Documentary filmmaking is not for the easy and the simple. Instead, documentary filmmaking is probing and challenging and even circumventing. More often than not overachievers are usually called upon to take on a documentary film journey. The work is often long and enduring with constant hills and labyrinths to mine through to the finish line.
Lately, I am witnessing far less documentaries going down this path. Instead of the patient, focused work in extrapolating nuance and gray lines in subject matter I am seeing simplified, generalizing work that leaves viewers with far more questions than answers. Not necessary for the truth often asserted but gaping holes in the delivery of the content. Documentaries at this level are low hanging fruit. These short and long-form films are attempted at something that is easy to obtain, achieve, or take advantage of with very little effort or resources. Documentaries that take such shortcuts for marketability and half-truth disseminating just to get a finished product lack ambition.
In an ever-evolving world of endless content and the changing technology to distribute such content it is easy and tempting to water-down films in the documentary genre. Directors, producers and even distributors aim for docu-series as a way of cutting through the pace of nuance-driven storytelling often leaving the completed versions for a later episode. This not only adds to the flair of more content for a given film storyline but allows less concision and focus applicable to get through a storyline in flow and comprehension the first time around for viewers. A solid example of this is Netflix’s new 4-part docuseries, TYSON. Not only is this low-hanging fruit because of accessibility and the numerous documentaries that have already been completed in portraying Mike Tyson but it lacks ambition. ABC, NBC, Sony Pictures, ESPN and even Spike Lee all had their turn in telling the Mike Tyson story usually in his own words. So, why another documentary about this guy now? What hasn’t been told about him? What’s new?
Low hanging fruit documentaries fall short of captivating minds and illuminating thought in didactic, educational, informative, and edifying ways. With such a long journey in digging through facts, collecting archives, conducting interviews, capturing verite content in realtime, following storylines over time, and all the necessary quality-control approach in putting a documentary film together, documentaries should demand ambition for the viewer. Directors, producers, and writers of this work should want the viewer to be moved, shook, inspired, hurt, disappointed, and every other emotion that may come in the entertaining experience.
Recently, I watched the feature-length documentary film, A City in the Forest, the 5-year chronicle of a decentralized “Stop Cop City” grassroots movement to protect the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, Georgia from the construction of a large police training facility. Without a formal trailer out I believe the two co-directors would rather viewers dictate what they will see with this film. This begins my critique of how a potentially great storyline fell short in ambition and focus. As penned in my review on Letterboxd, the film lacked the layered approach of capturing nuance of all sides involved as well as the framing of the sociopolitical context of what made “cop city” controversial in the first place. Instead, the driving motif of the film relied on the constant cheer of an anti-police, anti-government crusade that inspired the resistance local and visiting folks took part in at the Weelaunee Forest in Dekalb County, Georgia during the pandemic and post-pandemic years. The filmmakers here took a “native” approach to telling this story to an audience who otherwise should have some background as to what led to the clash of city government and pro-government businesses against demonstrators and residents critical of the new 85-acre Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. In fact, no individual speaking on camera (even the aliases of masked individuals) was ever named and titled which left the viewer feeling lost as to who exactly to follow, understand and resonate with. By not framing the story with important context and information, we instead get a continued visual amalgamation of the battle lines between poetic activists on megaphones and politicians ignoring the noise along with unarmed individuals and SWAT police officers with high-powered weapons. For this documentary to educate masses on what really happened in the city of Atlanta leading up to the development of this site as a forewarning to other cities and municipalities across the country a more didactic and informative approach was needed. Instead, we really have a film that “preaches to the choir” and not one of honest debate and critical examination.
It takes ambition to take on a documentary film in any capacity, to document a story in an unscripted fashion and to visually story-tell a subject matter through nuance. So, why be unambitious in editing with the proper flow and context, a film that can resonate and illuminate? Ambition should be the driving force from beginning to end in a documentary film pursuit. It should not be dictated on a marketing strategy or a social media algorithm. Ambition needs to move the needle in telling a nonfiction, unscripted narrative. It’s not enough to simply point the camera and deliver back to the audience what we think they would like and tell folks about. This work demands taking ownership of the the art of exposing, raising awareness, and informing all in a visual medium bent to challenge thought, document reality, push one closer to truth, and raise consciousness.