3 posts tagged “documentaries”
For the longest time, I swore I would study film production in college. Even as a took college level courses in high school, spearheaded a new major in film at Interlochen, and spent time at intensive programs, I was ardent that I would major in film.
Now here I am at college. A year and a half into it no less, studying dramatic writing at the hands down best university to do so, with a much more publicized film major. I regularly ride the elevator with Spike Lee, for fucks sake. And yet, I officially made the decision today to never pursuit that major here, despite the opportunity, the offering, the everything.
I've decided it's a very stupid thing to major in. Yes, studying film at NYU, USC, or UT might give you hands on experience, but as the more I think about it, the more I reflect on my past, they're pulling the wool over your eyes. They're making you pay (hundreds of thousands of dollars, no less) for hands on experience that should, and can be free. And there are several instances where all that money is wasted, because so many NYU grads end up working their way up the ladder from the very beginning, just like all those kids who didn't go to film school.
It makes sense to do it in high school if you have the opportunities and aren't really paying for it. Or if you're at a private institution like I was, and are already getting a quality education on something else. But to specifically pay someone to give you that training in college is bullshit. By then, you're already old enough to be working low ranking industry jobs, getting paid (albeit shitty) for pretty much the same thing. In fact, working on a real set is a much better education than what you get here. The only advantage here is the networking you can do. But really, that's something that is useful but not necessary.
I don't even want to go into big budget filmmaking, with huge crews. I'm not going to need that network, though I do already have quite a large one from my own department. And I don't need NYU film students wasting my time on all that. I, frankly, have better things to do.
I think I'll be much more successful in life if I take a more academic route to my artistic values. I want to make documentaries. I don't need another BFA to do that. Holding two BFAs is even more worthless than holding one, because that second one was a waste of your time. It makes much more sense and is a much smarter move to study Anthropology.
Why? Because while all those future-documentarians spent their time in film classes, I was learning the language of the subject medium. And I can still work my way around a camera. If Person A can operate a camera, and Person B can do it just as well, as well as understand what is going on and why......who's going to win?
I am.
At 11:00 last night, I decided it would be a good idea to watch Promises. It pretty much broke my heart, and due to the war in Lebanon now, it makes it retrospectively even worse.
Especially since two of the children, Daniel and Yarko, are probably killing Lebanese children right now and being totally okay with it. After all, they are defending their country from terrorism, and 3-year-old children are terrorists.
There was a boy in my Craft class my freshman year who was a hardcore Zionist. He was of the oppinion everyone who was no Jewish was conspiring to kill all the Jews. He honestly believed the holocaust was still happening and that every country in the world except Israel was helping perpetuate. America's Holocaust? Hollywood. You heard me. He thought Hollywood was conspiring against and killing Jews.
All year I sat next to this boy and watched as he wrote more and more propganda instilling hate and fear. Everytime he wrote about Jews kept in Palestinian prisons (prisons which, I might add, do not exsist), I sat by. I was shocked at his complete disregard for fact and reason. I made my oppinions to him clear on several occasions though, and every time I brought facts to the table, he would respond with dogma and call me a racist. He started telling people I wanted to kill all the Jews, including my best friend.
This was the same boy who wore a Lacoste kipah everyday and personnally attacked a very excellent professor and when the professor halted the performance, he defended it with "well it gets better."
I think now is the time for the obligatory stated of "I am not a racist, I do not hate Jews, many of my very close friends are Jewish." I hate having to say that, but if you dont, and even if you do, any criticism of the political structure of Israel or radical Jews gets you labelled a racist and dismissed.
How can we go on every day and tout "not all Muslims are fanatical radicals" without saying "all religions have fanatic, fundamentalist, radicals, but this is not usually the majority"? Christianity has fanatics, so does Islam, and Judaism, and even Buddhism. Though I think the safest fanatacism comes from the Buddhists.
There's a problem in the Middle East. There's a big problem. And Promises looked at that problem through the eyes of children. It was made by an Israeli, it was clear from the editing that nothing regarding the topic was edited in or out. Conversations with the children were uncut. Do you know where the intolerance came from?
Israelis. The Palestinian children were more willing to talk to the Israelis and more willing to say "all we want is freedom. I could live with you, but right now I cannot because you have the checkpoints that keep us segregated." Only 2 of the 4 Israelis were even willing to talk to the Palestinians. Only 1 of the Palestinions was hesitant, but he still participated and through his participation, he found answers and discovered he could cooperate.
Israel has gone too far. Too far with Palestine, too far with Lebanon. It's time for the United States to accept Israel for what it is: a racist and terrorist state.
So the day Miss Lexi came home, my first batch of Netflix DVDs arrived in the post. I feel so far behind the times since I'm only just subscribing. In my field, that's inexcusable. I can play off the whole poor college student thing, but that's still pretty lame.
I was very happy to find that Born Into Brothels was among the three. I've been frantically searching for this documentary since it was released in 2004. As a documentarist, I'm always on the look out for new and supurb documentaries, just the bad thing is they are sometimes hard to track down. But Netflix seems to have a whole slew of hard to find docs and to me, that makes it worth it.
My mother (oh how she's always meddling with my life!) was not so happy when she found out I was spending my money on something else 'I don't need' but she doesn't fully understand the whole film/dramatic writing thing. She does, but I can tell she and my father wish I were studying something more 'worthwhile' in college. Something more than just art.
But as T.S. Elliot argues in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," I cannot be a true artist without knowing my tradition. Watching movies is a necessity in my growth as whatever it is I am. It's important.
Anyway, she ended up watching Born Into Brothels with me and changed her mind. She really liked it; as did I. It broke my heart, but at the same time left be with a sense of hope. It was definately worth two years of searching to find.
