The Revival, Toronto|The thorny matter of working with alien communities was the issue at hand at today's Hot Docs filmmaker's panel. Directors Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground), Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Trembling Before G-d), Sherine Salama (A Wedding in Ramallah), and Susanna Helke (The Idle Ones) hashed out their views on the burning question: Does one protect the privacy of the subject or expose them in the name of the truth? The unanimous answer? The subject must not be exploited, even if that leads to some logistical nightmares.
Walker, for her part, claimed her mission was to "find images that challenge the tourist." As her film dealt with the camera-shunning Amish, she admitted to, in the interests of privacy, destroying tapes where her subjects felt it appropriate. Also, she discussed the problems in dealing frankly with her main subject's involvement in drugs–not only in using footage of him getting high, but in dealing with his wanted status after he narcs on a few dealers. Walker was in the precarious position of blowing the young man's cover, and putting his life in jeopardy–meaning she had to conceal certain things so that he might survive. In her case, "the truth" might have hurt more than her subject's pride.
Ultimately, the documentarian must juggle respect for the subjects' feelings and making an effective, coherent piece, though the former always take precedence. Dubowski talked of the "heart attack" he suffered when he tried to bring together several dozen gay Orthodox Jews at a party–only to discover that a mere six would appear on camera, with the rest complaining that those six didn't represent the community. Other obstacles included a reluctant subject, David, who was afraid of embarrassing his family and had to be convinced that Trembling Before G-d would help the cause of gay Orthodox Jews. Dubowski said that the filmmaker must not be able to simply walk away from their issues, and claimed that the film should "exist not only in its creation, but in its movement in the world."
Salama suggested something similar: that a personal connection must be established in order to gain trust. She found herself extremely lucky in her discovery of her subject Bessam at a Ramallah bridal shop. She immediately "clicked" with him and suddenly found herself his confidante. But she, too, found herself in a position of having to suppress information: Bessam's sister-in-law, who had been waiting in Palestine for her husband to send for her, was the victim of slanderous remarks by elder relatives; the filmmaker was forced to sort through the truth-tellers and chose to omit remarks in the interest of retaining trust with her more central subject.
Helke, meanwhile, had an unusual approach to empowering her unemployed twenty-something interviewees: she let them "direct," more or less, the scenes in which they appeared. Starting with a general theme to discuss, she created a space for her subjects to talk them out, often resulting in atypical results: one man, normally silent and shy, began a heated debate that was out of character. While she occasionally had to track down "cast members," showing up on the doorstep of one recalcitrant participant, she stayed out of the way of her focus group and let them explain themselves.
The consensus: the subject must be protected at all costs, meaning that the filmmaker's intentions need be pure. The potential for voyeurism is so great in a documentary that measures have to be taken to invest in the people in front of the camera, lest they be exploited without their understanding. The production must work around the interviewees–and not the other way around.
