Constructed Reality: The Ethics of Subjective Truth in Filmmaking

“There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”
—Werner Herzog, “Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema“

Film is constantly trying to hide its own construction. From narrative features to documentary and cinéma vérité we see the equipment, the multiple takes, the director, all erased. The supposed objectivity of film and photography only compounds this idea. Yet, every piece of film is constructed—the imperfect human playing a starring role in what it shows. In the age of fake news and alternative facts, we grasp for the idea of an objective, unbiased media. Media outlets oblige us with the aesthetic of being unbiased, unconstructed, of continuing to hide its creator. But what happens when we allow subjectivity, realize it as a part of the whole truth containing more than mere facts? And what happens when we remove the pretense and show the audience the creator’s hand at work?

The current Walker Art Center exhibition, Platforms: Collection and Commissions, features an array of different stylized interpretations of “reality” in cinema. The films range in composition from observational footage to staged scenes. Each features footage that could be seen as traditionally objective, but each film also sheds this supposed objectivity by intentionally showing the audience its inherently constructed nature. In the case of the film Vever, it is as simple as voiceover describing the process and limitations of shooting the film over the footage itself.

Deborah Stratman’s Vever, 2018. Photo courtesy the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

Vever, by Deborah Stratman, features footage shot by the late Barbara Hammer. In 1975, Hammer returned from an impromptu trip to Guatemala with a suitcase full of silent 16mm film reels. When she returned home she couldn’t “find a story” within the footage so it sat, unprinted, until now. This story parallels that of the legendary Maya Deren and her similar experience in Haiti. As Deren states in her book Divine Horseman: Living Gods of Haiti, “Today, in September 1951, as I write these last few pages of the book, the filmed footage lies in virtually its original condition in a fireproof box in the closet; […] and the elaborate design for the montaged film is somewhere in my files […] a new plan is necessary…” I cannot help but feel a loss that these films were locked away from the eyes of the world. Perhaps this sentiment was shared by Deren’s own husband, who, against late wife’s express wishes, published his own edit of the film.

Stratman cites Deren as a “mentor” in this film project—not only using the wisdom from Divine Horsemen but incorporating Deren’s words and drawings of Haitian vevers (symbolic designs used in Voudoun to invoke a loa or god) into the film itself. Vever tells the story of its creation and inspirations: we hear Hammer’s whole story over the footage, the beautiful imagery literally interrupted by a phone call so Hammer can reveal how she created it. The posthumous publication of Deren’s works felt disingenuous but Vever does not—because it intentionally reframes the “truth” it is telling. Vever is able to create an honest narrative out of its postcolonial gaze by turning the focus to the creators themselves in their processes of creation.The frame points not to the Guatemalan people but to Deren and Hammer and even Stratman herself. The voiceover by Hammer interrupts our blissful viewing of beautiful imagery to remind us that she drove there simply because she was sick of dating at the time, and that there was no political message we should take from this footage.

As the curator of this program, Ruth Hodgins, wrote, “Deren goes further and critiques the gaze of the colonizer’s lens: ‘I have come to believe that if history were recorded by the vanquished, rather than by the victors, it would illuminate the real, rather than the theoretical, means of power.’ Fundamentally both looked toward themselves as artists and recognized the risk of ethnocentricity as American filmmakers.”

While Vever changes its course to tell a personal tale, there are still truths of community, shared emotions and experience not singular to the person telling the story. These truths also have a place in constructed media. music from the edge of the allegheny plateau by Kevin Jerome Everson is the second commissioned work in this Platforms installation. It draws on the William Klein documentary The Little Richard Story, which firmly sits within the genre of experimental documentary. In classic Klein fashion, every shot is stylized, beautifully capturing the lush culture surrounding the rock ‘n’ roll icon. Everson’s film draws heavily from The Little Richard Story, even going so far as to recreate some of the shots. music from the edge of the allegheny plateau has three main components: a music duet performed in a domestic living room, a rapper performing in the back of a pickup truck, and a young woman looking into the barren distance.

Kevin Jerome Everson’s music from the edge of the allegheny plateau, 2018. Photo courtesy the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

The Little Richard Story shows the other idea of subjectivity in film—not the subjectivity of the individual filmmaker, but instead a shared, subjective, visceral aura that surrounded the music icon Little Richard. Klein uses emotionally charged footage to show the wake of Little Richard’s influence and the mythos he left behind, communicating a truth that a film without intentional affect could not.

William Klein’s The Little Richard Story, 1980. Photo courtesy the Ruben Bentson Moving Image Collection

Both films document black music culture and both give us an emphasis on setting. This is not a coincidence. The Little Richard Story addresses the importance of place and community in black music. As the camera rolls through Little Richard’s hometown of Macon, we hear him musing on how each town in the south was unique and stating that Macon had made him into the musician he now was. In music from the edge of the allegheny plateau, we see different generations of black music being contrasted by the difference in where the music takes place. The living room and the back of the car directly mirror scenes from The Little Richard Story. Even though the living room scenes take place in a domestic setting, both films emphasize community. In the car scenes we see the neighborhoods rolling by, in both films we see the younger generation building on the communal music of the past and displaying it for the world to see.

Both intentionally ignore the notion of unbiased, detached media to create truth, instead relishing in the ability to insert their own stylistic representation to impart a subjective reality to their audience. In the words of Audre Gide, “I modify facts in a way that resembles more truth than reality.”

Both films contain the formal look of traditional “objectivity” (Klein in his documentary style and Everson with his home-movie feel) but actively counteract it by discussing and showing their construction within the films themselves. Often The Little Richard Story would directly reference that it was a documentary. In one such scene, a radio DJ literally announces that a documentary is being made to the townspeople of Macon. In music from the edge of the allegheny plateau, Everson shows the men setting up and getting ready to perform for the camera, as well as revealing the construction of the rolling shot by showing the rapper riding around in the back of the pickup that drove him. 

Kevin Jerome Everson’s music from the edge of the allegheny plateau, 2018. Photo courtesy the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

The Little Richard Story and music from the edge of the allegheny plateau turn their lenses toward a cultural zeitgeist for their “truth.” While Vever takes footage that could’ve been problematic postcolonial documentation and turns it into an internally subjective narrative, The Little Richard Story and music from the edge take footage that concerns a group of people to which the filmmakers have varying connections, intentionally communicate the efforts that manufactured their products, and relinquish any right to the label “detached” or “objective,” thus succeeding in communicating a reality of a community. How can an honest retelling claim to be dispassionate when the truth it is sharing is not? 

By including the author’s framing into a subjective retelling, we as the audience are able to see the author’s intention. We are able to have discourse around its construction. To show the audience the construction of the piece makes it harder to hide behind spectacle. This ethical construction begins with humbly exposing your own hand in the work and the limitations of the medium itself.

Deborah Stratman’s Vever, 2018. Photo courtesy the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection