(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
A trend in documentary films at present seems to be so-called hybrid films – documentaries that use fictional grips. At least whether to judge from this year's film selection at Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF). Here, this phenomenon was also highlighted at the National Documentary Seminar, which was arranged during the festival for the eighth time.
The emphasis on hybrid films was also reflected in which films were awarded with awards at the festival. The prize for best film in the fairly hybrid program section Documentary Extraordinary went to Austrian Brothers of the Night, which is about a group of young Bulgarian men who feed on prostitutes at a bar in Vienna. In this film, director Patric Chiha has let his protagonists play a form of fictionalized versions of himself, portraying them with a stylized, brightly colored movie language that brings to mind Rainer Werner Fassbinder's feature films. A related grasp is found in Jon Haukeland's cinematic (and not as stylized) children robber, who won the BIFF award for best Norwegian documentary. Here, too, the film's young protagonists play themselves, in this case, based on a script based on their own experiences, combined with more traditional documentary sequences.
Protection. An interesting aspect of both children robber og Brothers of the Night is that the hybrid form in these films provides a form of protection for the protagonists – who can more easily claim that it was "just a movie" than if they starred in a "pure" documentary. This was emphasized by director Chiha when he presented Brothers of the Night at the aforementioned documentary seminar in Bergen, where he explained that the young, prostitute men are partly from homophobic environments, and have wives and maybe children at home in Bulgaria.
However, the fact that the documentary borrows from the fiction film and vice versa is nothing new. John Grierson, the author of the concept of documentary, referred to it as "a creative adaptation of reality", and already in Nanook of the North (1922), which is often regarded as the first full-length documentary, director Robert J. Flaherty made extensive use of creative staging. Among other things, he instructed the Inuit in the film to use more traditional hunting tools than the pistols they usually used, and had a specially made igloo built to film it from the inside. Furthermore, the main character's real name should not even have been Nanook, and she who played Nanook's wife was reportedly not his spouse in reality.
However, this was a time when the recording equipment was too large, heavy and lightweight for spontaneous and mobile "fly on the wall" documentary. Flaherty defended himself (according to Wikipedia's article on the film) that filmmakers often have to adjust or distort something "to capture its true spirit," and here he may have been on some of the same argumentation used today about hybrid grip, 100 years later. Namely, such elements do not have to detract from the authenticity of a film – on the contrary, you can recreate environments or events that you would not otherwise have been able to access, with a camera, and with that may come closer to portraying this reality. Both children robber og Brothers of the Night can probably be considered as examples of just this.
Wrote dialogue script. Furthermore, one can argue that the distinction between feature films and documentaries is exaggerated, and that it is not a matter of whether or not, but to what extent a film is staged. It's astonishingly easy to forget how much filmmakers manipulate what's going on in documentaries in general, even for us with a supposedly trained eye. A relatively well-known example is how the Swedish documentary filmmaker Stefan Jarl directed some of the characters in his so-called Modstrilogy. Jarl himself has said that he wrote a script for what a drug addict played in A decent life (1979) was to say about substance abuse in the working class, without necessarily sharing the views he was instructed to state. "It seems authentic, but is pure fiction," says filmmaker Søren Birkvad and Jan Anders Diesen's interview book Authentic impressions (1994)
But many would probably think that Jarl went too far in this creative process of reality. Unlike fiction, after all, documentary film enters into a kind of contract with the audience that the content should be "true" or "real", albeit with a certain (and possibly avoidable) influence on the filmmaker's choices and presence.
Will not be deceived. This contract is perhaps most evident when it is breached or when fiction pretends to be a documentary. One such case is Syrian Hero Boy, which was among the films The Norwegian Film Institute's staggering documentary film consultant Kristine Ann Skaret featured in her post during the seminar at BIFF. The (before her time) NFI-supported Norwegian short film created strong reactions and international headlines when it appeared that it did not contain authentic footage from war-torn Syria, but fiction scenes recorded in Malta – without this being communicated when the film went viral. In other words, the people do not want to feel that they have been deceived, and the film was even accused of weakening the power and credibility of authentic war journalism.
It's astonishingly easy to forget how much filmmakers manipulate what's going on in documentaries in general.
Of course, this does not mean that it is always controversial to use fiction elements in documentaries. On the contrary, reconstructions – that is, fixation scenes that recreate actual events – are a widespread and traditional tool within the genre. This seems to be completely unproblematic for the aforementioned public contract as long as it becomes clear that there are just reconstructions. In other words, such scenes should in some way make their visible artificiality, at the same time as they are meant to show something as it actually happened. Jon Haukeland does not necessarily do this in his film children robber – without that he therefore wants to convey something other than reality as his main characters experience it. And people have not reacted negatively either, on the contrary the film has aroused well-deserved enthusiasm.
Case The Magnitsky Act. It seems clear that the hybrid form's ability to provoke is linked to its manipulation of something perceived as authentic. However, exactly where the limit goes for what we accept of such manipulation is not as obvious.
In her review of recent hybrid films at the seminar, Kristine Ann Skaret also mentioned the controversial The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes, who got their first Norwegian festival show at BIFF. (The Grimstad Short Film Festival withdrew it as known from its program in June, following notice of lawsuits from the US investor and Magnetisky defender Bill Browder.) This is a movie that is based on reconstructions, and was perhaps initially thought of as something closer to a feature film . The film shows how director Andrei Nekrasov, in the process of creating these reconstructions, begins to doubt the story he was told – and is in the process of filming – about the circumstances surrounding the Russian tax lawyer and the death of Sergei Magnitsky.
Rather than call it a hybrid movie, however, I would consider that The Magnitsky Act contains a methane level – which in a way causes it to leave the reconstructions and gradually take the form of a more traditional, grave journalistic documentary. The film is also reasonably clear on what are reconstructions, what is behind-the-scenes footage during their recording, and what are more traditional documentary sequences. And it is not these moldings that have made Nekrasov's film so controversial. It is controversial because it boils down to established "truths" that have had major implications for the ongoing propaganda war between Russia and the West, while many believe that Nekrasov himself presents false claims in the film. (Despite arguing that his main concern is not to conclude, but to raise doubts.)
But by subtracting the very scenes that make up essential parts of the action The Magnitsky Act a movie that is about all stories told – also outside the film medium.
Elements of conflict. I myself was frustrated by another film that was shown in Bergen (and which recently also appeared on the capital's Film from the South festival), namely The Land of the Enlightened by Belgian filmmaker Pieter-Jan de Pue. This movie tells about a group of young boys in the mountains of Afghanistan who steal opium and trade mines and other weapons from the war. The sequences with the boys seem to be partly fiction, and are mixed with poetic constructions of a more mythological, past Afghanistan, as well as some more obviously documentary clips of American and Afghan soldiers. The result is, unfortunately, that the fiction and documentary elements partly kill each other. The film does not let us know if the young robbers represent an actual environment in the country, while the story of them never becomes engaging enough to act as a full-fledged feature film. And although some of the fiction elements are breathtaking, I missed more and more in-depth documentary scenes with the adult soldiers. In other words, I wanted a more traditional documentary, as I never quite saw the point of the hybrid format in The Land of the Enlightened.
The hybrid film can thus cause the audience to react with an indignant "what the hell?", But also with a more resigned "what the hell?" As the fiction film has long drawn inspiration from the documentary, it is nevertheless inevitable that the flirtation is rendered. And while it can create both unnecessary confusion and rightful resentment, it is obvious that fixation elements can be an enrichment for the documentary. Not only for its aesthetic expression, but also for its ability to convey something authentic.
