Non-linear Chronology, Documentary Shorts, and Counterpublics

I’ve been thinking a lot about sequence, chronology, and time in documentary film- particularly in relation to our readings for the week, my essay project in Reece’s class and our upcoming video montage; which instructs us to “deemphasize spatiotemporal continuity in favor of the poetic”.

Can I successfully translate my ideas in a non-linear, poetic style? (Hopefully) Are documentary shorts just as valuable as full-length features? (A tentative ‘yes’.) Can a documentary short successfully replicate the three-act structure? (Absolutely) Is this necessary? (No) Is the montage an overused trope? (Yes?) And, if so, why do we tend to use it so often? (Team America ‘s “Montage” comes to mind here).

Asher and Pincus cite the film Rashomon as a useful example of both an alternative editing style and alt. chronological structure. I’ve only seen clips of the film but, upon further research, I discovered an interesting digital project inspired by Rashomon’s discontinuous and alternative style. “The Rashomon Project: Online Multi-Perspective Chronologies” aims to create tools for the public to “obtain a comprehensive understanding of contested events from multiple video accounts”. The impetus for the project came from multi-layered citizen-journalist reportage of both the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. The project's founders argue that, even with (or possibly because of) the advent of smart phones and social media, it remains difficult to “obtain a comprehensive view of contested events from the many individual photos and video accounts. The result, like Kurasawa’s classic film Rashomon, is that viewers often draw contradictory conclusions by seeing only parts of the available material”. Their goal is to build an open-source toolkit which will allow people all over the world to establish “secure repositories to collect video, organize it chronologically, and then display for any event, while blurring faces to protect privacy. In this online "Multi-Perspective Chronology" (MPC) multiple videos and photos are precisely time-aligned in an intuitive user interface. MPCs allow visitors to gain a quick overview and then focus on specific time periods across multiple viewpoints”. I thought the project was a fascinating iteration of our readings for the week and an interesting response to a real-world application of Rashomon style editing.

A silly aside: In terms of non-linear chronology, I actually adore the structure of 500 Days of Summer. This seems to be a fairly vacuous example in comparison to Rashomon. I cringe at my own mention of the film- it contributes to the bit of imposter syndrome I’ve been feeling these first few weeks of graduate school.

It’s been about two and a half weeks since I watched two incredibly moving documentary shorts. The first, a piece by the New York Times, addressed the power of Black Twitter in a post Ferguson America. The second, a multi-piece, interactive documentary by The And features various couples in candid conversation about love, lust, relationships, trust, honesty, etc. These two pieces have been percolating in my consciousness for some time and seem to apply directly to the concepts I’ve been grappling with this week.

Curran notes in our readings, “As is already probably clear by the discussion of structure, moving a story forward through time does not necessitate resorting to a plodding narrative that is strictly a chronological recitation of events in the order that they occurred” (67). The And documentary shorts are unique in their chronological construction in that, different segments of the couples’ conversations are spliced together and presented as an entire piece only after you answer specific philosophical questions (generated by the website) pertaining to psychology and human interaction. The website personalizes the documentaries, tailoring each piece to suit your specific needs as a viewer. These shorts cater to our innermost thoughts, demons, and desires and are immensely emotionally provocative, with a duration of only about 5-6 minutes. The films are non-linear but follow a similar narrative thread. It would’ve been an interesting and tenuous process to be a fly on the wall in the editing suite while producers and editors decided on how to collapse the couples’ interviews.

These small moments captured by The And are more emotionally provocative and impactful than a number of full length documentaries I’ve sat through. Not only is the entire production interactive but it is immensely compelling, passionate, evocative and limited in time and scope. Arguably, a modest snapshot of our human experience can be just as potent, if not more so, than a broad, full-length brushstroke of a film.

I encountered Black Twitter After #Ferguson through the freshman recitation I’m teaching this semester. The module’s aim is to teach the nuance of conversation as a concept, social practice, and art. Black Twitter was particularly powerful in its address of these ideas. This short film serves as a cogent addition to a crucial counterpublic conversation.

Which brings up a final, tangential point: Can I, as a white, heterosexual, middle-class, first-world filmmaker, accurately represent a disenfranchised counterpublic? How do I tackle minority positions in an effective and respectful way? Is this possible with a documentary short? These are questions I’m sure I’ll explore further in the coming weeks, months, and years.