After watching Laura and Rohan fan-girl over the latest most raved about the Netflix short documentary series Wild, Wild Country (2018), I decided to check it out for myself. It still baffles me that what was once a small cult that was birthed in a small town in India suddenly moved hundreds of its followers to a small country-town in Wasco County, Oregon USA. I must admit the 1 hour or so episodes take a lot of out of you and attempting to binge-watching this series is not encouraged – but props to you if do and can handle it well! The documentary follows the rift between the Wasco County locals and the Rajneeshpuram community through the use of interviews from both parties (beautifully composed), archival footage and re-enactments (that were – once again – beautifully shot) of Wasco County.

Other than being quite aesthetically pleasing and comforting, the structure itself blurs the line between good and evil. What we assume would be presented as the “evil” is the Rajneeshpuram followers, however it somehow presented them as victims or “broken souls” and found their way of being happy. Probably except for Sheela who was clearly consumed by her own ambition and power beyond the religious group but also subtly presented as a victim of Osho’s manipulation.

The locals seemed to be the victims of this idea of the American dream and the large group that had the absolute potential to strip that away from them. At first, they accepted the Rajneeshpuram community into their own, but only realised that their jobs and homes were ultimately going to be abolished if they didn’t resist Sheela’s “cunning ways”.

I’m still in the middle of the 3rd episode but it just feels so surreal that this all unfolded about 30 years ago, the interviewees always have something interesting to share and appear at the most appropriate of times and the found footage just seem so confronting and overwhelming at times that I just sit there and wonder how far I can go with watching this entire series. It’s like I’m between this fine line of curiosity and nope, that’s enough Netflix for the day. At this stage I’m on the curiosity side, but will take about an episode a day or maybe a week to be safe.  

Speaking of incorporating yourself into your own documentary, Werner Herzog is one of the view that know how to do so successfully. In Grizzly Man (2005) he doesn’t act condescending or try to conceal any kind of truth, but instead curbs our curiosity through his and humanises Timothy Treadwell and the ones who are close to him.

This particular scene in the film presents 2 different tones within the film; factual and emotional. The coroner staring at the barrel of the camera made the scene quite scripted while detailing Timothy and Amie’s death and the jump cuts enhances the impact of the death through his description.

Timothy’s close friend Jewel Palovak appears after the coroner and suddenly the pace and tone changes. As Herzog listens to the audio of Timothy and Amie, the camera lingers onto Jewel’s traumatised face as Herzog appears to be overwhelmed and extremely uncomfortable while listening to them. We as the viewer are emotionally driven and realise that the tragedy of it all is that Timothy was murdered by the ones who he tried to save and love the most.    

Read more about Grizzly Man on my previous blog post.

I’ve never conducted a Skype interview before and knowing of all the technical problems that arise with an interview in person – let alone a Skype interview makes me a little bit nervous.

We’ve scheduled a Skype interview with Claire in the next couple of days and all we can do is prepare all the tech that we need: fully charged DSLR with another fully charged battery and 2 SIM cards with enough space on them, a H4n microphone in case we need the necessary sound grabs, a working computer and an air-tight room. Thankfully, Rohan suggested the edit suites so we were able to book ahead and be comfortable and familiar with the room itself. Below is a list of questions we plan to ask Mary, Carli and Claire:

MARY (Psychologist)

Broad

• What does a cult look like? (You mentioned 4 different types: political, commercial, religious, therapeutic (guru)). Are there any patterns that occur within these different cult groups?

• What was life like before Paddy entered?
• How did you realise that something was wrong
• What was your children’s relationship with Paddy like
• How did you make the decision to cut all ties with the cult
• Is there anything you would have done differently?

Now

• What are some of the tactics commonly used by cult leaders
• What are you doing now? (helping people get out of cults)
• Is there any advice you’d give to parents going through the same thing today?

CARLI
Broad / set up

• For someone who knows nothing about the group, would you be able to describe it to me?
• How did you first get involved in the group?
• What did the group teach?
• What did the group believe in?

During

• What activities did they make you participate in? (get her to describe)
• Did you have to wear anything in particular?
• If you feel comfortable discussing, what were some of the scare tactics they used against members?
• Can you describe to me the ‘survivors course’ for the 21st century?
• I read that Natasha claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Can you tell me about when she announced this?
• What was your relationship with Natasha like?

After

• At what point did you decide to leave the group?

CLAIRE
Intro

• (To start off) What is your name and what do you do?
• How would you define what a cult is?

First Cult

• What was your upbringing like? Were you exposed to the outside world? (School, pop culture etc.)
• What were some of their practices and teachings?
• When did you first realize you were living in a cult?
• How were your parents and family affected by their cult experience?

Second Cult

• What made you move to Melbourne when you were 18?
• Where did you meet your ex-husband (31 year old)? Why were you drawn to him?
• What made you decide to move to Nowra and join the Order?
• What were some of the practices and theories at that Doomsday cult? Was it any different from the first cult you were part of?
• What were the living arrangements like?

After

• What was the first day out of the cult like?
• What skills did you not have? And what did you have to learn?
• How did your children get affected by it?
• Does your kids still keep in contact with their father?

Broad

• It was mentioned in your BBC interview with Natacha Tormey that more than 70% of women make a majority of cult followers. Why do you think women are more of a target rather than men?
• What’s your take on religion now?
• Does sharing about your experience only bring back the pain you suffered or helped you heal?
• Is there anything you regret or wish you did differently?
• Any final words for us?

In reference to Rohan’s presentation in class, keep the questions broad yet succinct, and stay silent until they finish their answer! Fingers crossed everything goes well!!

Born into Brothels (2004) exposes the world to the realities of the sex trade in Calcutta, India. In particular, the children who were born and raised in one of India’s red light district. The film itself was fascinating and difficult at the same time for covering quite a confronting story, however, the filmmakers managed to condense the story to the innocence of the kids.

However, during our class discussion on Friday, many of us had raised more issues than praise for the documentary itself. I remember one time in class we discussed the ethics of adding yourself into structure and narrative of your short doco and how that could potentially change your intention for the film and manipulate your audience to view a particular subject a different way.

In Born into Brothels, director Zana Briski did so in what seemed like a film documenting the lives of the kids, became a story about how she “rescues” them from the oppression and life they’re living through. This is a clear example of the  White Saviour complex where “Western people [go] in to “fix” the problems of struggling nations or people of color without understanding their history, needs, or the region’s current state of affairs.

It’s scary to realise how much people have been heavily influenced by such a rhetoric and people of privilege are either ignorant about this or take full advantage of it. Another example is Kony 2012, where one polished video shared thousands of times on multiple social networks managed to convince hundreds of people to donate and partake in a “movement” to stop warlord Joseph Kony. However, the video itself oversimplified the entirety of the situation that the situation is described as “a humanitarian disaster” where other issues such as “militarization of poorer countries, short-sighted agricultural policies, resource extraction, the propping up of corrupt governments, and the astonishing complexity of long-running violent conflicts over a wide and varied terrain” should be considered. This article by Teju Cole articulates The White Saviour Complex eloquently. 

Surprisingly, Born into Brothels won the 2004 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. the Oscar speech itself reflects just how much the true intention was lost during the filmmaking process.

To be honest, it was difficult for me to finish or let alone watch the ethnographic documentary based on the indigenous Inuit people of Canada’s northern Quebec region, Nanook of the North (1922). Yes, the kids were super cute and the dog as well, but the obvious staging, and silence turned me off from the first 10 minutes.

This week’s reading by Fatimah Tobing Rony uses the metaphor of a taxidermy to describe ethnographic documentary as what is dead is made to looks alive. Indeed, director Robert J. Flaherty manufactured this world as if the indigenous Inuit people and culture were becoming extinct and as if positions us – the privileged audience – to sympathise to these characters.

Flaherty defends his film in saying that “one often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit”, so what extent can a documentary film be considered truth if the truth itself is distorted or misrepresented? In fact, Cunayou and Nyla aren’t actually Nanook/Allakariallak’s wives but were Flaherty’s romantic and sexual partners in real life, and Nanook actually uses a gun to hunt but was directed by Flaherty to use a spear instead.

Sure, it’s considered a film beyond its time, but the Inuit culture and people are misrepresented and are used for those who are are being used by people such as Flaherty to gain a huge profit and disregard the truth. They are humans too who live their own lives accordingly and shouldn’t be treated as if they were animals at a zoo – or in this case some taxidermy.    

References

Tobing Rony, F. 1996, “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North”, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, pp. 99–126.

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e4/e6/bf/e4e6bf7dc6046ed7887f7a35ae7a623c.png

YAY! We’ve finally locked in a story for our short doco!

After a few days of calling around and multiple Google searches, we decided that the raw and the aftermath of a cult experience would be story that hasn’t been told justice in the mainstream media, especially in Australia.

A psychologist based in Queensland agreed to share her story and the reason why she dedicates her career to help people get out of cults. We’ve also contacted 2 women who have been in cults themselves and have spoken out about their experiences in the media before. We realised that the 2 women live interstate as well, and the chances of interviewing them face-to-face is quite slim. The biggest dilemma we face is quality and how we will fit all their interviews in a concise structure and at a time frame that will do justice to the stories they’ve shared.

How are we going to create a high aesthetic quality when we are aware that a Skype interview alreadys strips that quality away? It’s a means of using as much of our resources as possible, such as doing a screen capture, audio recording and even potentially filming the screen capture through a DSLR. At this stage it’s a matter of trusting our interviewee’s in being comfortable to open up to us, and being certain that it’s these measures we have to take in order to share and raise awareness about an issue that many Australians aren’t aware are happening around them.

It was understood within our group that we wanted to create a short documentary on a story that creates social awareness and a story that hasn’t been saturated by the media over the past few years. A few of us were oozing with ideas and we managed to narrow it down to a few realistic potentials: a male escort service owned by two women, a psychologist who specialises in getting people out of cults, and an LGBTI elders dance club that occurs every month in the Fitzroy club.

Unfortunately, the two women who owned the male escort service were in the middle of selling their business and the psychologist is currently living interstate. We therefore decided to focus our short doco on the LGBTI dance club as it’s based in Melbourne and our subjects agreed to an interview within the next few weeks.

Everything went smoothly with the proposal and we were confident in wanting to pursue what we assumed didn’t have much media coverage yet. Rohan commended us for our detailed pitch, however, he dropped the bombshell that this story is about to become a feature film. It didn’t necessarily mean that we weren’t allowed to document this story, but it did limit us to only showcase it on an academic level rather than what we aim to be a story on a film festival calibre.

Rohan encouraged us to pursue any other people who are part of the All the Queen’s Men organisation and tell their story in association with the monthly dance club and the coming out ball. We do have a few leads to those who are active in the organisation and hopefully they can accommodate with our schedule.

Courtesy of: http://67.media.tumblr.com/d60c2982e276e027240625d2d7fd960d/tumblr_o365hoHwGb1qe4ru4o1_540.gif

Rohan warned us beforehand that this film was going to be some Australian Story-esque style. So we already had these assumptions in our minds about Maree Delofski’s 2002 documentary based on the origin story of Hollywood star, Merle Oberon.

Other than the extended long footage of Delofski’s cute, red beetle along the picturesque Tasmanian landscape, we as the audience plummet into Delofski’s curiosity of whether Merle was really the daughter of Lottie Chintock; a Chinese-Tasmanian native or someone who was of Anglo-Indian ethnicity and had no connection to Tasmania whatsoever.

Throughout the first part of these 55 minutes of our lives, we encounter quite a handful of characters from Tasmania who have the utmost confidence to know Merle’s story and “claim” her as an honorary Tasmanian: A former journalist and current dog judge who says she’s judged enough dogs in her time to know how to spot a certain ethnicity from afar, and a lady with funky, frosted blue eye shadow who claims to be a Merle Oberon expert but refuses to disclose the whereabouts of her birth certificate to prove she is Lottie Chintock’s child – just to name a few.

The second part explored Merle’s origin’s in India through interviewing Merle’s supposed childhood friends and neighbours who used to call her Queenie. Delofski then found herself in Canada to interview Harry Selby, someone who is adamant that he’s Merle’s nephew.

The last part of the film concentrates on Merle’s visit to Tasmania before she passed away and the uncomfortable and unconventional encounters she had with the locals. A Tasmanian local in her mid-40s to 50s reappears on screen to express how Merle’s story that won’t be appreciated by the current generation but is important for her generation and the past few.

The structure of film is quite clear and straightforward, but also seems to be artificially polished against Delofski’s narration. Additionally, the racist comments from the Tasmanian locals and Merle’s supposed childhood friend was unnecessary and should’ve at least been addressed through Delofski’s narration or shouldn’t been added at all. I get how Delofski tried to depict how people often are the product of their environment and time, but it also creates this negative representation of the locals in Tasmania.

More importantly, how much could we trust the credibility of all these characters? Especially the appearance of biographer Charles Higgins who was guilty of fabricating various biographies. Where are the interviews of Merle’s ex-husbands, her children or even fellow actors who knew her personally?  Delofski may not have realised these factors at the time in depicting Merle’s story back in 2002, but I guess that’s where her curiosity guided her in concentrating on just finding the truth. Judging from the class discussion we had, we’ve come a long way in society with addressing issues such as institutionalised race and statutory rape from just about 15 years ago.