For the past three years I’ve been a part of the feature film programming panel for the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, which means I get to watch dozens and dozens of documentaries through the year hoping to find some that might fit HRAFF’s mission to screen challenging, high-quality films dealing with human rights-related subject matter. It can often be brutal viewing, but it’s also given me incredibly deep exposure to all kinds of films from around the world, and a continually growing love for the documentary form.

After seeing such a wide variety of films, the idea of “objectivity” has become particularly interesting to me, because objectivity is usually a flexible concept in the sorts of films that would expect to be screened at a human rights film festival. The conventional wisdom is that true objectivity cannot possibly exist (since by turning on a camera or making a cut you are creating a perspective), but that filmmakers should strive for objectivity and fairness anyway. I guess this comes from the pre-Maysles idea that documentary films should be educational, and thus should attempt to convey everything as accurately and true-to-life as possible, e.g. by presenting both sides of an issue, or by attempting to be a comprehensive as possible when depicting an event, or by being a fly on the wall and not influencing anything, etc.

But now, there is a whole world of “activist films” that intentionally choose to have no respect for the entire notion of objectivity: think An Inconvenient Truth, Chasing Asylum, 13th. These films’ goal is not to be comprehensive or show both sides of an issue, but to convince an audience to think or behave a certain way. They understand that every single film ever made is subjective, even the ones that try to be objective, so you might as well just go all the way and embrace subjectivity and the ability to manipulate your material to make it as convincing as possible.

While we’ve been discussing the ethical concerns of documentary filmmaking in class, I’ve found myself applying these discussions to some of the films I’ve watched for HRAFF, and there are a few that I’ve found particularly interesting in this context, so I thought I’d do a couple of case studies around the notion of objectivity and the role of the filmmaker in participating in (or instigating) the actions captured in their film.

The White World According to Daliborek

Daliborek is a forty-something Czech man who lives with his mother, makes YouTube videos that get single-digit views, traces drawings of pornography off the television, and makes really terrible heavy metal music in his spare time. He’s also a hateful, neo-Nazi skinhead. The film is a portrait of Daliborek and his extremist views, but told with an eye to the banal, ordinary details of Daliborek’s life. The film doesn’t seem to challenge his views, and instead subtly shows their ridiculousness by having such an utterly pathetic character profess them.

The director has participated in workshops with Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing), and as a result there is an air of performativity and theatricality to many parts of the film. It can often be difficult to identify which events occurred naturally and which were influenced by the filmmakers, but there is a moment towards the end of the film where the line is completely obliterated. Daliborek and his family travel to the Auschwitz concentration camp (at the suggestion of his mother’s boyfriend, but again it’s debatable whether this was devised by the filmmakers), and take a guided tour during which they are introduced to a Holocaust survivor who recounts her experiences during the war. Daliborek begins peppering her with questions about the veracity of her story, denying that it would be possible for that many people to be killed, and other such ridiculous neo-Nazi talking points. The poor woman is incredibly distressed, but Daliborek continues until the film’s director actually steps out from behind the camera, into frame, and begins arguing with Daliborek. Even in such a theatrical documentary, it’s still jarring to see a filmmaker literally walk into frame and shatter the illusion of objectivity.

In press materials for the film all the director says about his actions is “I had to, it was unbearable” — referring to the act of standing by and watching while the subject of his documentary, someone who was only at Auschwitz because he brought him there, began to accost a Holocaust survivor. But I wonder why that was the moment he chose to finally step in and put a stop to Daliborek’s antics, and not when he was recording racist videos to upload to YouTube, or laughing with his family about killing “gypsies”. When the director brought Daliborek to Auschwitz, what did he expect would happen? Did a part of him hope that Daliborek would act in this way so the documentary would be more compelling? Because that’s certainly what happened — the documentary is fascinating and the ending in particular had me staring at my TV in disbelief.

A Woman Captured

The origin of this film is somewhat difficult to ascertain. The opening titles state that the director was travelling through Hungary when she was introduced to a woman, Marish, who worked as a “domestic slave” — she lives with a middle-class family and cooks, cleans and does other work around the house for them, without payment and withstanding constant abuse, and without the ability to look for other work or an improved living situation. The filmmaker, shocked at the discovery that domestic slaves even exist in modern Hungary, asked to film her and was allowed to spend months observing. (The fact that the “host” family even allowed their slave to be filmed shows how little they cared about the legality of keeping a slave.)

From the very beginning, it feels like the filmmaker is attempting to convince Marish that her situation is not normal and she should try to escape. She asks Marish leading questions about the morality of keeping a slave, asks her about her life before moving in with her host family, and even helps her make arrangements for her eventual life outside (such as driving her to a job interview, and of course filming it). There’s never any suggestion that the filmmaker is anything but an interested party — the film is really just her documenting her efforts to save Marish, it doesn’t pretend to be objective in any way and the filmmaker’s voice is very much present in the film. It’s a fascinating choice, and it works really well — the film is one of the most cathartically emotional and powerful I’ve seen in many years.

Would either A Woman Captured or The White World According to Daliborek have worked without such obvious intervention from their directors? Possibly, but I don’t think they would have been anywhere near as successful at achieving their aims.