The Screengrab : documentaries

Screengrab Q&A: "In A Dream"

Nicole Ankowski — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:00:00 GMT

When he was nineteen, Jeremiah Zagar began to film his father, Philadelphia mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar. He continued to follow him around with a camera for seven years for what became the documentary In a Dream.

Jeremiah set out to capture his parents' love, which is the creative force at the source of their family and their art. Then, one day, as they go to pick up Jeremiah's brother from rehab, his parents' forty-three-year relationship crumbles. Seemingly out of nowhere, Isaiah admits, on camera, that he has been having an affair with his assistant for years.

In a Dream, which has won multiple awards on the festival circuit, resonates far beyond the specifics of the Zagars' story. Their marriage is in some ways quite traditional; it is the core of a nuclear family, but their love also comes across as an unconventional artistic endeavor by two freethinking people.The film examines the dysfunction and self-mythologizing inherent to love and family. It's also, ultimately, a comforting film that leaves you believing in love in a way a romantic comedy never could. — Sarah Clyne Sundberg

You started filming In a Dream when you were nineteen. What did you think you were doing when you began?
I had no idea. I was really young and came home for the summer. My mother said, "Why don't you film your father?" He and I went down to West Virginia together and did these very intimate interviews. From those interviews it was clear that the movie would be about a man who wanted to make sense out of his memories. It was also going to be a love story.

Why do you think your mother wanted you to film your father?
I think she just wanted us to be closer. Everyone in our family respects the opinion of my mother. If she asks you to film your father, you do it. I think her intuition is based a lot on family. She wants to keep her family together.

In one sense the film is a very specific love story: one person, one family. But it’s also universal. I think many people come to a point growing up where their parents become real people.
Certainly that happened with my father. That part of the movie wasn't intentional. You view your parents as mountains, then at a certain point you see them as people. Though my mother will always remain a mountain for me, I can see her humanity too. It is very clear, when my father left her, how fragile and lost she was. It's wild to watch your parents disintegrate and become people. I'm lucky that I didn't have to experience it until I was nineteen years old, because some children experience it when they are six or seven.

You barely appear in the film. Was the camera a buffer?
The camera is a shield, a way to be with people without breaking down emotionally. Without it I would never have been able to suffer my parents. My father is exhausting. With the camera it becomes something you're doing. There were moments when I would start to cry and I would take the camera away and then I would take the camera back.

Did your family behave differently because you were filming?
Differently and awkwardly are two separate things. In the beginning my father behaved awkwardly. Eventually the camera became a character in itself. As opposed to making things unnatural, it brought out his honesty. That is true of my mother and my brother too. When the camera was on it was like there was a questioning force in front of them, someone asking them to be intimate, to be honest, to be real, to not pretend.

Did it ever catalyze situations?
I don't think my father would ever have told my mother he was cheating on her that day, if there hadn't been a camera there. Whether it made me question him, or simply was an unbiased eye looking directly at him, I don't know, but I doubt he would have spoken otherwise.

Have your parents seen the movie?
Oh yes. My parents are big fans. In the end it is a beautiful representation of the two of them coming through. [Though] my mother doesn't like to watch it. Neither do I. [My father] called me the other day. I heard the end credits playing in the background. I said, "Dad, what are you doing?" He said, "I'm watching the movie." I said, "You're watching the movie? Again? Well, what's it like?" He said. "It's really good, I like the characters."

At one point it says "Part 2: The end of an era."
The "era" is the belief in the strength and perfection of the family structure. No longer is the family invincible, we understand that our family is fragile and that we need to work on holding on to each other. I think every family needs to realize that at some point. It is the same thing with The Godfather, essentially.

Your mother, Julia, says at one point, "I lost my whole belief system."
If we are built from memories, then we are also built from each other. You spend your whole life building something with someone, forty-two years. All your memories are constituted of that person, and when that person leaves you it is going to break you.

Was there anything that anyone told you that really shocked you or surprised you?
Yes, and a lot of it isn't in the movie. There are certain sexual things that my parents told me that I never want to hear again. At a certain point you ask them anything and they are going to tell you anything. My mother told me about my father's inability to please her at certain points in her life. I wasn't shocked by the idea, but I was shocked that she would tell me. She even said, "I don't think you want to hear this."

Were you surprised when your father revealed his history as the victim of sexual abuse to you?
I was surprised by the way he told it. I had never seen him register the pain of the moment before. I've heard him tell the story before, but not like that. [He'd always told it] like it was a joke. I'd never heard it like it meant something.

What was it like to ask about your father's sexuality?
It was exciting. It is important to see your parents as human beings and an exciting process for a child to go through. Parts were terrifying. It is important to know that your parents are as fragile as you and that you can achieve what they can achieve. Or less. They are your strength and your weakness.

Had you seen the old Super-8 footage before?
I'd never seen any of it. My father said, "I have seventeen books of slides in the closet" or "I think there are a couple of movies about us from the '70s that people made." He has 40,000 square feet [of art] that people see every day. But he has warehouses full that no one will ever see. He has notebooks with drawings stacked up to the ceiling. I can't even explain to you. There are stacks and stacks of rolls of paintings.

There are these scenes where it looks as if he is walling himself in with his enormous mosaics.
That's what we wanted to communicate. It can either be a prison or it can be a paradise.

Was there anything you struggled with whether to include?
Because the film had to revolve around the love story, there was a lot of stuff that I lost of him as a youth that I love. [And] there is a scene that I called "Paints on Ceilings" that I ended up making into a short film. He is describing how he began painting as a child. He was drawing in his coloring book and then he decided that the lines were too binding, so he started to draw on the table and the refrigerator and the ceiling. Then his mother's scream was suddenly the catalyst for him to become an artist. He was so excited after she screamed that he decided that he wanted to draw everywhere and make the world scream.

It's like Harold and the Purple Crayon.
My father's story is totally like Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Is there anything that is in the movie that you were on the fence about including?
The shit scene. My editor, who really brought out the beautiful soul of the movie, said, "That scene makes your father very unlikeable. How can you relate to somebody who shits in their own hand?" I thought, if you don't like him after that, you are not going to like him at all. It is one of those things that are so emblematic of who he is. He is someone who finds beauty in the most horrible things.

You come away from it feeling that there is love in the world.
You want to let people know that. It's not so neat and tidy, but it is possible.

In a Dream premieres at Cinema Village this Friday, 4/10. Jeremiah Zagar and subjects Isaiah and Julia Zagar will appear at 8:00pm & 10:00pm showings on Friday. Special appearance by director Jeremiah Zagar at 8:00pm & 10:00pm showings on Saturday, 4/11.

How You Can Help Andrew Berends

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:45:00 GMT

We spend a lot of time in this slot telling you, the loyal Screengrab reader, about the ups and downs of independent film. We've also addressed, not always with tongue out of cheek, the travails of the documentary filmmaker. But we're dead serious when we tell you that being a documentarian can be a dangerous, and even deadly, business. That's where Andrew Berends comes in, and this is where you can really help.

Berends is a documentary filmmaker who's never shied from going to dangerous places to pursue his art. He's perhaps known for two feature films he did during an extended stay in Iraq: When Adnan Comes Home and the deeply affecting The Blood of My Brother: A Story of Death in Iraq. (Berends also worked on "Gangs of Iraq", one of the more effective Iraq War segments of TV's Frontline program). Recently, while researching a story on corruption and violence in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta, Berends, his assistants, and several translators were arrested by the government and accused of spying. Thanks largely to an outpouring of coverage in the film press and the assistance of the French organization Reporters Without Borders, the last of them were released last month.

However, that's hardly the end of his troubles. The charges, which carry no proof whatsoever, are nonetheless quite serious, and both Berends and his Nigerian translator, Samuel George, face ruinous legal fees which they contracted while combating the heavy-handed government attempt to shut down their story. If you'd like to learn more about the case, or better still, if you'd like to help contribute to defray Berends' legal fees and send a message that this kind of attempted censorship of documentary film won't go unanswered, you can visit the "Help Andy" website, here.

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When Is A Documentary Not A Documentary?

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

That's the question that William Goss is asking at Cinematical. Documentaries, long thought to be boring slogs that were designed to educate first and entertain fifth, have recently started making big money and attracting media attention. With that, they've also started to become entertaining first and informative last; and now, catering to an audience no longer consisting only of the fringe elements who liked documentaries for their own sake, their only previous requirement -- that they be true -- has come under increasing scrutiny.

"At what point did we begin to craft documentary filmmaking specifically to the masses," asks Goss, referring specifically to the Breakast Club-esque, heavily choreographed American Teen, "and then what happens when the masses just don't show?" And more than that, what happens when, in service to those massess, documentaries absolve themselves of their most sacred trust -- to reflect reality -- and start become something entirely different?

Obviously, this isn't the first time documentaries have blurred those particular lines in hopes of finding an audience. Going as far back as Nanook of the North, we find scenes that are staged, reshot, or otherwise tinkered with. Recreations have been a hot issue since the debut of Errol Morris' work; old Disney nature documentaries frequently blurred or even fabricated the truth about their subjects; and ideological bias has been an issue in documentary film since long before there was a Michael Moore. But in recent years, it's become a more important question than ever, with such popular films as March of the Penguins, which used manipulated footage on its way to becoming one of the biggest documentary successes of all time, the similar Arctic Tale, and the upcoming Morning Light, an alleged real-life documentary about sailing in which the cast is selected no differently than that of a sitcom.

Goss isn't entirely convinced this is a bad thing. He cites, in particular, cites Man On Wire (with its many reenactments) and Operation Filmmaker (whose protagonist abandons the 'role' crafted for him) as being excellent films depite the blurring of reality and fiction. But it does leave open copious questions. "The challenge remains for documentaries to double as entertainments," he says; but how much compromise can be made in service of that worthwhile goal?

Olympic Games Past: Rifling Through the Archives

Sarah Clyne Sundberg — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:08:00 GMT

Olympia

Leni Riefenstahl's epic documentary of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Your viewing pleasure may be somewhat tainted by the appearance of Adolf Hitler. He hosted the games and commissioned the film. The insanely long opening sequence shows nude and loin-clothed athletes, Greek ruins and German forests. Next, the camera pans over a map of Europe. Names of countries, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia pop up. It reads like a roadmap for coming invasions. Then on to the stadium full of heiling masses. Jesse Owens' series of wins in the sprint races, an athletic bird-flip to Nazism, are a definite highlight. Gives some perspective on Olympic Games and politics, no?

Tokyo Olympiad

Set at the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964, Kon Ichikawa's film opens with a wrecking ball on old fire-bombed buildings, then cuts to a brand new jet age Olympic stadium. Think of this as a post war bookends to Olympia. Out with the old in with the new. Children cheer the torch relay by the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. It's the '60s. Peace love and sportsmanship. The team from newly independent Ghana marches in Afros, Kente cloth and sunglasses. Post-revolutionary Cubans wave flags. Ridiculously huge teams from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. compete for world domination. This is sort of an anti-thesis to Leni Riefenstahl's totalitarian perfection. Ichikawa's camera finds weirdness in the details. A shot-putters round belly; the jaunty swing of race-walking butts; a sprinter from Ceylon lost on the field.

Chariots of Fire

Lanky Cambridge men in stylish white underwear run like the wind to win for Britain at the 8th Olympic Games in Paris in 1924. The country is still suffering the aftershocks of World War I. The Olympic Games are on the cusp of becoming the realm of professional athletes rather than gentleman amateurs. Two young lads, one Jewish, one an evangelical Scotsman, must overcome petty prejudice and personal obstacles on their way to the games. Like any self-respecting Olympic flick this one is based on a true story. Upper-crust period costumes abound. As an added bonus you get to see a foppish British nobleman jump hurdles on which he has balanced brimming glasses of champagne.

Munich

Low on sports, high on 1970s terrorist chic. At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Black September, a terrorist group, broke into the quarters of the Israeli Olympic team, took them hostage, and killed them. Spielbergs movie is based on the events and the vendetta with the Israeli secret service that followed. Flashes from the pivotal bloodbath are replayed throughout. Most notably when Eric Bana's character makes love to his wife; one of the more uncomfortable sex scenes in history. Steven Spielberg doing what he does best. You know he's driving your emotional roller coaster, but who cares when it feels this good?

Personal Best

Set at the try-outs for the 1976 Olympic track trials. No terror drama here. Just a lot of lesbian tension with Mariel Hemingway — of Manhattan — fame and Patrice Donnelly in the lead roles. skimpy mid-70s shorts. 'Nuff said.

The World of Lists: Documentaries Get Their Due

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Though we love movie-related lists as much as anybody -- indeed, as we love movie-related lists even more than anybody -- we've noticed a somewhat disturbing trend in the recent flood-tide of best-ofs: the documentary often gets the short shrift. Stuck somewhere between a feature film and an educational short, even with the new wave of populist docs that actually make money at the box office, doumentaries are rarely considered part of the mainstream corpus which gets shuffled around for various critics' Top Whatever lists, and thus, leave the average fan with no idea where to start when it comes to the medium.

That's something that Jonathan Kahana, a professor of cinema studies at NYU (and author of the recently released Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary) aims to change with this list.

Originally created as a feature for an in-flight magazine and later severely truncated (a process all to familiar to those of us who have tilled that particular soil), Kahana's list contains a dozen of the finest documentaries in history from the 1920s to the present, available on DVD and otherwise. Compiled by the author to "pay it forward" to an upcoming generations of documentary fans, the list is a solid one -- we'll present it below in chronological order, but please do check out the link for Kahana's insightful commentary on each choice.

1. Manhatta (Charles Sheeler & Paul Strand, 1921) & Rain (Joris Ivens, 1929)
2. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)
3. The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
4. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)
5. Salesman (Alfred & David Maysles, 1969)
6. Harlan County U.S.A. & American Dream (Barbara Kopple, 1975 & 1991)
7. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1982)
8. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1989)
9. Little Dieter Wants to Fly (Werner Herzog, 1998)
10. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000)
11. The Corporation (Jennifer Abbott & Mark Achbar, 2003)
12. Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee, 2004)

What do you think, Screengrab readers? What did Kahana include that you'd have left off, and what did he omit that you'd make sure got in? What are your 12 favorite documentaries?

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Watch It For Free!: The Celluloid Closet

Gwynne Watkins — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Any day now, I'll start taking it for granted — but for the moment, every time I discover a great film streaming free online, it feels like a visit from Santa. Today's free movie is the eye-opening 1996 documentary The Celluloid Closet, which caters not only to film buffs and gay culture aficionados, but to anyone with a short attention span. Based on Vito Russo's groundbreaking history of homosexuality in the movies, the film shows us how there have always been gay characters in films, literally from the beginning, with one of Edison's first reels. Sometimes these references were subtle (the "sissy" archetype in films like The Gay Divorcee) and sometimes overt (Greta Garbo smooching a lady in Queen Christina), as The Celluloid Closet demonstrates through a jaw-dropping series of film clips. Which brings us to that short attention span bit; it's impossible to change the channel (or open a new browser window, as it were) during this film. You want too badly to see the next clip.

Film clips are interspersed with Lily Tomlin narration and celebrity interviews about the progression of gay characters in film, for better and for worse: the censored flirtation in Spartacus, the landmark gays-are-people-too sensibility of The Boys in the Band, the psychotic queer murderers of '90s horror films. Rumor has it that the filmmakers deleted a segment on biopics that turn gay characters straight, because they couldn't retain rights to the film clips; says Roger Ebert in his review:

Richard Burton's estate refused the rights to show scenes from "Alexander the Great.'' Goldwyn wouldn't license clips from ``Hans Christian Andersen'' (Epstein says "somehow they got the idea we were outing Danny Kaye as opposed to Hans Christian Andersen''). Lawyers stepped in at the possibility that the film would identify Cole Porter as homosexual (!). And Charlton Heston refused permission to use scenes from "TheAgony and the Ecstasy'' ("because he'd done a lot of research for his role andhe assured us that Michelangelo was not homosexual'').

Watch the film in its entirety here.

(Also streaming for free: The Lavender Lens, a documentary montage of film clips featuring queer characters.)

IDA List FUBAR

Peter Smith — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

As anyone who's perused the American Film Institute's lists can tell you, consensus is boring. Unfortunately, it's hard to get around when you conduct a poll. The International Documentary Association has asked its members to select the twenty-five greatest documentaries ever made. (They voted from a list of 700 films, but that complete list doesn't seem to be available on the IDA's website.) It reveals that documentarians are just as prone to sticking with the "new release" shelves and shying away from subtitles as the rest of us. Despite the "international" in the IDA's name, only two foreign-language films made the top twenty-five — Buena Vista Social Club landed at #20 and Night and Fog at #22. Never fear, though: Michael Moore will come to save the day, with three films on the list. While including a number of landmarks (Titicut Follies, Don't Look Back, Grey Gardens), the list leans towards high-profile recent documentaries, including major films (Capturing the Friedmans, Grizzly Man) and mediocrities (Born into Brothels, Spellbound). Any films made before 1955 are missing — so much for Dziga Vertov (without whom Koyaanisqatsi, the #14 entry, would look much different) and Robert Flaherty. A strict definition of documentary seems to have kept F for Fake and Close Up at bay. All but two films are available on DVD — I wonder if this has anything to do with Netflix's sponsorship of the poll. Still, this list isn't entirely without merit in the long run — like the AFI's, it begs to be countered and is bound to spur dialogue, as it already has in the blogosphere. — Steve Erickson