{"id":660,"date":"2009-06-01T06:32:01","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T13:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=660"},"modified":"2009-06-01T06:32:01","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T13:32:01","slug":"the-hand-that-holds-the-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=660","title":{"rendered":"The Hand that Holds the Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow do you film a nightmare? Probably the best way is by animation,\u201d commented Thomas White, Editor of Documentary Magazine<\/a>. White and documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry<\/a>, who were in Israel as part of The American Documentary Showcase, had walked past the location of the nightmare scene in \u201cWaltz with Bashir\u201d, spurring a discussion on the aesthetics of documentary filmmaking. Says Curry, \u201cI\u2019m not a purist, I love animation, voice over, verit\u00e9\u2026I just wonder if you took the same movie, and instead of animating it, shot it with actors, would people say it is a documentary? I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curry\u2019s \u201cstreet cred\u201d as someone who watched a lot of movies, read a lot of books, bought a camera and set out the next day to make his first documentary, meshes well with the scholarly passion White conveys for his field. Informing me that the first use of animation in documentary goes as far back as \u201cLusitania\u201d made in 1919, White says, \u201cThere\u2019s always been a conscious need to tell a story and employ narrative devices, it needn\u2019t exude the pejorative elements that those who are not in the documentary community append to documentaries that they are boring, talking heads. It\u2019s a very dynamic art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is perhaps this dynamic quality that led the US Department of State to initiate The American Documentary Showcase as a way to present the diverse and changing face of America to the world, one screening at a time. 29 movies have been selected which will be shown in 60 countries. White and Curry spent a whirlwind week in Israel from May 8 \u2013 15, showing and discussing several documentaries, including Curry\u2019s first film \u201cStreet Fight\u201d (nominated for an Academy Award in 2005) in Sderot, Taibeh, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

Curry expressed his surprise that \u201cStreet Fight\u201d was selected as one of the movies in the showcase, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily the side of American democracy you want people to see.\u201d The movie follows the 2002 race for mayor of Newark, NJ between four-term incumbent Sharpe James and post-civil rights era, Yale educated Corey Booker. As far from \u201ctalking heads\u201d as a movie can be, moving between political intrigue and action movie as Curry\u2019s camera and crew are at times physically barred from filming. The movie exposes not only the erosion of political integrity in James\u2019 thirty-odd year reign over Newark, but the racial tensions between black candidates of different eras and world views.<\/p>\n

Curry and White both expressed the view that showing the more complex, if less complimentary aspects of America can enhance communication with other countries. Rather than viewing America as a monolithic collection of Hollywood plastic perfection, \u201cairing the dirty laundry\u201d as Curry puts it, presents a more accurate portrayal. As for \u201cStreet Fight\u201d, Curry feels it communicates that \u201cpolitics doesn\u2019t work all the time. People make mistakes, they pick the wrong guy\u2026the coda of the movie is \u2013 you can change it. You think the stories are specific American, but they are universal.\u201d After a screening at the Ma\u2019ale film school in Jerusalem, a student commented that the tensions within the black community depicted in the film reminded her of the conflicts between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews in Israel.<\/p>\n

At a screening which took place in Tel Aviv for the Israeli Forum of Documentary Filmmakers, White and Curry talked about the film and answered questions, many of which related to the difficulties of making, funding and marketing documentaries. One audience member commented in Hebrew that Curry \u201csets a bad example for students\u201d because he did not formally study filmmaking. However, a look at his background reveals a road perhaps \u201cless travelled by\u201d but no less compelling. After completing\u00a0
\nComparative literature studies at Swarthmore Curry lived in Mexico for a year where he taught English and did a lot of reading. Considering teaching as a possible vocation, he moved to Washington D.C. where he worked in a program that brought high school students to the capital to learn about democracy from members of congress and journalists. A fellowship in Indiana where he researched the economics of non-profits led to his interest in organizations such as PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and although the job ended, he \u201cstuck around for the summer helping someone who was making an historical documentary\u201d. At that point in the narrative, the various threads of comparative thinking, education, democracy, and film came together and Curry began to work in New York for a company that made interactive documentaries for museums.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on his past Curry says, \u201cI always loved documentaries and watched a lot of them and wanted to make them. None of the friends I grew up with made documentaries; it was hard to take the leap\u2026My parents don\u2019t do that, they don\u2019t get that really\u2026Everyone in my family does finance. I\u2019d saved up some money \u2013 I decided to try to make a movie.\u201d Although he attributes some of the success of his first film to luck, \u201cstuff that happened [in the campaign]\u2026I didn\u2019t know it was going to happen. If six of those scenes hadn\u2019t happened the movie would be totally different,\u201d he also notes: \u201cThe other side [of not going to film school] \u2013I was there a lot and I worked really really really hard\u2026I spent months of physically and emotionally very hard work. I came home after shooting and looked at the footage and tried to figure out how I wanted it to look. Looked through books to figure out how to construct it, how a scene was cut together. As someone said \u2013 the harder I work the luckier I get.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if he had intentionally provoked the several \u201caction scenes\u201d where the mayor\u2019s people and even the police try to take away his camera, Curry said, \u201cI wasn\u2019t\u2026I was always nervous, hoping I could just shoot the thing that I wanted to shoot. I don\u2019t really like confrontation, I\u2019m averse to confrontation. [there is a] sense of justice that pushes me \u2013 what they were doing was wrong, and I wasn\u2019t going to let them get away with doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curry\u2019s second film, \u201cRacing Dreams\u201d is about a completely different topic \u2013 three teenagers who dream of being NASCAR racers, and another film that relates to environmental issues is currently in process. Commenting on the diversity of his subject matter, Curry said, \u201cThey\u2019re pretty different\u2026 [but they have] something in common \u2013
\nThey\u2019re about people who want something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Image credit: Marshall Curry Productions, LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow do you film a nightmare? Probably the best way is by animation,\u201d commented Thomas White, Editor of Documentary Magazine. White and documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry, who were in Israel as part of The American Documentary Showcase, had walked past the location of the nightmare scene in \u201cWaltz with Bashir\u201d, spurring a discussion on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}