Documenting the Reel

Tom Zubrycki argues that ,while reconstruction is not exactly de rigueur, it is still a very valid form of documentary.

 The British writer and academic Stella Bruzzi says that "documentaries are a negotiation between filmmaker and reality and, at heart, a performance."

 The notion of performance is not something I would have associated with documentary before The Secret Safari, but thinking about it, it makes perfect sense. Documentary, for me, has always involved something of a tension between spontaneity and a high level of construction. There is something artificial about the idea of performance, and what is more artificial than (1) a re-construction, and (2) an interview situation? Both happen to lie at the core of the structure of my latest film.