From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Andrea Meyer

From the 60's "cinéma verité" which introduced a new brand of entertaining, thought-provoking documentaries on subjects from Marlon Brando to Bob Dylan, Broadway to the campaign trail, to the 90's truth-confounding formats of Errol Morris and Michael Moore, documentary film has become a compelling art form as well as a means of imparting information, an art form that deserves a film festival of its own in New York City.

This year New Yorkers got just that. From May 27-31, they had the pleasure of experiencing "docfest '98," the First Annual New York International Documentary Festival. Introducing audiences to the past, present, and future of the medium took place at an animated discussion titled "Half a Century of Documentary Making." Moderated by Program Director David Leitner, the all-star panel included D.A. Pennebaker ("Don't Look Back"), Albert Maysles ("Salesman"), and Jean Rouch, the man who invented the term "cinéma verité" to describe his film "Chronicle of a Summer."

Maysles and Pennebaker engaged in a debate about documentary filmmaking as a representation of truth. While Maysles bemoaned the blurry line between fact and fiction in documentaries today, Pennebaker expressed an opinion that today's films dispel the notion that there is one reality to depict. Rouch, the French contingent, told charming stories about his career as an anthropologist in Africa and his relationship with the other filmmakers of the French New Wave. He remarked poetically, "a film is a thing you can touch and smell. It's a sort of love affair."

What became clear is that you can't really put your hands around what exactly is a documentary film or what exactly it should be. Despondent about the media today, about the MTV style of filmmaking, and a general lack of humanity in film, Maysles explained, "We're getting more and more numbed and dumbed by the way films are put together." As justification for his harsh judgment, he held up three films by the three filmmakers present, "Don't Look Back," "Salesman," and Rouch's 1961 masterpiece that provided docfest's centerpiece, "Chronicle of a Summer." These films, made three decades ago, still provoke thought and discussion today. Their impact and aesthetic value passes the test of time. Maysles wondered if documentaries today, with their formal experimentation, dazzling cinematography, and interplay between fact and fiction, could hold up.

The docfest program, as put together by festival Founder and Director Gary Pollard and Program Director David Leitner, seems on a mission to prove how interesting, diverse and valuable documentaries today can be. Their tools were documentary gems from the past and the present.

Docfest began with "Fires of Kuwait", an IMAX film about the multiple oil fires set in Kuwait in the wake of the gulf conflict. An opening night film can't get much more spectacular than 36 minutes of real life heroes blowing up oil fires to save a decimated country -- projected on an 80' x 100' screen. IMAX is the perfect medium for bringing the actual horror onto our screens. Director David Douglas and his wife and producer Diane Douglas attended the screening and described the difficulty of juggling three minute rolls of film in the excruciating heat and dodging the oil that inevitably splashed onto their lens. While 35mm would have told an interesting story, IMAX shoves the fires right in our faces. The film was nominated for the 1993 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

While IMAX imposes a reality that is bigger than life, the Vietnam films of Morley Safer and Pierre Schoendoerffer present an intimate picture colored by anti-war sentiment. In 1967, CBS Saigon Bureau Chief Morley Safer was ready to leave Vietnam, but needed to do a one-hour piece on the war before he could go home. The result was "Morley Safer's Vietnam: A Personal Report," the cynical and poetic personal journal he shot before returning to the States. Safer did the impossible: he made an anti-war film that was broadcast on US primetime television.

Safer was present and talked about the changes in media, nostalgically recalling the "wonderful freshness of interviews with guys who hadn't practiced the art of the sound bite. Everyone knows how to talk in sound bites today. They were just talking to me." This film still packs the same punch that it must have in 1967, as does "The Anderson Platoon" by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer. His film also gets into the trenches of Vietnam, where a filmmaker puts his life in jeopardy as surely as his subjects do. His experience with a platoon of sweet-boyish faced soldiers is extremely powerful and won a 1968 Oscar for Best Feature Documentary.

Legendary director of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," Melvin Van Peebles presented his take on the history of blacks in cinema in "Melvin Van Peebles' Classified X". Arté, a French/ German television network had the idea and offered Van Peebles total creative control. Van Peebles wrote and narrated the piece while Mark Daniels directed, and the result was broadcast as part of a "Soiree Thématique," along with "Running Man," (an awe-inspiring portrait of Van Peebles by Mark Daniels that was also screened at docfest) and "Sweet Sweetback." Van Peebles welcomed a French production because in the States they "would have wanted to tinker." To tinkerers, he says, "My answer's always a very simple 'Kiss My Ass!'" The film reveals a black cinema that most of us have never seen before -- the film is angry, opinionated, and eye-opening. Afterwards Van Peebles and Daniels gave the audience the opportunity to experience first hand the words of this Film maker, novelist, poet, musician, Wall Street trader (!), jogger, and iconoclast extraordinaire.

Following in legendary footsteps was a challenge that the filmmakers of the next generation met admirably. Some highlights include Bennett Miller's much acclaimed portrait of New York oddball Timothy "Speed" Levitch, "The Cruise," which plays like poetry. The film's subject speaks, and the camera watches. Many of the scenes seemed staged, which a purist like Albert Maysles might criticize. However, the film portrays one person's reality and in doing so touches on universal truths.

Another film about one person's particular vision is Maggie Hadleigh-West's provocative film "War Zone" about the catcalling and leering that she calls "street abuse." The film sets out to prove that male behavior in the streets takes away women's power by dictating their behavior, dress, self-image, and especially their fear. Thanks to those familiar kissy kissy noises, the film suggests that women walk around in fear of attack. Hadleigh-West's unique technique which includes walking around with a video camera that she shoves in the face of offenders created quite a stir in the audience and among those interviewed. The result is a provocative look at a very complicated subject that will certainly stir up conversations. The film opens August 12 at Film Forum in Manhattan.

"The Brandon Teena Story" by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir investigates the 1993 murder of a Nebraska 21-year old Brandon Teena, née Teena Brandon. Teena was raped and subsequently murdered when some of her friends learned that she was born female but living as a man. The film, which explores the issues of sexual identity and intolerance, won the IFC Independent Vision Award presented at docfest. It also opens at the Film Forum September 23.

A personal favorite that does not yet have a distributor is "Out for Love...Be Back Shortly" by film student Dan Katzir, a portrait of Israel through the eyes of an Israeli man in love with a woman in the military. What begins as a man's quest for true love becomes a moving meditation about love, hate, and the value of personal freedom. In his raw, uncalculated documentation of daily life, Katzir illuminates a reality in which violence and political upheaval has become banal. It's this reality he begins to question as he opens himself up to the girlfriend he finds during the making of the film -- if the fighting continues, he could lose the love it's taken him so long to attain. The beautiful interweaving of the personal and global rarely works so flawlessly, and hopefully a distributor will recognize the film's strength.

Gary Pollard, festival Founder and Director, explains in the program that docfest is "the first of many activities planned by the newly-created New York Documentary Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to building new audiences for documentaries of vision and impact." Though the successful inaugural festival signals an enthusiastic interest in Pollard's mission, Morley Safer reminded us that "documentary is a dirty word," the least sexy of films, and yet with stars like Mira Sorvino and Madonna showing up for the festival, the underdog of the film world might now be sexier than ever.