Despite the fact that we spent the majority of our four days in Leipzig inside movie theaters, I feel our group left Leipzig feeling like they’d gained a whole lot of life experience. For me the Leipzig DOK festival revealed many eye opening stories to me, while also helping me improve as a documentary filmmaker. Through out the course of the three days most of us watched a total of around eight films. All of the films I saw were amazing, and they showed me that a story can be shown in many different ways.
In order for a documentary to be good, the cinematography does not have to be stunning with shallow depth of field and fiery sunsets in every shot. In fact most of the really good documentaries I saw, were shot with hand held cameras, that didn’t make the subjects look like Victoria’s Secret Models, but rather showed them as they actually are, which is human. Another thing I learned is that its much more interesting to watch someone doing something or living the story rather than watching an interview where they recap a story.
So trying to make our documentaries so they are happening as much as possible in the present, we learned, is very important.
A lot of what I learned at the DOK festival helped me with the actual filming of my doc. After each film played, we could hear the directors talk. All of the directors talked about their personal relationships with their documentary subjects, and how before filming it is important to have trust with your subject. However, during the filming process it is also important to make yourself seemingly not there when the camera is on so as to really capture the moment. This helped me a lot during the filming of my documentary about the Vegetable Orchestra.
I spent a lot of time just hanging out with them and talking to them before turning the camera on. However, once the camera was on I tried to make myself invisible.
One of my favorite films, that most of our group also watched was called Toto and his Sisters. Toto and his sisters was a phenomenal film about an impoverished family that lives in Romania and whose lives have been destroyed by heroine. In particular the film follows the charismatic, optimistic and adorable eight-year-old boy Toto. Toto and his sisters have a father who left them years before and their mother is in prison serving time for drug trafficking. The family lives in a one room apartment, if it can even be called an apartment. They have no bathroom, no running water, no shower, no kitchen and one couch that is used as a bed by all three of the siblings. The film covers their struggle to survive in the mess that is their life.
This documentary was done wonderfully, the film maker was able to capture the endearing childhood hope of Toto who remained positive despite his growing up in adversity. The filmmaker was asked how he was able to sit back and watch things like Anna suffering, and Toto playing with needles without interfering. He said that as a film maker it was more important for him to tell the story than put down his camera and help because in the grand scheme of things his documentary would help more by raising awareness about the subject. Being able to sit back and not interfere is a very important skill in documentary film making.
My other favorite film was a lot less tragic and dark. It was about the theory of six degrees of separation. A Polish film crew had random people select random numbers and letters from a bingo ball roller. They asked six people to carry out very specific tasks that would lead them to their ultimate goal of creating a web separated only by six degrees.
The filmmakers spent two weeks with each one of the six people they met and then at the end of each two weeks they would have that person call another person that might lead them closer to their goal. The movie was not just about the theory but also about the personal relationships and details of the lives of each one of the six people. What was even more fascinating were the stories of each one of the six people that were revealed in this documentary.
Not only were we extremely inspired by the Leipzig DOK festival, and filled with ideas for our own documentaries, but we also got experience mingling and talking to producers and directors at the lounge parties each night. We were able to meet some of the directors of the films we had seen, and ask them for advice about our own documentaries. It also didn’t hurt that the treats they served there were delicious!
Written by Kendall Milton
