In today’s seminar, we grappled with the notion of documentary as an instrument of political or poetic expression.

We were introduced to the idea of agency in documentary theory, and the ethical justification for and importance of involving subjects with/in the film as a strategy encourage documentary film makers to recognise their political stance and engage with it, rather than facetiously ‘capturing’ images from a disembodied stance.

In relation to this, Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing was mentioned as an interesting case study on the employing of subjects within the making of the film. To briefly summarise, Oppenheimer invites authoritative figures to re-enact their actions during the Communist massacres in Indonesia. However, it is not merely a film garishly recreating the horrific for the sake of sensationalism. Instead, it’s a moral exercise which though acknowledging its political leanings through its primary existence (to draw awareness to the massacres), allows audiences the autonomy to emotionally respond to a historical event through sustained and deliberate manipulation and deracination. This is perhaps most notably achieved through the involvement of the authorities. As they retell and motion to gouging eyes, grinning between generous offerings of gory descriptors, we are arguably led to a visceral response of distrust and disgust. The result is a sort of moral grappling: regardless of ones’ political affinities, the glorification and evocation of violence embodied, is disturbing.

Further discussing the implications of involving subjects was the question ‘why’. Through discussion, I posited the importance of recognising Oppenheimer’s explicit political agenda and as such, not only the uniqueness of his approach, but its formal necessity. While on many fronts it can be considered formally experimental, on others, its structural approach to having the perpertrators adapt their own lives (with embellishment and panache captured through the process) can be viewed as a directorially savvy technique utilised by Oppenheimer to avoid immediate backlash or red tape, and further yet, a strategy to remove himself from the burden of political impartiality or worse yet- heavy handed manipulation of ‘the facts’.