sound, and a general sense of the character and thought processes behind the person to whom all commentary to the camera was addressed.

Once arguments against the film’s perspective are disarmed, and the filmmaker’s voice is rendered sympathetic, the autobiographical film becomes uniquely poised to “prompt us to think” about situations and perspectives that a viewer might otherwise have been prone to dismiss. Certainly this seemed to be the goal of  Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory: to re-orient the viewer’s sense of history to include an often omitted chapter, one to which many people might have had a defensive answer in place, had Tajiri’s film had any pretense of objectivity.  Thus her film becomes an effective vehicle for provoking thoughtful reflection on an oppressed and choleric perspective, allowing a vulnerable story to be told in a way that shields it from shameful repercussions

Fox, Broderick. "Movements and Modes." Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2010. 40-44. Print.

Documentary: Mode Activity 2

There was a substantial learning curve in store for me as I headed into this project with a concrete idea for an expository documentary piece.  First of all I got to encounter the roadblock of reality not matching up with my preconceived story.  I simply didn't get the reactions or the shots that I had in mind, because the illustrative moments I was counting on didn't happen.  But secondly I got the experience, appropriate for an expository project, of determining what story did exist in the footage I had captured, and of finding a way to be as transparent as I could with my audience about the whole experience.  Despite an appearance of "honesty" or disclosure in this piece, I still had power over what was included and excluded, so it was enlightening to see how something that can appear so raw can still be so thoroughly constructed. (Though frankly- half-constructed here; my audio and transitions are awfully rough.)

My original concept here was to be clever and explore the process of watching a documentary.  I was planning on an animated subject, giving me somewhat explosive, highly charged responses that would be easy to inject the meanings of my choice into.  Instead I got the most solemn and still face I've ever seen on my subject (Mary Ila) for the entire hour duration of the film she watched.  I had to figure out what to do with it, and since I was already intending to create something reflexive, I got to be reflexive about the process of filming and interviewing her (and even the process of trying to interview myself, which - sheesh.) It seems like this "what went wrong" formula may be likely to surface in expository documentaries, as it becomes the most available vehicle for constructing a story when your original plan falls through.

So ultimately I suppose I've created a cautionary tale here about interviewing the hearing impaired. There are certainly complications revealed here about the process that I didn't think to anticipate before I began the interview. Ultimately that experience of realizing what it is you don't know while you're on your feet, trying to create something, is really kind of stunningly informative; a most thorough way to learn.

Documentary Online Response #6: Reflexive Mode

According to Nichols[1], “Reflexive documentaries ask us to see documentary for what it is: a construct or representation.”  A reflexive documentary is therefore a use of a medium to explore the phenomenological mechanics of its own medium, which certainly seems in keeping with post-modern reflexivity and intertextuality in other mediums.  Perhaps this is more resonant in documentary because of the reputation for objectivity and omniscience that more traditional modes, such as expository and observational, may have established for the entire medium/genre of documentary film.  We see a similar self-reflexive tendency in fiction films such as Day for Night (1973) that explore the process of creating a fiction film, or in a Mel Brooks parody like Blazing Saddles (1974) or Young Frankenstein (1974), making fun of fiction genre conventions and addressing the audience directly, but it seems that a documentary being reflexive about its own creation feels a little closer to the source, a little more willing to be vulnerable about its own limitations, and far less likely to use self-reflexivity toward a comedic end, as comedy tends to imply a control that seems incompatible with self-reflexivity about social actualities. 

This integral vulnerability came across strongly in This is Not a Film (2011), in which Jafar Panahi was on several occasions open to the ambiguity of the project, and how it was not going to turn out to be the original project he had devised (a reading of his banned script.) but was instead evolving into something more complicated and nuanced.

It seems like, while elements of self-reflexivity may be becoming more common across all documentary modes, a primarily reflexive mode would be difficult to pull off, as it would require either an immense willingness to show vulnerability and fallibility from the filmmaker, or else an enormous ego; or perhaps, in the case of a filmmaker like Nick Broomfield, a bit of both. In a film like Driving Me Crazy (1988), Broomfield chose to be willing to portray the frustrations his subjects had with his film crew, but he was also willing to show some of his financial backers in an unflattering way.  He certainly allowed himself, his small crew, and his subjects to all be portrayed as parts of a complicated relationship, which in turn allowed for an engaging portrayal of the ups and downs of documentary production.

Nichols went on to say that reflexive documentaries “examine the nature of (such) belief rather than attest to the validity of what is believed.”  This felt especially true about Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s  Chronicle of a Summer (1961), where, in the final sequences the subjects view and discuss the film made thus far.  Watching the ways that they arrive at different conclusions about each other as social actors, and about what worked best in the film, invited introspection into one’s own perceptions and relations with the same footage, as well as requiring a concession that opinions other than one’s own could be deduced from the exact same film sequences; which ultimately invites a certain vulnerability from the audience as well.

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[1] Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Print.

Documentary Online Response #5: Participatory Mode

Our entire class found Nobody’s Business to be a delightful change of pace when we viewed it for participatory mode, largely because the filmmaker, Alan Berliner’s, relationship with his father becomes the center, catalyst, and purpose of the film. The complexity of this relationship shows through in the first sequence of the film and develops ever more nuance and weight as the film progresses.

 Berliner manages to express this relationship with very minimal voiceover narration.  It is almost entirely expressed in the diegetic dialogue between himself and his father on-camera, with the help of non-diegetic post-modern use of archival footage (largely of boxing matches) to render external and visual the struggles that the filmmaker wanted us to understand were occurring more internally, creating strong visual metaphors.

The way in which Alan Berliner allows his father to constantly condemn and redeem himself in the course of the film’s interview dialogue shows a great amount of charity and investment in the relationship.  It would have been incredibly easy to edit the same conversations to make his dad seem irredeemable, but that never happens.  Oscar Berliner is always allowed to finish his thoughts, so that his outlandish initial sound bite statements are softened by explanation and context, and sometimes even by the arguments they provoke.  Certainly the sequences explaining and illustrating the intense loneliness of his father’s lifestyle evoked a sense of explanation and forgiveness for some of the more unfeeling words his father threw at him.

Certainly Berliner came across as more of an essayist than a historian.  He also embodied Nichol’s statement that, “It is the filmmaker’s participatory engagement with unfolding events that holds our attention.”[1]  As Alan Berliner’s participation, catalysis, and provocation were the glue and the impetus that kept the entire film cohesive and kept me as a viewer engaged.  Berliner’s own sense of family, identity, and relationships became the normalized perspective against which to judge his father’s alternate value set.  The film felt inevitably structured to evoke sympathy with Alan Berliner’s perspective and values, but also to provoke a complicated, redeemed affection for Oscar Berliner who so frequently antagonizes him.

It seems that without the voice of Alan Berliner, and the sense of him navigating his relationship with his father, it would have been difficult or impossible to portray his father with the same dignity and likeability.  The obvious affection that Berliner has for his father is what allows the audience to repeatedly forgive Oscar for his belligerence and folly.

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[1] Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Print.

Documentary: Mode Activity 1

(Expository/Observational/Poetic Mode)



Documentarist's Statement

Due in large part to time constraints, I did not write, record, and add a voiceover narrative to this piece.  I could have easily transformed this into a straightforward use of either expository mode or an essayistic version of the poetic mode with a voiceover, depending on what approach I might have taken. I could have described my son's activities with the sterile voice of an anthropologist, or with the sentimentality of a mother-poet. (I think it would be interesting to have him describe his own actions, but that would push the project into other modes).  The use of a music soundtrack could have also easily lent poetic voice to the piece, and probably helped in an effort to cover up off-camera noises.

As it is currently edited, I feel that this project aligns most with the observational mode, although because I'm the one who filmed it and edited it together, I'm keenly aware of its constructed nature, and of all the omissions, as well of how differently it could have looked if I had made different choices, especially while filming.  I'm wishing I had gotten some different perspectives - his hands coloring at their level, from a perpendicular angle, and possibly an overhead shot.  I also really wished my shots were longer when I was editing them together.  All but one of them were at least 10 seconds long, but I found I needed several longer (probably wide) shots to ground the whole piece, as well as explanatory shots for all the off-camera-noises (of which there were many.)

Because I was filming my own son, it would have been pretty impossible to have fully embraced an expository mode.  I have too much of a relationship with my subject to create a viable impression of objectivity.  But this project fits one of the descriptions of the spirit of observational filmmaking.  It contains "no voice-over commentary, no supplementary music or sound effects, no inter-titles, no historical reenactments, no behavior repeated for the camera, and not even any interviews."(Nichols.) Actually, that's not true.  We did have to repeat his entrance shot for the camera, he was too nervous about its presence the first time, and clean entrances and exits were part of the assignment.

But interestingly, Nichols claimed that "Observational films exhibit particular strength in giving a sense of the duration of actual events," and this film, in total, is about the length it would normally take my son to color this picture.  When I was filming, I found that everything took longer because my son behaved differently with the camera in the space, and was far less comfortable in his processes than he normally is. So the finished product here is a reasonably close representation of what would have happened without the camera present, while what happened with the camera present, while I was filming this, was a much more awkward and halted process.  I'm still deciding how I feel about that in the context of observational mode editing.
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Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Print.

Documentary Online Response #4 - The Observational Mode

I found it very interesting to ponder Italian Neorealism as an informing influence for Cinéma vérité.  I had not noticed the correlation before, largely because of the intense pessimism that is often inherent in Italian Neorealism, and not as often or as severely so in vérité.   

Il Posto - 1961 - Dir. Ermanno Olmi

Interestingly, despite an emphatic shift away from the authorly, poetic, movements that predated them, both neorealism and vérité tend to find their strength in striking, bold imagery, with images that would be impossible to achieve in a more tightly controlled environment or with more cumbersome equipment. The sense of kismet that tends to accompany these images and sequences in vérité renders them all the more memorable. 

I am coming to terms with thinking of the observational mode of Cinéma vérité as more of a style of storytelling than as an actual reality in filmmaking.  That it is more that the filmmaker wants to create the impression of having been an invisible, detached observer, than that they actually managed to be one. In this context, the stylistic choices like a lack of voiceover narration, the use of handheld equipment, and longer takes allowing for more spontaneous dialogue by and between social actors contribute to a distinct type of storytelling that strives to create an effect of fidelity to lived events and historicity. I really want to know what happens when Observational/Cinéma vérité filmmakers have long conversations with cultural studies scholars (like Raymond Williams, discussing the elusiveness of capturing the "structure of feeling" of anyone's lived reality and the repercussions of the selective traditions that form, determining which elements of any lived realities will be remembered and ultimately become historically representative of that cultural moment in history.)

Nichol's extensive collection of ethical questions for documentary filmmakers seems especially relevant for Cinéma vérité practitioners, who usually strive to make their voice in a film invisible, as though the story was telling itself, and as though the viewer's experience with the film were somehow an abbreviated, but comprehensive substitute for having actually been present for the events portrayed. If it's not going to be obvious to viewers that a film represents one person's perspective on what happened, then the one person who's unique experience is shaping the film has an added measure of culpability if the ethics of their filmmaking come into question.

The films we watched in class for Observational Mode (Lonely Boy (1962), Primary (1960), and The War Room (1993) were all interesting for pondering the ethics discussed by Nichols. The not-entirely flattering depiction of Paul Anka's agent in Lonely Boy, for example, provides a distinct example of choices made by the filmmaker (in editing, largely) that dramatically affect the way one person is portrayed. 

Interestingly, the same is true about the rather sympathetic portrayals of James Carville and George Stephanopoulos in The War Room.  Certainly the footage was compiled and juxtaposed in a way that rendered those two persons more interesting and relatable than they could have otherwise come off, while other individuals, who were largely occupying the same space at the same time, become almost invisible in the film; proof of the subjectivity of the camera. 

Documentary Online Response #3 - The Expository Mode

Born Into Brothels (2004), begins with a disembodied, direct address, but the voice in that address is quickly embodied in Zana Briski, who also becomes the central character in the story that unfolds. By the time the film wraps up, it feels that the overall voice of the film was embodied (by Zana and the children she featured) and that the distinct perspective the film promotes is conveyed more indirectly than directly.  The strongest rhetoric in the film lies in what is not said that the audience must fill-in with their own assumptions.

According to Bill Nichols, "The idea of voice is... tied to the idea of an informing logic overseeing the organization of a documentary." As we discussed in class, if Zana were only a subject and not also a director of this piece, the voice would be weighted differently.  But because she comes across as our storyteller and our lens, it has both an autobiographical and a participatory bent to it.  She certainly appeals to a certain Western morality and standard of living for the film's perspective on the squalor of the children it featured. Their situation certainly seems more dire in contrast to the esteemed gallery events that featured their photographs within the film than it might have in comparison with other poverty-stricken cultures or societies.  The starkness of the contrast that was included in the film, along with the effect it seems designed to provoke, are evidence of the construction, voice, and desired effect of the filmmaker(s).

Nichols also said that "the voice of the film betrays its maker’s form of engagement with the world in a way that even he or she might not have fully recognized.  It speaks from and reveals a distinct perspective on the world."  Zana's outsider-ness in this culture she's determined to make a study of and participate in is ever-present.  She never manages to assimilate into this culture - she has no desire to.  And so while she verbally proposes her intent to "let the children tell their own story... through their photographs," the film never becomes about their stories, but rather about how their stories fit into, inform, and catalyze Zana's story. 

The rhetoric of this film, and the assumption underlying Zana's quest to secure boarding school admittance for these children, rely on the type of "common sense" rhetoric that Nichols found common in documentary. "Common sense makes a perfect basis for this type of representation about the world because common sense, like rhetoric, is less subject to logic than to belief."  Certainly the film is sympathetic toward Zana's zeal for education as the only constructive option for these kids, and unsympathetic toward all those institutions and individuals who did not share her passion (extending even to the kids themselves.)  This belief in education functions within the film as an assumed shared belief with the audience.  (It is likely a nearly universally held value among English speakers likely to be choosing to watch a documentary about a social issue - so it's a pretty safe belief to build a rhetorical argument upon.)   

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Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids. Dir. Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman. Perf. Zana Briski. Red Light Films/HBO/Cinemax, 2004. Film.

Nichols, Bill. "What Gives Documentary Films a Voice of Their Own?" Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. 67-93 and 167-171. Print.

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