Online Response #5: The Participatory Mode

Nichols and Barnouw agree on some commonalities of the Participatory mode.  Says Nichols: “If there is a truth here it is the truth of a form of interaction that would not exist were it not for the camera.  In this sense it is the opposite of the observational premise that what we see is what we would have seen had we been there” (184).  Using different terminology, Barnouw explains the difference between direct cinema and cinema verite (espoused by Rouch), the former more associated with the Observational mode, the latter with Participatory: “The direct cinema documentarist took his camera to a situation of tension and waited hopefully for a crisis; the Rouch version of cinema verite tried to precipitate one.  The direct cinema artist aspired to invisibility; the Rouch cinema verite artist was often an avowed participant.”

Filmmaker as “avowed participant” seems to function along a spectrum of provocation in Participatory documentaries, as each filmmaker uses certain tactics to precipitate conflict.  On one end of the spectrum is Michael Moore, who is not above catching people on camera under false pretenses in order to generate a response.  Though some audience members may respond to this method differently, I felt uncomfortable, as if I were watching NBC’s To Catch a Predator.   It speaks volumes about the entrapment-like nature of this method that I feel more pity for the guilty party than I feel vindicated by the filmmaker. 

Alan Berliner is no less a provocateur than Michael Moore—Nobody’s Business exists simply because he continued to prod his father for answers to family questions that had long haunted him—but his methods seem more personal and less sensational.  Oscar Berliner’s choice to be filmed is never in question, and the overall feel of the documentary is that of father and son having a conversation that could be taking place in the living room or at the dinner table.  It’s a film, though, which is the whole point—the audience is not under the impression of taking a glimpse of a day in the life of Oscar Berliner, a la Observational mode.  The medium by which Alan Berliner evokes these stories is meant to preserve them—something his ancestors (including his father) hadn’t done. 

Like Nobody’s Business, Dear Zachary is another documentary in which the filmmaker does not hide his personal relationship to the subject.  The director, Kurt Kuenne, created this film as a tribute to his friend, Andrew Bagby, who appeared in many of his home movies when they were teenagers.  The story of Bagby’s tragic end (no spoilers) might have been relegated to the news, but Kuenne’s film, containing plenty of archival footage, an autobiographical voiceover, and interviews with Bagby’s family (whom he knows well), served to personalize the injustice in a way that a more Expository treatment wouldn’t have.