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DOCUMENTARY
THE WAY WE’RE LIVING – THE FILMS OF MARC ISAACS AND SHEFFIELD DOC FEST 2009: MARC ISAACS MASTERCLASS3/28/2017
Two very informative talks with the film maker behind Lift. Isaacs details the process of how he makes his films, how he provokes certain reactions out of his real life characters and places them in certain landscapes that capture the essence of who they are. He also explains why he dislikes the word interview and prefers to capture an emotional truth from his subjects rather than hard facts.
I must confess that while watching these talks, as informative as they were, I was quite shocked by Issacs working method. Maybe I’m being a little naive but when he talked about how he followed the residents of the tower block in Lift inside their homes and preempted the filmed encounters with them, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated and my overall opinion of Lift has lowered some what. Worse still was the fact that he brought the fly in the lift with him. It just goes to show how subjective images can be as one critic thought that Issacs was making a statement on the death of fly on the wall documentary when in actuality Issacs states that it was simply out of a need for inserts. Personally I interpreted the death of the fly as signaling the end of the documentary and the end of Issacs status as the fly on the wall. This method of working, provoking people into responses and placing things that were not there before the camera starts rolling goes against the grain of documentary film making to me. If I hadn’t watched these two talks, I would have never been aware of the fact that Issacs works this way and that to me is lying to the viewer and represents a very shady interpretation of reality. After these revelations I have lost all interest in pursuing the Participatory mode and will now explore other modes of documentary. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMy name is Clay Sandford and I am currently studying an FDA in Film and Media Production at University Centre Weston. I have a keen interest in directing, cinematography and camera operating. ArchivesCategories |