Here’s a nice collection of views on the nature of documentary filmaking made by the National Film Board of Canada. Listen out at 3.00 mins.
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That was Errol Morris: his understanding of documentary filmaking – ‘creating a story where there really is no story’. There’s a clue to what he’s getting at when he says this in his recently published Believing is Seeing (the title is a nod to Marshall McLuhan’s oft-quoted ‘if I hadn’t believed it I wouldn’t have seen it’) which examines the truth behind a series of iconic photographs. These are photographs which have been understood as testimonies to the truth. In that sense there is no story. We know what we are looking at and it makes sense. Morris digs around though, challenges what we think we are looking at, and from behind the frame discovers webs of meaning and doubt. It’s an epistemological inquiry which links Morris’ previous experiences as a private detective, PhD student of philosophy and director of ads. It’s an inquiry which runs through his award-winning documentaries (The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War) and seems to be central to his latest film, Tabloid which tells the tale of Joyce McKinney a US beauty queen embroiled in a sex scandal in the UK in 1977. It’s the truth behind the iconic events, creating the story where there is no story.
Here’s his latest short documentary, published by the New York Times as part of its series of video op-docs. It’s a powerful telling of the story of manipulation, of the involvement of the ‘umbrella man’ in the assassination of JF Kennedy in 1963 and the story which lies beyond. We may think there’s nothing stranger than fiction but Morris might convince you that, actually, there might be nothing stranger than fact.
