Ahead of History - The Documentary Filmmaker in the Age of Extremes

NSW PREMIER’S HISTORY AWARDS ADDRESS 2000

In his book Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 Eric Hobsbawm refers to the difficulty of writing history on the twentieth century because it is not 'a period known only from outside'. 'If the historian can make sense of this century', he says, 'it is in large part because of watching and listening.'

Reading Hobsbawm's words made me think that the work of a documentary filmmaker is not dissimilar to a contemporary historian. Yet observing and listening is only the raw material of making documentary films. The other part is struch1ring a story, a narrative, with a point of view.