by Krause A.S.
Whitney Dow and Marco Williams on the set of Two Towns of Jasper (2002).
Since Robert Flaherty’s groundbreaking film Nanook of the North, the ethics of documentary filmmaking have been a central conversation surrounding documentary filmmaking practices. Nanook was made in a time dictated by racialized and racist ethnographic practices. Anthropologists like Franz Boas and Bronisław Malinowski had only just begun to break from the dominant perspectives of evolutionary racial theory and promoted a more relative and observational approach to anthropological research. Ethnographic subjects were not included in the production of knowledge, and expert observations were meant to be explicitly apolitical.
These models of ethnographic epistemology were revolutionary for their time but have become significantly outdated. As ethnographic considerations of the “other” progressed, the ethical considerations of documentary making became central to the process itself. A comparatively early and important development in documentary ethics was made by Jean Rouch’s 1950s and 60s films set in West Africa like Moi, un Noir (1958), The Human Pyramid (1961), and Jaguar (1967). These were some of the first western films to feature African voices and share a part of the production/creation processes with their subjects. Simultaneously, there was the proliferation of socialized Cuban cinema, revolutionary Argentinian and Brazilian cinema, pro-communist Bengali cinema and several other “global south” cinematic movements set against the hegemonic cultural, academic and economic influence of the west, which sought to seize the means of film production from western “researchers.” These films have often been lumped into the broadly defined category of Third Cinema, and have brought forward new considerations of self-representation, reflexivity, anti-colonialism, identity and intersectionality.
But how do these ideals influence contemporary filmmaking? How have we changed the ways we make, consume and fund non-fiction media? As a white-American male, what are some steps or models that I could follow in my pursuit to make documentary films that align with my leftist political ideology and enact a sort of praxis to push social and political change? And how do I make sure these films accurately represent the people, ideas and issues in them? My search for answers to these questions led me to rather underrepresented world of collaborative filmmaking.
Photos: left- Life in a Day (2011); right- Five Broken Camera (2011).
There are a plethora of collaborative films and documentaries that take very different approaches, forms and subjects. Some have become increasingly outdated, while others have maintained significant educational and emotive value over decades. Collaborative forms range from Lars Von Trier and Jørgen Leth’s twisted The Five Obstructions (2003) to the rather reductive and somewhat problematic Life in a Day (2011), a film constructed from 80,000 individual clips from around the world. In Five Broken Cameras (2011), Palestinian Emad Burnat approached Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi to help him make a film out of the five years’ worth of footage he had shot in and around his town of Bil’in in occupied Palestine. The two edited the film together and are credited as co-directors. The documentary saw huge success, receiving a PBS distribution deal and Oscar nomination.
However, there are two particular collaborative documentaries that stood out as having very distinct and lasting approaches to collaborative filmmaking: Two Laws (1982) by Carolyn Strachan and Alessandro Cavadini and Two Towns of Jasper (2002) by Whitney Dow and Marco Williams. Although these films were made in very different spatial, temporal, national and social contexts, the methods and ideals practiced in the conception, articulation, production and distribution of these films are worth learning from and understanding within the contemporary mediascape.
Against the Western Definition of the “Other” – Two Laws
Focusing on Australian Aboriginal communities’ legal fight over their land rights, Two Laws is credited in the western media as being co-directed by Carolyn Strachan and Alessandro Cavadini, but in truth it was written and directed by the four native language groups in and around Borroloola, Australia. In an interview with Strachan, she told me that her and Cavadini’s roles were more like that of technicians who the Aboriginal community had hired to make their film. Strachan, who left her honors history course to become more involved in the history-making process was contacted by the Borroloola community after they had seen her and Cavadini’s work with other indigenous groups in Australia. “They contacted us and knew what they wanted to make before we got there. It was never like, ‘Let’s go in and win their trust.’”
Photos: left- Carolyn Strachan during filming of Two Laws (1982); center- The people of Borroloola rehearse a reenactment of police brutality; right- The people of Borroloola reenact a courtroom scene on the local runway.
The entire production was done tribally; Strachan and Cavadini were initiated into the tribe and followed tribal law in every aspect of production. There were no contracts drawn up, and almost all of the funding came from the Australian government. The aboriginal community outlined the film in four parts and would watch the dailies flown in every week to decide what should end up in the final cut. The entire process was entirely communal. Each decision was decided on by the whole group, according to tribal laws, which even dictated the way reenactments were cast. Strachan told me all of the casting could not be done based on acting ability or physical similarity but was decided through tribal kinship. The entirety of the filming was dictated by the community’s laws and customs. “The process of making the film was simply an extension of community storytelling and reenactment practices,” she said in a 2009 interview with Framework Magazine.
Two Laws’ title has a double meaning. It references the different set of laws white and aboriginal Australians are held to, but also comments on the differences of Euro-American cinematic codes versus those of aboriginal storytelling. According to Strachan, the goal of the film was to create a film that not only showed the political inequalities that the aboriginal community faced, but to make a film on their terms, using their set of storytelling conventions and codes. For Strachan and Cavadini, this meant shooting on a wide lens, framing in the listeners and witnesses with the storytellers and actors. Their filmmakers’ statement consistently cites the need for an experiential format rather than an explanatory one. “Instead of using editing techniques to lead the western audience to a limited meaning, we kept the frame wide, challenging the audience to explore the frame and thereby experience the film in a new way.”
The importance put on wide-angled experience also weighed on the film’s distribution. At the time, televisions were much too small to allow a fully immersive experience of the film’s elements as they were intended, so Strachan, Cavadini and the indigenous groups who directed it decided to withhold release onto VHS or DVD. Instead, they showed the film throughout aboriginal communities, conventions and legal conferences in Australia, and in classrooms and festivals. For the filmmakers, it was more important for the film to be seen properly than widely without a big screen. After many years, with the inclusion of overhead projectors in classrooms and larger, high-quality TVs in homes, the film was released on DVD. When I asked Strachan how she feels about the fact that most people now consume TV and films on phones and laptops she laughed, “I just can’t imagine how Two Laws could work on a phone.”
Photos: left- Carolyn Strachan with the people of Borroloola shooting Two Laws (1982); right- The people of Borroloola filming a scene in Two Laws (1982).
Even though Two Laws is almost 40 years old now, it offers lasting lessons on how to go about making a film that serves those you are there to represent. At every step of production and distribution, Two Laws follows the needs and conventions of the group it services. It does not belittle, observe, control or isolate them, but allows the aboriginal community of Borroloola to speak for themselves and dictate the terms in which they speak. The film and its release received backlash from academics and anthropologists for being too political or too chaotic, but the value of giving complete creative control to the people in the film seems much more important than the wrought scientific objectivity that twentieth century anthropology so loved.
Two Voices, Two Perspectives, One Murder – Two Towns of Jasper
The other important film I want to discuss employs a completely different form of collaboration and subject matter. Two Towns of Jasper, co-directed by Marco Williams (black) and Whitney Dow (white), focuses on the aftermath of the racist lynching of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas in 1998. After seeing the local sheriff on the news following the murder, Dow took a trip to Jasper to investigate the event. The visceral racial tension he witnessed in this trip made it apparent that he would not be able to accurately represent the events of the murder and the aftermath of the trials by himself. Dow explained: “In the 1990s there wasn’t a functional language to discuss race and intersectionality like there is today.” He began to discuss the situation with filmmaker and friend, Marco Williams, who told me, “Those conversations were very profound and focused on the racial overlay of the whole event. The film we ended up making came directly out of these initial conversations.” Dissatisfied by the mainstream media’s focus on the white perspective, the two decided to co-direct a film that would explore the racial differences in Jasper and how they played out through the three murder trails in the year following the lynching.
Photos: left- Whitney Dow (in the doorway) and his crew avowed white supremacist, Trent Smith; right- Press photo for Town Towns of Jasper (2002).
Their actual filming process was rather unique. Dow used an entirely white crew to shoot the white community, while Williams used an all-black crew to shoot the black community. Prior to production, the two made a manifesto of how they would treat the interviews and film their subjects. They would shoot it handheld, in situational interviews, and would not watch each other’s’ footage until all the filming had been finished. They did not want one side of the film to influence the other. According to Williams, it was essential that they were allowed to film autonomously and represent the communities they were working with. The two rarely saw each other while filming, occasionally meeting on the courthouse lawn or behind a local fast food restaurant to discuss general progress and some reoccurring themes.
During production each of the directors came across topics that were articulated by every member in their respective community, but never mentioned by the other. Dow told me that every single white person he met brought up how James Byrd Jr. was an alcoholic or used drugs. “Sooner or later, every white person, every white person told me that.” Williams said the black community never brought it up. Instead, when discussing Byrd, they often talked of his family. Dow and Williams both commented on how the white community wanted to judge Byrd by the life he lived and were dismayed by the sudden act of white supremacy in their community, while the black community saw the event as an inevitable incident in the long-standing racial tensions of East Texas. They saw themselves in Byrd, someone who could be killed just for being a different color.
Representing two distinct communities’ interpretations of such a charged event was sometimes difficult for the two filmmakers to construct. Once they brought together their edited selects to make the film, they would stall for hours or days. Dow and Williams told me they had complete shared control. “Everything was 50/50. There was no 49.9% and 50.1%.” Every cut was discussed from both perspectives. “Sometimes the editor would just leave the room after an hour of us debating.” After hitting a major stall in post-production in the summer of 2000, they decided to each take a month off so that they could each have a month to work with the editor alone. When they came back together, Dow had set the foundation for the first half, and Williams, the second. Their separation had allowed them to “articulate themselves visually without having to always articulate themselves verbally,” Williams said. Finally, the film was finished after 18 months of editing.
“Co-directing is extremely difficult under the best circumstances,” Dow told me. There is always going to be tension in co-directing, but they both articulated an incredible amount of trust in each other, which allowed them to push hard and develop a challenging and important film. “The only way a collaboration succeeds is with a shared belief in the common goal, which begins to be articulated in pre-production, and can take a lot of time to realize in post,” Williams said. While, the process of collaboration and co-direction was obviously difficult at times, the value of the end product encouraged Dow and Williams to co-direct again on I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown vs Board of Education (2004) as well as work together in different production roles on other projects. Their main advice for filmmakers wanting to make collaborative films: talk things through, trust and push each other, and find someone who does something well that you can’t do and vice-versa.
Photo: Behind the Scenes on set of Sweet Samara (working title) by Chris Gauthier and Divad Durant (2020).
I also interviewed a pair of young filmmakers who were inspired by Two Towns of Jasper’s approach to collaboration. Chris Gauthier (white) and Divad Durant (black) are currently producing a film about agriculture, prison, and race in New York with the working title, Sweet Samara. The two filmmakers were joined by a shared interest in the story and began working together after being connected by a mutual friend. They drafted a memorandum of understanding, which includes a dedication to regular check-ins and actively maintaining an open dialogue with each other. They hope to use their film as a tool of advocacy and community organizing, showing it locally and encouraging post-screening discussions once it is complete.
By providing these models, I hope to encourage more filmmakers to work with people with differing opinions, backgrounds, privileges and ideas when creating documentary films. By sharing creative control, labor, authorship and distribution, filmmakers can work to democratize the means of storytelling and cinematic production and do away with oppressive misrepresentations and reductions that still plague too many documentary films today.
Two Laws is accessible on Kanopy for certain institutions, and you can watch Two Towns of Jasper free on Vimeo.