Silence Through the Lens--From the Memoirs of a Filmmaker

Silence Through the Lens--From the Memoirs of a Filmmaker
--At a roundtable discussion in the spring of 1969

In the spring of that year, I was invited to a roundtable discussion in a magazine. The topic was "documentary. But it was not just a technical or programmatic discussion. We were reexamining the roots of the question of whether video can approach the "truth.

I am the camera," said a man. I am the camera," he said in a play, and I was fascinated by the spirit of his words. I was attracted to the spirit of this phrase from a play. To observe reality through a lens. In a sense, it was an act that confronted me with what I myself was seeing and what I did not want to see.

But another participant objected. Another participant objected, saying that there were "too many words," and that "the narration compensated for the emotion." I wondered whether a documentary could really be made in an objective format, and whether we should let the "thing" itself speak, rather than someone else's story, or someone else's point of view.

One person said, "There are limitations to recording in a studio. This was certainly true. Light, sound, timing, ...... all become artificial, and the person being filmed also becomes poised in front of the camera. Unlike outdoor shooting, where you can capture a moment by chance, in a studio, "being filmed" itself distorts the reality.

Then, that program came up in the news. It was a documentary that followed a new singer for 30 minutes with a single camera. The stillness and tension. Her expression and voice were consistent, and there she was. When I saw that program, I was a little jealous. I knew how difficult it was to capture human time without adding or subtracting anything. I knew how difficult it was.

The term "cinéma vérité" was also used. But it is not just a style. Someone said, "Bringing a camera to the site itself deconstructs the culture. Someone said, "Bringing a camera to the site itself deconstructs the culture. This is certainly true. The photographer and the photographed. We knew how much that relationship generates a subtle gravity in space.

Or, holding a camera was like exposing a part of your nervous system. In the streets, on the battlefield, in the studio. Pain and displacement, which should have been invisible, are burned into the film.

Some people laughed and said, "This is the age of the 100 million documentarists. But I could not laugh. It was also the arrival of an age in which people only filmed what they wanted to see. Reality is sometimes unpleasant, ugly, and helpless. But that is precisely the point of our cameras.

After the discussion, the spring light shone through the window. We returned to our respective sites. But even now, the words from that place linger in my ears.
--"Are you really paying attention?" I asked myself, "Are you really paying attention?

It was an eternal question posed to the world and to myself through the documentary format.