-
8. Panorama: Other Approaches to Personal Documentary
- University of California Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
260 While interest among American (and Cambridge) filmmakers in producing ethnographic film, at least in the modes pioneered by the Marshalls, Gardner, and Asch, diminished by the 1980s, or at least was redirected into a broad-ranging critique of the myth of detached, objective observation both among those who were interested in ethnographic cinema and within the discipline of anthropology in general, the successes of personal documentary, both aesthetic and commercial (Pincus’s Diaries had a theatrical run, and McElwee’s Sherman’s March was something of a hit), emboldened a good many aspiring documentary filmmakers to try their hand at exploring the autobiographical mode. If classic ethnographic (or proto-ethnographic) filmmakers from Flaherty through Asch had often failed to take adequate account of how their depictions of Other cultures were filtered through their own cultural conditioning, personal documentary offered a route into the study of culture that allowed this very conditioning to be explored. Pincus had been inspired by the slogan, “The personal is the political”; personal documentary was demonstrating that the personal was the cultural. Pincus, through his teaching at MIT and Harvard (he taught at Harvard from 1980 to 1983); and McElwee, Moss, Guzzetti, and Steven Ascher, through their teaching at Harvard, nurtured a good many prospective filmmakers, including some who soon followed in their personal documentary footsteps. While interest in autobiographical filmmaking has spread far and wide, Cambridge has continued to be a nexus for an exploration of both the formal and practical possibilities of documenting the personal. Some filmmakers—Ascher (and his partner Jeanne Jordan), Michel Negroponte, Nina Davenport, and Alexander Olch, for example— have produced engaging, inventive feature autobiographical work for broadcast on 8 Panorama Other Approaches to Personal Documentary Panorama 261 public television; others—John Gianvito, Jeff Daniel Silva, and Amie Siegel—have assumed a smaller, more experimentally inclined audience for films that are more demanding formally. Even Ricky Leacock, teaming up with Valerie Lalonde, found his way into openly personal documentary; and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Ed Pincus returned to filmmaking after twenty-five years, teaming up with Lucia Small to explore the ways in which a national tragedy affected the personal lives of those who experienced it and of the filmmakers themselves. This chapter is a survey of some of the contributions of documentary filmmakers working in the personal mode, arranged more or less chronologically and highlighting several distinct thematic and formal tendencies evident in the films. The particular nature of each of these filmmakers’ connections with Cambridge differs considerably: some live and work in Cambridge; others who work elsewhere have maintained and continue to make considerable use of their connections to the Cambridge filmmaking scene. The films discussed must be understood to stand in for a good many other worthy contributions to personal documentary produced and/or instigated in Cambridge but not discussed in what is already an extensive study. STEVEN ASCHER AND JEANNE JORDAN: FAMILIES IN TRANSITION A summa cum laude Harvard graduate, Steven Ascher was hired by Ed Pincus in 1975 to help with the editing of Diaries (1971–1978). During the time when Diaries was being edited, the two men collaborated on Life and Other Anxieties (see chapter 4) and subsequently on The Filmmakers Handbook (New York: Penguin, 1984), the canonical guide to making films that Ascher has revised several times.1 From 1978 through 1982, Ascher taught filmmaking at MIT and more recently has taught at Harvard. He has worked on a wide range of projects, mostly for public television , nonprofit organizations, and government agencies. Jeanne Jordan, a midwestern native, arrived in Boston in 1978 and forged a connection with WGBH, where she worked as an editor on a wide variety of projects, including two episodes of the first series of Eyes on the Prize (episode 3: Ain’t Scared of Your Jails [1960–1961]) and episode 5: Mississippi: Is This America? [1962–1964]—both 1986). Ascher and Jordan married in 1989 and have worked together to produce, write, and direct three feature documentaries about American families under stress: Troublesome Creek (1995), which was nominated for an Academy Award; So Much So Fast (2007) and Raising Renee (2011). Ascher has done the cinematography for these films, and Jordan the editing. In Troublesome Creek the focus is Jeanne Jordan’s parents during the months after they were faced with the prospect of losing their Iowa farm near the town of Wiota, which had been in the family for 125 years: Norwest, the corporation that [35...