Category Archives: Creative Reality Festival

The space for Duke students final collaborative project: designing a documentary theater and film festival.

War In Documentary Theatre and Film

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The Art of Storytelling: A Look Into the World of Documentaries (Dax and Brittany)

Documentaries serve as creative nonfictional accounts that focus on a specific topic or group of people. The value of documentary centers around education because documentary films and plays channel in on various issues that do not normally receive much attention. Creativity plays a large role in the overall construction of documentary works because truths become somewhat organized and presented in a variety of ways. Documentaries serve as alternate forms of learning that give audience members the opportunity to interpret reality from a different perspective. Creative Reality itself seems like an oxymoron because reality is usually viewed as concrete, but it crosses boundaries and actually presents audience members with a form of the truth. Filmmakers and playwrights have indefinite amounts of freedom when they create documentaries because they have the ability to make choices about their methods of organization and presentation. Film festivals, including the  Full Frame Creative Reality Film Festival, aim to display these unique methods through providing a variety of films and plays that reflect the art of documentary. Editing, special effects, and overall content play major roles in the aesthetic appeal of documentary films, but the idea of storytelling, in particular, shapes the direction of the films and plays. We have compiled eight documentary plays and films that feature storytelling at its best, but also center on the theme of military and social injustices. Our chosen documentary films and plays bring to light a handful of these discrepancies while creatively describing the hidden aspects of social injustice.

The sub-theme of storytelling reveals its importance in the eight films and plays within this festival. Our works run along a time line of various methods of storytelling and allow audiences to receive the presented material in different ways while also critiquing the United States’ justice system. Mike Wiley‘s the one-man play of Dar He: The Lynching of Emmett Till takes place in 1955 in Mississippi. It serves as a living document that depicts the events leading up to and after the murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till. Though it does not follow a chronological pattern, the structure of the play resembles that of an interview because Wiley takes on the role of each character and speaks as though he is answering a variety of questions. As Martin suggests, the play could potentially be deemed as “getting at the truth” and telling another set of lies”, but it primarily reveals hidden injustices through interpretive storytelling.

PBS documentarian Keith Beauchamp eloquently reveals unknown facts and immense details surrounding the murder of Emmett Till in his film The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. As both the producer and director, Beauchamp aims to bring to the light the injustice of the trial as well as include first hand accounts of the events that actually happened. The film focuses on recounting the story of Emmett Till through a variety of interviews with expert historians and people who actually witnessed the event. Beauchamp’s choice to interview those directly involved increases the overall credibility of the film because the viewer hears the story from those who were affected; the film functions as a somewhat conversational dialogue between the interviewees and the viewers.

The Tillman Story uses the art of storytelling to bring military injustices to light through the death of football player Pat Tillman that occurred while he was serving in the Middle East. Amir Bar-Lev uses interviews with family members as well as historical clips from United States’ press conferences to articulate the evident governmental cover-up that resulted after Tillman’s death. The film uses storytelling as a tool to convey the flaws within the government and the gray areas that have developed as a result of the war.

No Child…, on the other hand, uses storytelling to show the below par resources in the public school system. Nilaja Sun plays a variety of characters in the one-woman play that tells the story of a high school drama teacher who comes to Malcolm X High School to direct a play. The underprivileged and rowdy students initially resent her attempts and Ms. Sun leaves the school. Fortunately, Jerome, the primary troublemaker convinces her to come back to put on a version of Our Country’s Good. Sun directs much of her script to the audience and also engages in dialogue between characters as she rapidly changes the tone of her voice. The play comes from Sun’s personal experience and her methods of storytelling spark an interest in the “No Child Left Behind Policy”, as she provokes thoughts about unfairness in underprivileged school districts.

The unifying theme of our productions that make them valuable additions to The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is that all four allow the audience to understand the views of those who are normally voiceless.  Both of our films, Voices of Iraq (Review) and Iraq in Fragments (Review), represent one of the few opportunities in which Iraqi citizens can share their stories with others around the world.  The play Aftermath (Review) also allows Iraqis’ stories to be heard.  All of the characters are refugees from Iraq who are finally able to express their frustrations about being forced to live in exile in Jordan.  The Exonerated (Review) is another play that allows prisoners on death row who were eventually cleared of all charges to tell their own unique stories and relate the powerful emotions that they feel.  Because the media and the American public generally spend much more time grappling with the stories of murder victims and not the suspected murderers themselves, The Exonerated offers a rare and valuable perspective from the falsely accused, who become victims of the criminal justice system.

The three works dealing with Iraq are similar in that they all provide a platform for the type of freedom of expression that Iraqis did not have under the dictator Saddam Hussein. The films Voices of Iraq and Iraq in Fragments offer a fascinating glimpse of the real Iraq after the American invasion of 2003.  In Voices of Iraq, the Iraq citizens are not only the characters in the film, but also the directors. Their stories and the images they capture will keep audiences spellbound.  Iraq in Fragments deals with the three different parts of Iraq (South, Central and North). There were some interviews in the film, but it mostly portrays the everyday lives of Iraqis.  In the central region, almost all of the Iraqis are upset with the situation the United State forced on Iraq. One old man outside a café says, “”We don’t care about the oil. Why don’t they just take it and leave us alone?” In the South, the suppressed Shia feel that it is their time to start a revolution, and that simply getting rid of Saddam is not enough. In the North, the Kurdish people are very peaceful farmers who are supportive of the United States, especially given the atrocities Saddam committed against them. Both films focus on average Iraqi citizens who celebrate their newfound freedom while struggling with it at the same time.

In the plays Aftermath and The Exonerated, the characters are able to describe their stories, which most Americans have never heard. Both plays were written by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen and were constructed in order to give voices to the otherwise silent. Even though the plays’ subject matter differs, they are presented almost identically. In Aftermath, the characters are Iraqi refugees that describe the experiences they endured after the invasion in 2003 by the United States. The play The Exonerated is about people who were on death row and were falsely accused. The vast majority of inmates who are on death row are guilty, but shockingly enough there are some who are innocent.   The Exonerated allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions about the morality of the criminal justice system that comes close to executing innocent people.

The four productions are focused on characters who live their lives in the shadows, away from the media spotlight.  They are generally misunderstood and under-appreciated as a result.   We learn from all four works that everyone has a story to tell, and that sometimes the most compelling stories are the ones we hear about the least.  The Full Frame Festival believes that everyone has a right to be heard.

This festival has really reached out to organizations around Durham that relate to the productions. One of the productions, Aftermath, connects Iraqi refugees who have lost everything.

As a whole, the Dar He functions as a historical documentary that aims to tell the unheard facts of the story of Emmett Till’s murder. The one-man play

chronicles the horrific event of Emmett Till’s Lynching. As the curtain rises and Wiley steps onto stage, “Amazing Grace” plays; in essence, the opening creates a mood for the play with the red and yellow lighting as well as the various images circa 1950s that appear intermittently on the screen. A feeling of an almost drawn out hope circulates on stage as Wiley steps out of the shadows and begins to speak the supposed words of William Bradford Huie.  The play loosely recounts the dialogue between the various characters, leading up to the actual event and then it reveals the aftermath of Emmett Till’s murder. Because the play operates as a result of dialogue, not always between characters, the plot and details about the murder drive the play.  The moments vary in intensity and offer snapshots of the actual events and interviews with characters such as Mamie and Mose. Wiley tells the story as he imagined it happened. Granted, he provides his audience with factual information through the monologues and dialogues, but his play technically changes every time he performs it; he can change certain hand gestures or facial expressions to add another layer of creative reality to his play. Wiley’s overall structuring of the play allows the audience to become a part of the story through his personalized and ever-changing presentation of the historical drama.

Running Time:

90 minutes

Director:

Anthony Thaxton

Producers:

Mike Wiley, Shane Stanford, and Anthony Thaxton

Release Date:

2006

Country:

USA

Beauchamp’s production opens with Mamie; she describes Emmett as an enfant and how their relationship changed as he continued to grow older and more mature. Emmett’s cousins describe him as mischievous, yet intelligent. According to their interviews, “nothing fazed Emmett one bit”, and he was the happiest kid you’d know. Beauchamp’s documentary goes into greater detail about Emmett’s childhood and progresses to the Jim Crow Era. Unlike Dar He, the film provides an overview of what life was like in the south through the eyes of blacks. Reverend Al Sharptan explains that blacks were “forced to live in Satan communities”. Various interviews with Emmett’s cousins and friends contend that blacks in the south lived a life of seclusion and were treated as less than human. After providing background information about Jim Crow Laws and Till’s childhood, Beauchamp begins to reveal the untold facts surrounding Emmett Till’s murder. He interviews Mamie as well as a number of other persons who were close to Emmett. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till uses the traditional documentary form of organization, consisting of interviews followed by images or historical footage. Beauchamp could only push the envelope so far in his film because it served as an educational tool for PBS. The film succinctly tells Emmett’s Story, but also provides unheard facts though the personalized interviews.

Running Time:

105 minutes

Director:

Keith Beauchamp

Producer:

Keith Beauchamp

Release Date:

2010

Country:

USA

The producers of Voices of Iraq, Martin Kunert, Eric Manes, and Archie Drury, felt that because the U.S. invasion of Iraq was such an important issue in the 2004 Presidential election, the American public deserved to know how everyday Iraqis felt about the occupation.  The producers believed the American media was unable or unwilling to show the true situation in Iraq.  In order to deliver the Iraqi point of view, the three men hand-delivered 150 digital video cameras in 2004 to different areas of Iraq and encouraged citizens to document day-to-day life in a way they never would have been able to under Saddam Hussein’s repression.  The result is a film full of powerful images that are uplifting and heart-breaking at the same time.  It is a documentary in the most real form because all the American producers do is edit the 400 hours of film the Iraqis shot.  They do choose to include some graphic images of the chemical bombing of the Kurds that took place during Saddam’s reign, but otherwise the producers are removed from the making of it.  They don’t ask the questions or choose who is interviewed.  The filmmakers attempt to stay true to their goal of allowing the Iraqis to tell their own stories and express their own hopes and frustrations.  Kunert, Manes, and Drury do not reveal their own opinions regarding the invasion, but the fact that they rushed the release of the documentary so that it came out before the 2004 presidential election proves that they wanted it to affect how Americans perceived the war…and how they voted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtIr3r1g0bU

Running time:

80 minutes

Director:

Martin Kunert and the people of Iraq

Producers:

Martine Kunert, Eric Manes, and Archie Drury

Release Date:

October, 2004

Country:

USA

The writers of Aftermath, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, went to Jordan to interview Iraqi refugees about the struggles that they faced after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. This is truly one of the first times that American public was able to hear about the invasion from the Iraqi perspective. These interviews took place about 5 years after the 2003 invasion by the United States. Their stories are about the effects that the invasion brought upon the characters who represent everyday Iraqis. Even though all the characters knew how corrupt Saddam was as a dictator, they all wished that the 2003 invasion by the United States had never happened. All of the characters either lost their jobs, their homes, or members of their families. Even though the invasion may have given the Iraqis more freedom, it also resulted in much less security.  Everyone felt threatened enough to leave Iraq, and one character, Basima, had already lost several families members and been horribly disfigured herself in a car bombing.  A lack of translation and communication between Americans and Iraqis is key in the play. Translators would sometimes not be able to fully understand the Iraqis and other times soldiers would not even have a translator. Because of this Blank and Jensen included a translator character to show the gap between the audience (representing America) and the characters. Aftermath has a very simple stage, with one chair and no stage design in the background. This allows the audience to truly focus on what the characters are discussing. The setting is intimate enough so that the audience feels the emotions that the characters express.

Running Time:

85 minutes

Director:

Jessica Blank

Writers:

Jessica Blank &

Erick Jensen

Release Year:

2009

Country:

US

The Full Frame Creative Reality Film Festival at the Carolina Theater presents a great opportunity for the people of Durham to get a first hand look at social injustice and the people who suffer as a result of it.  A collection of gifted filmmakers have put together stories from around the globe that are eye-opening and compelling.  The film festival champions those who the mass media often forget about.  The documentary theater lens presents real stories through the eyes of the filmmakers who have endeavored to capture them.  With topics ranging from underfunded urban school districts to the real story of the government’s cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death to how Iraqis truly felt about the American invasion, there is something for everyone.

We are thrilled to have the following partners and speakers providing additional insight into some of the subject matter treated in the festival:

http://www.vetfriends.com/organizations/directory.cfm?state=NC

http://www.chicagodefender.com/article-8697-organization-remembe.html

Guest Speaker: Reverend Wheeler Parker

http://dukevets.org/news

Guest Speaker: Sterly L. Wilder ’83

http://www.heraldsun.net/printer_friendly/6812638

Guest Speaker: Karmel Wong

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Innocent_and_the_Death_Penalty.php

Works Cited:

Cover picture from The Exonerated: http://www.michaelkhagan.com/news.html

Cover picture from Voices of Iraq: http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Iraq-People/dp/B000G6BM1O

Martin, Carol. Bodies of Evidence. Theatre Journal.

Production picture from Dar He:The Lynching of Emmett Till: https://www.artsnw.org/nwot_detail.php?NWOTID=217

The Violent Struggle; Alex & Bryana’s Final Presentation

As we approach the completion of our studies of documentary theatre and film, we start to realize that the two sub-genres share common features. Both incorporate aspects of reality, though documentary theatre implies the use of realism rather than real informants as in documentary film. The ideas of documentary theatre and film are easily interchangeable. We believe that their purpose, however, is the same: to inform the public on issues that are not well known. By the definition of Carol Martin and Michael Brunelle, the ‘public’ is the group of people that are going to receive documentary works. Filmmakers and playwrights take artistic approaches on their subjects in order to make it entertaining and interesting to the receiving public. This is done with the use of backdrops, props, and hours and hours of editing and manipulation of documentary film. This manipulation of raw footage can include being spliced, diced, and mash together to fit a producer’s liking. Some have criticized Michael Moore’s use of taking scenes out sequence or creating gaps within his documentaries.

This is even more true when it comes to playwriting, where the creation of a script and stage design in theatre is completely up to the playwright.

In Dominic Dromgoole’s 2004 article ‘Reality Check’, published in The Guardian, he states that “theatre is a place of imagination, of compassion and of obsession. Much of the new journalism is too dry, too flatly written, too studiedly impersonal (Reality Check)” The documentarian, and not necessarily the subject, essentially create the reality we see.  This is why the authenticity of documentaries is sometimes questioned. However, it is almost an impossible task to show a subject matter in its totality. Documentaries have to be subjected to a certain perspective because all things are subjected to objectivity.

We believe that in order to assure its legitimacy, filmmakers and playwrights need to make known the pitfalls of their works as to not mislead the audience. It is probably always in the best interest of the audience to question and research information that they do encounter in these works.

“The Violent Struggle” will be the sub-theme for the Creative Reality Documentary Festival this year. Each of these documentaries provides an example of some sort of great burden that our protagonists must fight against to keep their footing. In some cases, this struggle contains or ends in literal, physical violence, while others depict great mental or emotional battles against greater odds. This festival occasionally will have you rooting for the underdogs, but in some cases you may find yourself wishing they were never even born.

Featured Films and Plays

columbinus (2006) showcases the struggle of two social outcasts against the decimating power of the status quo. Based on the Columbine High shooting in 1999, they both find asylum from constant ridicule in each other and they heal their wounds by wounding others themselves.

My Name is Rachel Corrie (2005) is a play depicting the toils of an American woman who seeks to create peace as an unbiased perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. Quickly, she realizes that she has embedded herself in a stalemate of a magnitude too expansive to be solved.

American Teen (2008) is a documentary film containing yet another example of the classic adolescent labor of the quest to fit in. Watch as six teens seek friendship, social status, and academic success while fighting off the pressures of their parents, peers, and the universities currently viewing their applications.

The Killer At Thurston High (2000) is a documentary produced by PBS that tells the story of Kip Kinkel, a boy who struggled to be good enough for his entire life. Regardless of the severity of his mental ineptitudes, not even his parents’ love could shake him from the idea that his brain worked incorrectly, and this notion would haunt him until he took action.
Boys of Baraka (2006) produced by Loki Films documents the lives of African-American boys from the violent ghettos of Baltimore, Maryland who are chosen to attend the Baraka School in rural Kenya. The purpose is to strengthen the boys’ academics by removing them from their adverse environment. However, some of the boys find it hard adjusting to a life without their families, friends, and the constant fear of living in the hood. National Public Radio (NPR)

Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins + KOS (1984) is a documentary produced by Goldfine Productions about one artist’s hope to transform the lives of young Latino males through an after-school art program. Filmed during the course of a year within Rollins’ art studio in South Bronx, New York, the hardships of the students range from being HIV positive to the death a fellow K.O.S member. New York Times

No Child (2006) is produced by but written by Nilaja Sun, a teaching theatre arts artist from New York who uses her experience in the American education system as the premises for her performance. As the only actor on stage, you will be amazed by her seamless transformation into multiple students of different backgrounds, but all with the same goal: to putting on the best play for friends, faculty, and family. New York Times

A Piece of My Heart (1991) is a documentary play written by Shirley Lauro of six fictions women and their personal involvement in the Vietnam War. As their excitement of participating in the armed forces fade with the realization of war brutality, the women are faced with the question; “What do we do?” Watch this play as the women struggle to come to terms with life before, during, and after the war. DC Theatre Scene

Possible Outreach Partners

Seeing as the majority of this festival focuses on issues within the educational system, we hope to attract all involved with the Durham Public School system: students, teachers, and parents. By attracting an audience with exotic subjects such as the misunderstood violence in Frontline: The Killer At Thurston High or the religious stalemate in My Name is Rachel Corrie, we aim to familiarize the crowd with documentary theatre. We can assume rather safely that most people who watch television have seen a documentary, but until I took this class, I had no idea that documentary theatre even existed. We are looking to change that in the Durham youth.

Violence in the classroom rears its head time and again in this selection of documentaries. Through the lessons taught in each of these scripts, this festival will educate students on how to avoid bullying and violence in school. Still, we want to make sure that the Durham youth stays out of trouble in what is at times not the safest city of the South. Therefore we have partnered with two different extra-curricular student centers around Durham. Both of these organizations will make a live presentation in between showings in the hope that the children in the audience will visit one of these centers after school instead of getting involved with some of the more unsavory aspects of our city. The Nonquon Outdoor Education Center provides students ages K-12 with a place to go after school where they can interact with and learn about the natural world around them. The Downtown Durham YMCA gives the young men of Durham a place where they can release the energy they built up during class in all different types of athletic activity.  The Manbites Dog Theater has also offered their support in hopes of creating more of an audience for theater in general amongst the Durham youth.

The head of PEFNC, (Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina) Darrell Allison, will open the festival with a few words. At the festival’s close, the president of the Southern Anti-Racist Network, Theresa El-Amin, will speak on the racial and religious implications of some of the festival’s documentaries. Both will be available afterwards for discussions and workshops with both students and other audience members.

This festival has some lofty and optimistic goals. We hope that through experiencing the morals taught in these intense works we not only develop an appreciation for documentary theatre and documentary in general amongst the Durham youth, but also that we can help guide them away from both the struggles showcased in the productions and the dangers that await them on the streets. If we can convince students to head to Nonquon or the YMCA after school, we can cut down on the danger of underage criminals, victims, and gang members.

Extended Entries

The following more detailed accounts of some of the selected films and plays in this year’s festival:


Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins + K.O.S

In the documentary, “Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins + K.O.S.”, filmmaker Dan Gellar provides a glimpse into the lives of young artists who struggle to survive in their adverse, urban conditions. Narrating is Tim Rollins, an artist who hosts an after-school art program for at-risk youth. Set in the South Bronx of New York City, where gunshots, drugs, and AIDS run rampant, the film begins with students at Rollins’ art gallery. They call themselves ‘Kids of Survival’, a name they feel best describes their life experiences and create art related to classic American literature. Geller introduces each member one by one, all of which are Latino.  Most of which are having difficulty with their academics, especially Victor, a twenty year old still in high school. Geller captures various heart-breaking moments during the young artists one journey, like when one member is gunned down in his own apartment complex. Footage from the young man’s funeral and news clips are shown during the film to emphasize its impact on the community. At an art gallery showing of the artists’’ work, members mingle with high-class art curators, critics and other artists. However, their showcase receives little positive reviews, and even fewer profits. Towards the end of the film, Rollins’ intentions and purposes with the K.O.S are harshly criticized. The films simplistic editing and formatting makes the subject appear as authentic as reality.

Running Time:

87 minutes

Producer(s):

Dan Geller & Dayna Goldfine

(Goldfine Productions)

Release Year:

1984

Country:

US

A Piece of My Heart

Shirley Lauro’s A Piece of My Heart is documentary play about the lives of six women before, during, and after Vietnam War. Staged with only seven actors but with over 14 characters, transformations of body and dialogue take place right before the audiences’ eyes. The play moves seamlessly as each woman tells her story of racism, sexism, and officer duplicity associated with their individual involvement in the armed forces. One character retells her experience of being a nurse and taking care of brutally wounded soldiers as another relives discrimination from other commanding officers. These retellings progress from their lives before the war up until the reveling of the Vietnam’s Veterans Memorial Wall of the present. Lauro’s use of minimalistic for staging and acting creates an intimate set for the audience to enjoy. The strong language and action of the play is geared to a more mature audience.

Running Time:

135 Minutes, one interrmission

Director(s):

Producer(s):

Release Year:

1991

Country:

US

columbinus

At 11:19 AM on April 20th, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold entered the doors of their own Columbine (Colorado) High School. They carried between the two of them two 12-guage sawed-off shotguns, two 9mm pistols, one semi-automatic 955 Carbine rifle, and one tec-9 semi-automatic handgun. They would inform one student whom they deemed a friend to head home before making their way to the cafeteria where they would begin their rampage – a rampage that left 12 students and one teacher dead and 21 others wounded. columbinus tells their story along with the stories of six other fictional students as they go about the motions of their adolescent lives in the weeks leading up to the massacre, completely unaware of the darkness waiting to enwrap their town for years. The first act siphons the audience into the stress vacuum that is the modern American high school. Here the viewer observes the vicious nature of the social hierarchy that rules the halls of the school daily. The pressure to fit in, the need to have some talent or worth to offer, and the endless ridicule and bullying at which countless students endure at the hands of a distinct minority of their “cool” peers combine to create a mental warzone for all of the play’s characters. The emotional trauma is too much for two of those students, and the second act depicts what happens when the melting pot overflows.

Running time:

135 Minutes

Director(s):

PJ Paparelli

Producer(s):

PJ Paparelli

Stephen Karam

Release Year:

2006

Country:

US


Frontline: A Killer at Thurston High
Kipland Phillip Kinkel came into the world on the 30th of August, 1982. An energetic and friendly boy, all seemed well for the Kinkel family of Springfield Oregon. But Kip was not a “normal” boy. No, Kip could not quite read or write as well as the other boys, nor could he play sports as well as them, and he also had a tough time even hanging out with them. Kip had some learning disabilities, and these hindered him in all aspects of life. Yet learning disabilities do not necessarily make someone a fool; and Kip was certainly not nearly enough of a fool to be unaware of his inadequacy. He was reminded of it in class, in the athletic arena, and even in his own home, where his sister seemed to be the perfect child. PBS’ Frontline: The Killer At Thurston High shows the viewer Kip’s childhood as he begins to fall in love with something that can make any man powerful, regardless of size or athleticism. Kip developed a keen affinity for firearms, and he began to relentlessly beg his peaceful father to give him one. This emotional news documentary chronicles Kip’s father’s inner struggles as he debates whether or not to allow Kip to have the one thing that could make him happy, yet finally he succumbs to Kip’s will and rewards him with an old family heirloom, a rifle. The documentary informs us that Kip would later use this rifle to shoot him and his wife in the head before massacring his high school the next morning. PBS’ documentary sheds light on a previously unexplainable tragedy, and should not be missed.

Running time:

90 minutes

Director(s):

Michael Kirk

Producer(s):

WGBH

Release Year:

2000

Country:

US

Relevant Works

Production Photo for columbinus

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3370/3342954790_739af434cc.jpg

Photo for Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

http://www.db-artmag.com/archiv/2008/e/2/1/589.html

Photo for Frontline: The Killer At Thurston High

http://extremethinkover.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/ap_kip_kinkel_070619_mn1.jpg

Production Photo for No Child

http://dublintheatrefestival.com/programme/display.asp?Eventid=471

Production Photo for A Piece of My Heart

http://www.georgefox.edu/academics/undergrad/departments/theatre/02-03/piece_heart.html

Poster Background Picture

http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2008_10_05_archive.html


A Struggle for Personal and Communal Freedom

“It’s a way to transform the world, a way to change people’s mindsets,” documentary filmmaker Patricia Guzman explained in the film Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary. “It’s like a mirror you look at, and then you’re able to see your own problems in it.” Guzman believes these are the main functions of the genre of documentary, and as we gathered knowledge about documentary theater and film, we too began to develop our own sense of this genre’s broader missions and goals. Here, the phrase “creative reality” gains significance, for documentary theater and film expose the truth in an artistic, compelling approach, lending a fresh perspective on reality. It provokes debate and questions the status quo, implementing techniques and styles like cinéma vérité to reach and captivate viewers. The genre of documentary pieces together fragments of reality to provide a comprehensive interpretation of a particular issue or subject matter.

The art of documentary is a complicated craft, as artists who work within this genre are all too aware of. They struggle to create artistically flexible relationships with the editor and intimate, relaxed relationships with interviewees despite the obvious camera in the room. They must find camerapeople with will, skill, and affability, as well as subjects with honesty and openness. These artists fight to find a dramatic premise, interesting characters, and the right ending. But foremost of all, they must be able to abandon their finest material in order to stay true to reality and the truth they are seeking.

Within our Festival of Creative Reality, we have decided to focus on the timeless theme of struggle. We have included two plays and two films that depict the stories of individuals who struggle with internal forces, as well as two plays and two films that explore the concept of communal struggle. Whether or not the conflict originates from the inside or the outside, and whether or not the force is good or evil, the documentary texts we have selected all present the stories of those striving to attain something in the face of difficulty or resistance.

One text in our festival that highlights the theme of personal struggle is PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam’s production of the 2006 play Columbinus. The play’s first act creates a fictional portrayal of the generic American high school, where eight teenage archetypes take the stage to tell their individual stories within the context of daily high school life. The play’s second act focuses on the true story of the 1999 killing rampage at Colorado’s Columbine High School perpetrated by students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. In both acts, Columbinus illustrates the personal struggles of high school students — whether it be a pregnancy scare, an eating disorder, academic pressure, or self-mutilation. Through harsh, lurid lighting, the use of archival footage, and careful insertion of audio elements, Paparelli and Karam create a contemporary world that rings true in the minds and hearts of teenagers everywhere.

Another play that handles this motif is Eve Ensler’s 1996 The Vagina Monologues, which consists of a number of monologues that somehow relate to the vagina, whether it be through sex, love, rape, menstruation, birth, and more. One monologue describes a girl’s first menstrual period and the confusing, unfamiliar feelings that come along with this occasion. Another discusses the personal struggles of a woman who suffered various traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood. The females featured in these monologues sometimes grapple with challenges caused by their gender, and they contend with their own internal thoughts about what it means to be a woman. The Vagina Monologues relies on stark staging, “compelling shorts that blend together into a tapestry of experiences,” and the absence of music and plot to prove the vagina as being the tool of female empowerment and individuality.

Mental and emotional struggles become especially apparent in the 2004 film Word Wars, directed by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo. This film follows four dedicated Scrabble players in the nine months leading up to the 2002 National Scrabble Championship held in San Diego, California. The players — all men — are plagued by insecurity and anxiety throughout the pre-championship tournaments, and they must commit to strict training routines in order to participate in as many as eight matches in one day, prevailing over their own physical and economic shortcomings. With the tagline “This is not your grandmother’s game of Scrabble,” Word Wars examines the quirky, aggressively competitive world of passionate Scrabble players through the implementation of tongue-in-cheek humor and in-depth profiles on four individuals for whom Scrabble is everything.

The concept of personal struggle is again explored in the 2002 Brazilian documentary film Bus 174 (originally titled Onibus 174), directed by Jose Padilha and Felipe Lacerda. This movie tells the story of Sandro do Nascimento, a young man from an impoverished background, who took Bus 174 hostage and threatened to shoot all the passengers in Rio de Janeiro on June 12, 2000. Bus 174 examines Sandro’s life and the events that paved the way for this terrible decision. Nascimento had lived on the streets of Brazil ever since he had seen his mother murdered when he was only ten years old, and “from then on, Sandro’s life was a succession of jails, drugs and street crime.” Like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in Columbinus, Sandro do Nascimento was driven to violence as a result of the struggles he experienced throughout his childhood. Padilha and Lacerda use actual television footage from the event and interviews with witnesses of the hostage to create a gripping, suspenseful viewing experience that poignantly captures a tragic event.

In addition to exposing a variety of individual struggles, our festival will also concentrate on the struggles of groups of people and specific communities. One script that highlights the theme of communal struggle is Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo’s Honor Bound to Defend Freedom. This theatre of testimony is comprised of monologues and letters of five British detainees. The first act describes the lives of the prisoners prior to their arrest, portraying them as peaceful, caring individuals. The second and third act focus on the brutal treatment of the American government towards the prisoners of war and the corrupt system used to keep detainees at Guantanamo. In his review of the play, Raymond Whitaker asserts that through stage designs with ominous lighting, little space, and small metal cages, theatre companies such as Timeline depict the struggle of prisoners at war and create an environment that causes a primarily American audience to sympathize with enemy combatants.

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s The Exonerated tells a very similar story to that of Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, as it focuses on the struggle of a group of unjustly sentenced prisoners. The play revolves around the stories of six former Death Row prisoners who were released from jail after their convictions were reversed. The play tells, in a narrative manner, each person’s story of what they were falsely accused of, how they were convicted, and their ultimate exoneration. The creative aspects of the script include the fact that there is no physical movement since the actors remain seated throughout the play. They recite dialogue based on their own court transcripts in order to present a theatre of testimony. Through these techniques, productions emphasize the emotional and physical struggles of a group of innocent people who have had chunks of their lives wrongly taken away from them.

Linda Bryant’s Flag Wars depicts the struggle between homosexuals and African Americans during the gentrification of Columbus, Ohio. The title symbolizes the fact that the struggle takes place between two groups that, in fact, struggle for equality every day. In his review, Gerald Peary acknowledges that the film addresses racism and homophobia and portrays the similarity between the two struggles. Flag Wars demonstrates that the gradual acceptance of homosexuals in Ohio angered African-Americans, who believed that if homophobia was declining, racism should be, as well. Struggling for acceptance, the two groups clash consistently throughout the film. In addition to interviews and factual reports, Bryant uses cinema vérité, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, to provoke individuals and portray the struggle.

Throughout the unconventional wars taking place within the Democratic Republic of Congo, combatants use rape to systematically subdue and intimidate the civilian population. Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt’s Lumo is an intimate look into the struggle of women. Although the film addresses the struggle and political complexities of the Congo, it mainly focuses on the future of shame, loneliness, poverty and mental struggles of women raped in the Congo. Reviews of the piece condense the central idea to dealing with the “scourge of rape that marks the war-torn politics of central Africa.” Perlmutt’s film is full of bright colors, vivid pictures, and modulated sound. His artistic goal is to make the audience unconscious that the camera, an invisible narrator, is even filming. Furthermore, he uses staged setups, long medium shots, and close-ups to enhance the realism of the subject matter.

As students from Duke, we believe it is fitting that our festival will be sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at the University. Our sub-theme of struggle, both on an individual and personal communal level, has led us to partner with the Carolina Community Outreach Committee and the Southern Anti-Racism Network in North Carolina. The former strives to enhance the quality of life in needy communities, while the latter seeks to reduce racism and discrimination throughout the South through discussion meetings and educational classes amongst local citizens and social activists. We hope Project South, the company that funds the Anti-Racism Network, will hopefully provide financial underwriting for our festival. Although the festival will be held at the Carolina theatre, we imagine partnering with the Manbites Dog Theater and holding several performances at this venue. Not only will this allow more people across Durham to view the productions, but we believe the company’s mission statement of “facilitating cross-disciplinary and cross-community projects” matches our goal of promoting productive change in communities. At the beginning of the Festival, Jeff Storer, the Artistic Director of the Manbites Theatre and a member of the Duke Theatre Studies department, will introduce the slate of performances by talking about his Theatre’s goals and the reasons he agreed to partner with us. Towards the conclusion of the Festival, Theresa El-Amin, president of the Anti-Racism Network and an activist against discrimination, will offer her thoughts and opinions about the productions, as well as discuss her organization. Through the festival, we hope to expose struggles and injustice through a variety of interesting plays and films that demonstrate creative reality. We hope the performances foster positive change on a local scale, and we have partnered with these organizations and brought it in these speakers to assist us in completing our mission.

__________________________________________________________________

Columbinus

On April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, two students ran through the school on a killing rampage, injuring twenty-four students and murdering thirteen others. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the perpetrators of the massacre, were suddenly the faces for the corruption of youth across the country. The incident provoked discussion about the nature of high school cliques, bullying, gun control laws, and the role of violent movies and video games in American society. PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam sought to retell this tragic story and create an authentic portrait of contemporary high school life in their 2006 documentary play Columbinus. The play is divided into two distinct parts: the first act is set in a stereotypical, fictional American high school and follows the lives and struggle of eight teenage archetypes, while the second act focuses on the true story of Klebold and Harris, chronicling their days approaching the massacre and the gory details of the massacre itself. Through chilling archival footage and excerpts from discussions with parents, survivors, and community leaders in Littleton, Columbinus offers a disturbing portrayal of the psychologically destructive social climate of high school and the capacity for brutality and violence in today’s adolescence.

Bus 174

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Q2I-z70x8

It is June 12, 2000. A young man wielding a gun and delirious on drugs steps on board a crowded bus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After a bungled attempt to rob the passengers on Bus 174, the man takes the innocent people hostage, threatening to murder them if his rambling demands are not met. The police stand by ineffectively, their tactical failures becoming more clear and pronounced as the hours drag by and chaos ensues. Bus 174 analyzes the causes and events of this incident, exploring the story of the young man who committed this crime: Sandro de Nascimiento. The film offers a glimpse into the cruel, merciless features of childhood and adolescence in urban Brazil that guided Nascimiento’s later actions. As an orphan at age ten, he subsisted on the streets of Rio, joining the masses of children who swarm the city’s slums, begging and perpetrating petty crimes. After barely surviving the savage police massacre of street children sleeping outside a church in the Candelária district of Rio in 1992, Nascimiento spent time behind bars, failing to set his life back on track. Through live television footage and interviews with witnesses and police officers, Bus 174 sketches a vivid, emotionally moving illustration of the hijacker and the ruthless universe that shaped him.

Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 set the standards in international law for humanitarian treatment of prisoners at war. However, the status of detainees at Guantanamo Bay is widely disputed, as many people believe the US government comprises the rights and liberties of individuals set at Conventions. Monologues portray the detainees at Guantanamo as innocent men: one does social work, one fulfills Islamic missions, and another attempts to execute a charitable business operation in Africa. The play then describes the appalling arrests of the detainees, particularly the sequence of imprisonments of The Al-Rawi brothers from Gambia to Bagram to Guantanamo. In the final act of the play, we learn about the inhumane treatment of the detainees and the slim chances of those remaining in Guantanamo to ever leave the “legal black hole”. Through vivid stage designs and a theatre of testimony, Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom uses historical accounts to expose and critique the perpetual injustice occurring at the American detention facility.

Lumo

“The agonies of war torn Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women.” In the eastern Congo, militias and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror. The results of such an action are portrayed vividly in Perlmutt’s Lumo. Twenty-year old Lumo Sinai, recently engaged to a man in her village, was eager to start a family. However, after crossing paths with a group of soldiers who brutally attacked her, Lumo suffered a fistula. This condition prevented her from giving birth and rendered her incontinent. Rejected by her fiancé, family, and friends, Lumo begins a new life in a hospital for rape survivors in Rwanda. As a new cure emerges, Lumo and her companions in the hospital cling to hope and a chance to return to their normal lives. However, when the operation does not go smoothly, Lumo leaves the hospital on an uncertain road to recovery. This emotional, powerful film shows the enormous struggle of women in war-ridden African nations.

Relevant Works:

“Body in a Struggle.” Photograph. <http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UOQIVYFn5tg/S05cWAU8n1I/AAAAAAAAAAk/OLengDSujzU/s1600-R/struggle.jpg>.

Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary.” <http://films.nfb.ca/capturing-reality>.

“Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan.” Photograph.
<http://look2thewest.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/darfur1.jpg>.

Lumo. Goma Film Project. Web. Oct 10, 2009. <http://www.gomafilmproject.org>.

Peary, Gerald. “Flag Wars.” Web. Apr. 2004. <http://geraldpeary.com/reviews/def/flag-wars.html>.

Sinfield, Karl. “Bus 174 Poster.” Photograph. <http://www.sinfield.org/postergal>.

Suchman, Scott. “‘Reb’ and ‘Vodka.’” Photograph. <http://www.fcnp.com/503/review.htm>.

Timeline Theatre Company. “Production Photo.” Photograph. <http://www.timelinetheatre.com/guantanamo>.

Creative Reality Festival: A Look at Documentary Through the Eyes of Adolescents

Curated by Zayd Ahmed and Mengchao Feng

Creative Reality

Creative reality may at first be a term which appears oxymoronic. However, as one looks more closely at the promise of documentary and the pitfalls that are present, one realizes that creative reality is the most appropriate term to describe this genre as it captures the inherent difficulty that documentarians face. In her article, Janelle Reinelt discusses this difficulty; providing the audience with access to the archival materials without distorting reality. The goal of documentary is to take us to another place or time and show us events and human stories through another perspective. Through documentary, we are granted access to historical documents.1 This opens up a world of possibiliy, however, this cannot be achieved without creative mediation on the part of the documentarian. There exists the danger that, as Carol Martin quaintly puts it in Bodies of Evidence, what is real and what is true are not necessarily the same. We must be careful and realize that filmmakers and playwrights cull through the archive of material and make conscious decisions in presenting the reality that we, the audience, sees. In addition, artists are able to “deceive” our eyes with documentary techniques.2 Therefore, we come to the question: how are documentary artists able to convince us that the messages they deliver via their works are true? Is bringing the audience closer to the subject matter the only solution?

Documentary theater uses the techniques of the stage to reenact events. Theater is more straightforward than documentary film as an audience realizes, to some extent, that reality is being reproduced by actors and that there is a production process that has taken place. Through our shared humanity, actors are able to present emotions and connect audiences to the events on stage. In this festival, we shall examine eight different documentary pieces, four films, and four plays, to see how documentarians deal with the challenges they face.

Using these eight works, we examine the unique features of documentary film and theater, and how medium and style affect the ways in which we perceive the messages carried within. Some of the pieces use conventional production methods3.  Some of them are quite experimental.

1. What is a documentary film

2. Reality Check

3. Documentary Conventions

Adolescence

On Nov. 29, news hit that Sam Hengel, a 15-year-old Marinette sophomore, held 26 students and a teacher hostage at gunpoint for six hours. He shot himself as police stormed the classroom, passing away the next day. This is not the first time we faced such tragedy, and we wanted to take a close look at this group of people.  They are in the intermediate stage preceding adulthood, yet their stories always attract attention. During the Vietnam War, students in Oberlin College were experiencing their own war on campus. In the Gaza strip, some teens fought for human rights. In Columbine High School, two boys shot and killed teachers, classmates, and themselves. What can we learn about adolescents from these stories? How do adolescents impact our world? The eight pieces presented are just the tip of the documentary iceberg. They were all produced after 1990. Therefore, we believe that they will allow us a close look at adolescents of our time, and help understand the issues that they face.

Summaries

My Name is Rachel Corrie

My Name is Rachel Corrie, a documentary play, follows the story of a pro-Palestine activist who was killed by a bulldozer while defending a home in Gaza. This piece is in the form of monologue entirely composed of Corrie’s journal entries leading up to her death. Editors Rickman and Viner use this material to recreate Corrie’s reality by giving us insight into her adolescence and development so that we understand her motivation for traveling to Gaza. This serves to make the piece powerful as we identify with her and are all the more troubled by her untimely death.

Royal Court Theatre- My Name is Rachel Corrie

Variety- My Name is Rachel Corrie Film Review

In Conflict

In Conflict is a docudrama which features the testimony of college-aged Iraq War veterans. The piece is composed of raw transcripts taken from interviews with real soldiers. The play illustrates the human toll of conflict in an unstable region on youth who, like Rachel Corrie, are just past adolescence but still in a crucial developmental stage of their lives. Douglas C. Wager utilizes the experiences of these diverse, young people in order to present the negative consequences of warfare and the difficulties these veterans face in readjusting to civilian life. This piece illuminates the fact  that these young Americans are forever altered, often times in negative ways, by their experiences.

Temple University

The New York Times-  In Conflict Film Review

COLUMBINUS

In the play COLUMBINUS, two teenage murderers’ high school lives were presented. Playwrights use fictional performance of two murderers’ interactions with people before the massacre they conducted to illustrate how they changed from students to killers. However, in the second act, the play changed into an objective reproduction of the shooting scene which happened in Columbine. The performance on stage is far from being real. However, this play raised broad echo among its audience. Years after its official performance, youth throughout the country reproduced this work time after time.

Production by New York Theatre Workshop

Review by New York Times

Vietnam 101, The War on Campus

In Vietnam 101, The War on Campus, the playwright also combined fictional elements into the play. This piece recalled four years in Oberlin College during the Vietnam War. The combination of fictional and documentary materials created a genuine reflection of those days. However, instead of informing us of what happened back then, this piece discussed the adolescence’s involvement in politics, and the influence of the war on their lives.

Production by Central Washington University

Review by City Paper

Film has the ability to present documents in a way such that they appear unedited and unadulterated. We must realize, however, that there are many modifications that occur behind the scenes and that the director has the ability to very effectively edit a piece, without the audience being aware of these alterations.

Gaza Strip

Next up is a film which also attempts to capture the reality in Palestine. The piece is quite different from My Name is Rachel Corrie in its style as James Longley uses cinema verité conventions in order to increase the believability of the film. We see images of the destruction and disorder in Gaza and hear many different stories, all of which highlight the constant danger and mayhem. The most powerful scenes are ones which tell stories through the perspective of adolescents such as Mohammed Hejazi. Longley uses children and young people to present the reality of the situation in Palestine and to illustrate how young minds are negatively affected by conflict and suffering.

IMDb- James Longley

MacArthur Foundation- James Longley

The New York Times- Gaza Strip Film Review

Promises

Promises, yet another documentary film,  presents a refreshing side of the Israel-Palestine issue as we meet seven different adolescents who live in Jerusalem, some Jewish and some Muslim. They are all similar in their innocence and childishness but are separated by their political differences. The film veers away from the cinema verité style of Gaza Strip as we hear one of the filmmakers, B.Z. Goldberg interviewing the children and even weeping on camera after hearing a troubling story. We can observe here how filmmaker involvement can detract from the piece as Goldberg’s reaction seems a bit contrived. Cinema verité conventions are more effective at convincing the audience that the reality they are viewing is unedited and unaltered.

PBS Point of View- Promises

The New York Times- Promises Film Review

American Teen

In American Teen, cinema verité has been used to record the senior year of five high school students in Indiana. This film perfectly presented the ups and downs in high school, and a fast-pace editing style makes the film fluent in story-telling. However, although this film accepted several awards on documentary films, it was broadly criticized because the stories in the film were either not real, or real but dramatized. Despite that, when watching this film, the audience laughs and cries with the characters in it, this piece is no different from a fictional movie made with documentary techniques.

Official Site

Review by the New York Times

Girls Like Us

Another film, Girls Like Us, concentrates on the lives of four girls in South Philadelphia and follows its subjects from the ages of 14 to 18. The director also used cinema verité to present huge amount of genuine footage. Merely the fact that the filmmaker spent four years on this project is convincing enough to make people believe what they see through the director’s camera. However, to make a 57-minute film out of footage taken in four years is a highly selective process. Film makers inevitably covered some information, and highlighted some other events. As a result, the reality audience see is not the “real” reality.

Official Site

Reivew by James Berardinelli

Community Connection

Surrounded by video games and Hollywood blockbusters, adolescents seldom pay much attention to documentary films or theatre plays. Our festival tantalizes the audience by giving it a chance to experience a world and place that is very different from the one they inhabit. Thus, we hope to bring more adolescents into theatres and illustrate the differences in film and theatre techniques.

Documentary theatre is a fitting component of documentary film as it preserves one crucial link that is often lost in film; the human connection between actors and audience. Although an actor’s performance is an imitation of someone else, we are able to feel the emotions and struggles that that person wrestled with. The performances are authentic because we are connecting with the human emotions that are common to all of us. This is what makes documentary, both film and theatre, important and makes us obligated to give ear to the stories contained within. The subject matter is important because of the humanity we share with those presented in the works.

The North Carolina Theatre for Young People shares the same focus as our festival and we expect NCTYP to be a potential partner in organizing this festival. NCTYP was founded in 1962. Throughout the years since its foundation, it has garnered a prestigious reputation. Generations of young people come to enjoy the pieces presented in NCTYP’s Taylor Theatre. NCTYP’s resources and experience in presenting works geared at young people will help to not only attract more youth, but also to better organize such events. Meanwhile, the festival itself will give NCTYP new momentum to broaden its impact on local young people.

NCTYP is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Many executives of NCTYP come from UNCG, and thus, UNCG has a long history of looking into the impact that theatre plays have on youth. This institution will be able to provide insightful analysis and discussion on the issues our festival focuses on. We are pleased to have speaking at the Creative Reality Festival, Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Rachel Briley. We hope to hear her insightful talk regarding youth and documentary, following the aforementioned festival pieces.

Throughout the history of documentary theatre and films, youth have seldom been the focus of discussion. Our festival will function as a reminder to documentary artists that adolescents are also a crucial part of society, who have an impact on the world.

Extended Summaries

In Conflict

In Conflict is a sober documentary theater piece which chronicles the stories of Iraq war veterans. The play first opened  at Temple University’s Randall Theater and then moved onto the Barrow Street Theater in New York City.  Created by Douglas C. Wager, the archival material of the work comes from recorded interviews of soldiers deployed in Iraq. This use of real interviews allows the audience to connect on a personal level to the work. Because the actors are so connected and invested in the military personnel they are portraying, the audience is drawn into the play. Another important aspect In Conflict is that its cast features many untried actors, many of whom are still students at Temple University. This works out well as the limited experience of the actors can be compared to the novitiate of the war veterans. We see from the piece that many of the soldiers were young and, oftentimes, ill prepared for the jarring effects, both physical and mental, that warfare, and Iraq in particular, has on them.  Many of these young soldiers were thrown into the most grotesque and emotionally trying situations possible. For example, one of the soldiers, Mr. Noel, recounts the gruesome killing of a baby due to suspicions that it was a bomb in its mother’s arms.  Although these narrations are horrifying, they shed light on the brutality of warfare and the toll it takes on those involved. We see this impact most prevalent when an actor pauses unexpectedly whilst talking, presumably overcome with a memory of the chilling realities of warfare.

Director: Doug Wager

Interviews Originally Recorded by: Yvonne Latty

Released: Randall Theater (Temple University) 2007, Barrow Street Theater 2008

Barrow Street Theater Production Image Taken from The New York Times Film Review

Promises

Come witness the Israel-Palestine issue from the perspective of seven kids. Promises is the ground-breaking story of children of different backgrounds who live in Jerusalem.  These adolescents  come from two ethnic groups which are often at odds with each other; Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews. One can note the similarity that the children have to each other which contrasts with the rift that exists between them. We realize that they fear each other because of the ideas that they have imbibed from their respective societies. Many overcome these stereotypes once they meet with each other, however, we are left with the bitter truth that their friendships are not likely to last due to the reality of conflict and negative propaganda that exist between their people. This poignant film allows us to listen to these children, leaving behind our own biases. One heartwarming scene features a rabbi in training named Shlomo. He talks about negative experiences he has had with Arabs whilst discussing how Arab and Israeli elders often share civil relationships. At one point, a Palestinian boy approaches Shlomo and belches to attract his attention. Shlomo continues the interview unmoved. Eventually, however, he yields and begins to giggle and acknowledges the Palestinian boy with another belch. This scene is compelling as it shows the potential for understanding and peaceful relations between Arabs and Israelis. This perhaps succinctly captures Goldberg’s vision of the film; to demonstrate that people of different backgrounds share many similarities and that children, who see beyond stereotypes and division, can serve as models for Israelis and Arabs to reach peaceful negotiations and agreement. The filmmakers do so by going against convention and presenting the Palestine-Israel issue from the perspective of adolescents.

Directors: B.Z. Goldberg, Justine Shapiro, and Carlos Bolado

Run time: 106 mins

Release year: 2001

Taken from the PBS Point of View Website

Taken from the PBS Point of View Documentaries Webpage

Promises Trailer

COLUMBINUS

In COLUMBINUS, co-written by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli, writers adapted a controversial yet revolutionary manner to bring the audience back to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. COLUMBINUS takes the form of documentary theatre to raise discussions among its audiences on the adolescent. This play is based on real archives. In the first act, the actors and actresses perform in a typically fictional manner to reproduce representative scenes in suburban high schools. Eight labels are presented in this play. They each stands for one type of students. For example, AP refers to nerdy students, and Rebel is a rebellious girl. Among them, Loner and Freak, the two who later became the murderers, have been continuously bullied and segregated by other students. Different moments are highlighted to present how the two murderers’ classmates and family aggravated and accelerated the process that had turned two high school students into cold-blooded killers. The second act used a different style of production. In the direction before the first scene of act two, PJ Paparelli commented that act two is of “no air of pretense or affection” (86), but a sense of reality and genuineness. All the interactions, conversations, and incidents are all genuine reproductions of what happened in the tragedy. Characters change from labels to real persons. This dramatic contrast between the two acts brings the audience a deep shock, and, thus, makes them start thinking about what are the true murderers that killed tens of students, including the two gunners.

Taken from The New York Times

American Teen

American Teen is a film that labels itself as “experiences through real-life teenagers”. It used cinéma vérité to record the senior year of four high school students in Arizona. The four have disparate personalities and stories. A geek, who is having a hard time getting along with people, a basketball star, who is struggling to impress college coaches in order to continue his education, a unconventional girl, who is challenging the conservative world, a charming boy, who is generally discovering a side of himself that he never knows, and the vice president in the student council, who strives to achieve her father’s expectations, make up the main characters in this film. The director focused her lenses on the drama and trauma in these students’ lives. Stories of the five students interweave with each other’s, yet the roads they choose for their future are totally different. Therefore, the audience will be able to see how different high school lives result in different understandings of values, and how different choices and attitudes in high school determine the direction of development in life. At the end of the film, a brief introduction of the five students’ experience after the production of the film is presented. Thus, the audience will also realize where the different roads finally took the five teenagers. Besides footage of students’ daily activities and some interviews, the director also combined two animation clips into the film to visualize the mental activities of characters. However, this innovation does not affect the strong sense of reality in this film.

Trailer

Works Referenced

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=4047

http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/p/promises.shtml

http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/my-name-is-rachel-corrie-october-2005

http://www.curtainup.com/inconflict.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04E1D61039F936A25750C0A9649C8B63&scp=3&sq=promises%20julie%20salamon&st=cse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/apr/08/theatre.israelandthepalestinians

Alex and Michele’s Program

PART I/II
When documentarians take a piece of real life and shape it to present a facet of truth, you are left with the concept of “creative reality.” Production constraints, especially the limited amount of time documentary artists have to present their piece, cannot help but affect their objectivity. In order to make the most of this time and limitation, artists working the documentary genre, must carefully consider expectations of both objectivty and bias as they create their texts, all the while using different strategies to attempt to present the closest thing to an absolute truth. However, whatever the final product is, it is impossible to separate the creator’s personal experiences from his or her creations and thus no documentary can be completely objective. Yet that lack of objectivity does not mean that documentarians do not show reality; they simply show a creative reality. This is something that must be acknowledged when watching documentary film and theatre; even though a film may present the film maker’s reality, there are other sides to the story. However, one must also recognize that even though documentaries are their creator’s altered truth, they are still true pieces of work. Though they might not prevent an entire reality, they still present an aspect of truth. Thus, the notion of creative reality exists, contrasting the stark, absolute nature of truth and reality with the more flexible and ambiguous connotations of creativity and subjectivity.

This film festival takes the concept of creative reality, and applies it to an unlikely concept: justice. Carrying the subtheme of “Voicing Justice: Perspectives from the Silenced,” the films and plays presented throughout this event will tell the stories of those whose stories weren’t meant to be heard. From prisoners, to their families, to documentary directors whose lives were cut short, the portrayals and documentations of stories throughout the festival will offer you perspectives on justice and its definition. These “silenced” individuals will be given a voice, and a chance to tell their side of the story: their creative reality.

PART III

My Name is Rachel Corrie offers one young American’s perspective on the injustices occurring in the occupied Gaza Strip. Composed entirely of the title character’s diary entries, letters, and emails, Corrie’s compositions offer the audience a “creative” insight on the real and oftentimes horrifying conflict happening overseas that would not otherwise have been told. The audience is thrust into a reality that is beyond anything one can experience in America, and comes to understand how hard, and sometimes seemingly hopeless, it is to fight for justice.

Death in Gaza is a film produced posthumously after director James Miller suffered a tragic death while shooting the documentary. Although Miller’s story was never meant to be the one told by the film, the silencing of Miller’s life was not enough to silence was he had to say, and the film was continued on by producer Saira Shah. Before Miller’s death, we see footage of the horrors endured daily by Mohammed (12), Ahmed (12), and Najia (16) whose childhoods are plagued by militias and death.  Through it, we come to understand how even for the young, justice is hard to come by.

Another American: Asking and Telling documents the true tale of those who are forced to be silent about their most important possession: their identities. The play is composed of director Marc Wolf”s interviews with straight, gay and lesbian military personnel (from World War II veterans to anonymous soldiers serving today), in addition to civil rights lawyers, federal judges, professors and politicians. Through monologues and a connection to the audience, the play comes to express how a silenced community strives for justice, even when their identities have been taken away.

The Thin Blue Line, directed by Errol Morris, is the true definition of how justice can prevail when a voice is given to the silenced. The film tells the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder that he did not commit. The film takes different testimonies given by witnesses, and reenacts them to try to construct a scene that occurred. Through this testimony, we come to see how poorly the pieces in this case fit together, and Adams is finally able to prove his side of the story.

Doin’ Time Through the Visiting Glass, written and performed by Ashley Lucas, is a one-woman play about the lives of prisoners’ families. By focusing the attention on individual characters, Lucas is able to create a play in which the characters can express hidden feelings and be completely convincing as individuals. Lucas portrays the other side of the prison life: life on the outside. Rarely is the story of these families told, but this play is able to magnify the voices of those who silently suffer the consequences of the justice system.

A Sentence of Their Own is a powerful film directed by Edgar Barens in 2001, set in Georgia. It details the life of Becky Raymond and her children Danny and Joshua as they cope with the imprisonment of Alan, Becky’s husband and the children’s father. Though the film takes the perspective of a silent observer, the editing of the film crafts powerful moments of “reality” to heighten emotions in the observer. This film shows how life stops for this family as they wait for Alan to get out of prison, giving justice to a family silenced by Alan imprisonment.

A moving play about the lives of innocent prisoners facing death row, The Exonerated, published by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen in 2004, conveys the idea of both creative reality and justice for the silenced. Six innocent victims of the justice system tell their stories as they spend years convicted with weak evidence. Their stories are the ones that are never fully acknowledged by society, but are brought to light in this 90 minute performance, which pieces together their reality.

After Innocence is a powerful film directed by Jessics Sanders, about the lives of men who are released from their unjust prison sentences after compelling DNA evidence proves their innocence . The 2005 film shows the story of those often forgotten after being thrown behind bars despite the lack of concrete evidence. Released from prison but not from the years they experienced locked away, these men, silenced by oversight, struggle to regain what they have left of their lives as they return to society.

Part IV

Our film festival will strive to attract a new crowd of people, particularly students at the college level. Taking advantage of the three large schools in the area (Duke, University of North Carolina (UNC), and North Carolina State University (NC State)) the festival will reach out to students who were potentially interested in documentary film, but hadn’t yet been attracted to the idea of documentary theatre. We will do this by contacting representatives at the Duke Documentary Studies department (http://cds.aas.duke.edu/), the Art and Dramatic Arts departments at UNC (https://art.unc.edu/index.htm and http://drama.unc.edu/), and the Art and Design department at NC State (http://design.ncsu.edu/academic-programs/art-design). The departments would have much to gain from getting involved with our festival. First of all, the professors and students alike would get to see real life applications of their in class lessons. Having students attend, critique, or even partake in the festival gives them real-life experience that they would find useful in their future endeavors. Also, it would open students’ eyes to a new form of documentary in the form of documentary theatre.  Some people who could provide positive contributions to discussions before and after the festival could be professors from the Documentary Studies program at Duke, such as Professors Alexander and Blewin (http://cds.aas.duke.edu/courses/teachers.html). Our festival will strive to make its mark by simply opening the eyes of those students who are very knowledgeable on the subject of documentary film to the genre of documentary theatre, which is a lesser known, yet equally as powerful, form of art.

Part V

My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-woman play that tells the tragic story of the 23-year-old activist after whom the play is titled. Rachel Corrie, originally played by Megan Dodd, was an American from Olympia, Washington who left her life in the states to attempt to bring justice to the Gaza Strip, an area plagued by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Composed entirely of Rachel’s journals, letters, and emails, the play follows Rachel’s emotional and physical journey, ending with the dramatic climax of her death, as an Israeli bulldozer crushes her while she is trying to prevent the unjust demolition of a Palestinian home. The play opens with Corrie in the quaint setting of her Washington apartment. Without directly acknowledging the audience, Corrie is able to converse with the viewers, expressing her and her family’s excitement and apprehensions about her impending journey. Eventually, the set opens up to her in her frightening bunker in Gaza.
Over the next few months, Corrie is forced to endure a world that is mature beyond her years, and watches the merciless destruction of homes and communities that surround her. The documentary theatre piece is minimalistic in the sense that it only engages one character, and Corrie is the only person who we ever see on the stage, save for the use of media clips, but the nature of this show makes for an intimate setting between Corrie and the audience. You will leave the show feeling as if you knew Corrie, understood her thoughts, and will empathize fully with her journey and unfortunate end.

Death in Gaza, directed by James Miller, is a powerful documentary about what happens when one is forced to grow up too fast. Shot in the Gaza Strip, the film closely follows three Palestinian children as they grapple with issues far beyond their years. (http://www.videodetective.com/movie_trailer/DEATH_IN_GAZA/trailer/P00370510.htm) We meet best friends Ahmed and Mohammed (age 12), who enjoy playing with their friends and beings kids. However, Ahmed is also a member of an underground militia, and spends his nights acting as a lookout for heavily armed militia members. We also meet Najia (age 16), who wants nothing more than to be a regular teenager, but finds childhood hard to bear as she loses member after member of her family to the conflict. The film also documents the death of director James Miller; as he journeys through Gaza on his mission to capture the truth, an Israeli soldier shoots him in the middle of the night, and he becomes a martyr in the eyes of the Palestinians. In the movie, though the plot does move chronologically, we are not walked through the story in a perfect, never-changing order. Rather, Shah takes advantage of the tool of juxtaposition to create more meaning with the film. The underlying chronology is broken up by interviews with children (as to show one’s innocent) compared with clips from killings and other events. This juxtaposition illustrates the intent of the film: to show how even in the direst of situations, innocence and purity still survives, and is in need of preservation.

Ashley Lucas performing Doin’ Time Through the Visiting Glass

Ashley Lucas met a world of prejudice and isolation when her father was incarnated.  She discovered how differently the world treats someone who has a relative in prison and how the experience itself affects her daily life. She took her experience from that time until now to write a play. Lucas’ main objective for creating such as play was for other families to gain a forum in which they could connect with others who have gone through the same thing. However, in addition to this main focus there is also a theme of injustice as a common thread of all the stories, which indicates a political focus as well. Due to the fact that her main purpose for writing the play was to connect others experience this tragedy that play is not inspired from her experiences alone but also other who have gone through this phenomenon. Over a period of several years Ashley Lucas has gone through many interviews and continues to edit her play over time as reluctant information comes in. This hour long performance is a one women play which Ashley Lucas herself performs; it tells the story of diverse people who each have a different experience but a common element: imprisonment of someone close to them.

    Joshua Raymond (photo from A Sentence of  Their Own Website)

Becky was ripped from the life she once knew with her husband Alan and her two kids Danny and Joshua when Alan was imprisoned, in the film A Sentence of their Own. No longer able to depend on Alan for support and having little experience living on her own with two kids Becky sinks into poverty. Their story is not a unique or current one however its impact still remains relevant to today’s society. The transition from Becky’s life before to her life in the film is jarring by the descriptions she gives. It is clear that the family’s life has gone on standstill as they waiting for Alan’s release. The family survives not by being optimistic about the life they have but rather by accepting that they will only have to experience it until Alan is released from jail. The family is silenced not by force but by oversight, they have been defeated by the prison system and are waiting for the sentence to run its course. They are truly under a sentence of their own, one in which Becky states is harsher then her husband’s as she lives in a state of constant insecurity and scarcity.

Relevant Works:
photo from http://readmykink.com/2009/12/21/silenced-by-emotion/
photo from http://studentaffairs.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=4386
photo from (originally from a sentence of their own website) http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rlz=1T4ADSA_enUS395US396&biw=1003&bih=542&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=%22a+sentence+of+their+own%22+%22edgar+barens%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Our Fight for Freedom: The Creative Reality Documentary Festival

By Harry Rappaport and Greg Lee

WARNING: If you’re looking for a magical world of fantasy and wizardry, there’s a movie theater around the block and that romantic love story that would never actually happen in real-life is down the road to the local playhouse. For this is a documentary film and theater festival.

With today’s mainstream film attracting audiences by helping them ‘escape into a new reality’, like the Avatars and Harry Potters of the feature film world, these aren’t based on real life. Sure, they may have real people and real props, but documentary film and theater are some of the only truly realistic forms of entertainment left. Instead of being based on special effects and 3D glasses, documentary film and theater involve just as much creativity as feature length films but by still maintaing their authenticity. The presumption is that if you want entertainment you go to a dream world that provides an escape from the one we live in. We believe true entertainment stems from the truth. But looking into the eyes of a doomed prisoner locked away for life and hearing their story will strike more emotion in you more than any blue-faced, dragon-riding alien race ever could. So, even though you really want to see a boy wizard overcome ridiculously unrealistic odds and defeat an evil sorcerer, come check out these pieces to view the true reality, creative reality.

Documentary filmmakers are faced with the problem of how much creative license they can have without taking away from the non-fiction aspect of documentary film every time they create a film. This notion of “creative reality” proves that there is, in fact, creativity in the documentary genre that helps us think of these pieces neither as full fiction nor as a total non-fiction piece. One example is the article “Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work”, which shows these contemporary documentary filmmakers’ struggles with these ethical concerns, since now is a “time when there is unprecedented financial pressure on makers to lower costs and increase productivity, filmmakers reported that they routinely found themselves in situations where they needed to balance ethical responsibilities against practical considerations”.

One person who summarizes the idea of how filmmakers should approach the ethical concern of creative license in documentary films is John Grierson in his ideas on Documentary Principles. His philosophy towards “creative reality”, or as he calls it, “the creative treatment of actuality”, is that “the idea that a mirror held up to nature is not so important in a dynamic and fast changing world as the hammer which shapes it…It is as a hammer, not a mirror, that I have sought to use the medium that came to my somewhat restive hand”. In other words, documentarians must have the ability to work with real sources and materials and edit them in order to depict as realistic a picture of reality as possible. But, they must keep a “somewhat restive hand”, meaning that to rearrange too much information can result in the loss of authenticity. This notion of truth in documentaries is under even more criticism in a less-used genre, documentary theater.

A specialist on the subject of documentary theater, Carol Martin, spoke specifically of that goal of these pieces, which she called the “function” of documentary plays. In one of her writings, Bodies of Evidence, Martin talks of different playwright’s abilities to take information “from a specific body of archived material: interviews, documents, hearings, records, video, film, photographs, etc.” and utilize and edit it in order to accommodate it to their play while still being truthful.

Knowing this, we tried to encapsulate the overarching idea of oppression and its effects on those being oppressed, those close to them and on the worldwide community as a whole into our film and play festival to help the documentarians and playwrights achieve the functions of their respective pieces.

We think we know what it is like to be oppressed (even if this is only by the iron fist of school work and professors). Being young adults, fresh into the ‘real world’, we’ve experienced the restriction of freedom associated with the pre-teen years. Though this may not be much connection, we have also studied pieces of documentary film and theater that outline the devastating effects of oppression on different groups of people and through this festival; we hope that you are able to see them, as well.

The Texts

The Children of Leningradsky

The Russian documentary film, the Children of Leningradsky, calls for the public attention to the homeless children, whose predicaments have been carelessly ignored. Through this film, the magnitude and urgency of this issue have become widely known. Apparently, the lives of these children are not those of normal kids but of beggars; they spent most of their days begging for changes, running away from policemen and looking for safe, warm shelters for a night, where they can drink vodka, sniff glues to get away from the harsh realities. However, the impact of this film might have been less if the directors merely take shots of their predicaments. According to the review in New York Times, the film makes it “tempting to scream at the filmmakers” to “put down the camera and feed these children. However, such effect can be maximized by capturing a glimpse of hope in these children who still dreams of the warmth of their friends, homes, and families. -GL

The Iron Ladies of Liberia

On January 16th, 2006, the first female leader of Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf began her presidency in Liberia. Following her lead, many of females are appointed as the head of executive offices. To restore the order to the country where the civil war and disorder have dominated the scene for fourteen years is not an easy task; however, with her caring, responsive yet determined leadership, she comes closer to the accomplishment of her goal step by step. Without any voice-over or other add-ons, the Iron Ladies of Liberia merely follows Ms. Johnson Sirleaf’s path and shows the audience what she does for Liberia and how Liberians react to her actions. With the minimal editing employed, the authentic appeal of the materials of the film is maximized. -GL

9 Parts of Desire

When the light brightens up, only one woman stands on the stage of Manhattan Ensemble Theater. The actress talks about the lives and struggles of nine different Iraqi women. In this one-actress monologue, 9 Parts of Desire, none of the stories are told verbatim; thus, the poetic structure of the script possibly makes the audience to doubt the authenticity of materials. However, she has gathered her information from Iraqi women after spending “hours of gaining the trust of Iraqi women” (Raffo’ Website). As truthful as the materials are, Raffo’s emotional yet persuasive monologues reveal “what [women] wanted to say but couldn’t and what [women] never knew how to say” (Raffo’s Website). -GL

Butterflies of Uganda: Memories of a Child Soldier

The power of Butterflies of Uganda does not come from the script to itself.  However, according to Los Angeles Theater Review, when the visual backgrounds and emotions of actresses are added with the script, the power of such play becomes real. Thus, it is often the job of producers to make the audience emphasize with actors on stage and subjects of the play. In the production of Greenway Court Theater, the combination of the imposing threat of the big machine guns at the sides of the stage and the touching remarks of Mary the child soldier not only delivers what has happened with children in Uganda but also what children and their parents feel in their life-threatening struggles. Due to the unavailability of the production site of Greenway Court Theater specific to the play, here is another production for reference. -GL

The Fence

Rory Kennedy, director of The Ghosts of Abu-Ghraib, speaks of yet another way in which a U.S. government project with goals of containing illegal immigration, cracking down on drug trafficking and protecting American from terrorists, has given way to unforeseen consequences in The Fence. Through the use of interviews with Border Patrol guards, ranchers, environmentalists and both sides of the immigration debate, Kennedy takes an artistic approach in showing her audience that a large amount of people are having their rights restricted. The addition of The Fence in the festival “puts a human face on the enormous impact the fence has made as it rambles across the Southwest”. To read what the critics had to say, check out this review from the New York Times. -HR

Radio Mambo: Culture Clash Invades Miami

Culture Clash, a comedy trio that create vignettes that examine hot topic issues relating to their lives, uses video taped interviews with Miami residents from all walks of life to create the production Radio Mambo: Culture Clash Invades Miami. Through seriocomic sketches based on these real-life people, Culture Clash uses the idea of “creative reality” to conjure up comedic characters who provide entertainment while still showing audience members the struggles of immigrants in the United States. By addressing the serious moral of oppression against immigrants and restriction of freedom, Culture Clash’s work brings a light-hearted aspect to the festival. -HR

Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom

Based on actual interviews and letters from prisoners of Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as well as press conferences with U.S. government officials, Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom written by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo and performed by the TimeLine Theatre Company along with many others, reenacts how these horrible occurrences affected not only the prisoners, but their loves ones, as well.  Through the use of “creative reality”, this documentary play brings the audience as close as possible to the prison camp and its inhabitants without actually being there, while still putting a creative twist on the material in order to achieve a dramatic effect.  By showing this oppression endured by the prisoners, this play fits perfectly under the theme of this festival, the restriction of freedom and movement for change. To see what theater critics thought, read this review. -HR

GITMO: The New Rules of War

Through the utilization of multitudes of different sources, GITMO: The New Rules of War, directed by Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh, is the quintessential example of a documentary within the larger frame of “creative reality”. Through this wide array of sources, Gandini and Saleh are able to put an artistic spin on real-life events in order to provide their viewers with the idea that the U.S. Government may not always tell the full truth. The oppression and restriction of freedoms committed at the detainment camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is one of many in our film festival that must be stopped. By showing the audience the truth behind this monumental cover-up, “GITMO” inspires the crowd to fight against the legal black hole that is Guantanamo Bay. To read a critic’s opinion, see this review. -HR

Community Connection

This documentary festival structured under the embedded theme of oppression of minority rights calls for further actions. We have earnestly asked for the collaboration from Duke Community and, even further, local society of Durham to bring upon the efforts for the change in a wider scope. Not only do the listed entries in the festival call the attention to incidents of the oppression of minority rights by showing facts but also cover the emotions of the victims of the violence, through which the audience could really feel the urgency of these ethical injustice pervading around the world. Eventually through such emotional impact, the festival will only provide an initiative for the broader research about the violation of minority rights using resources of Duke Human Rights Center but will surely motivate those with the specialized knowledge in the fields of laws, human rights, and public welfare to take actions. Coming from Duke Human Rights Center, Professor Robert Korstad (Professor of Public Policy and History) and Professor Mary McClintock Fulkerson (Professor of Theology and Women’s Studies) will share their experience and knowledge about the violation of minority rights after the exhibition of documentaries; any member of the audience is welcome to ask questions the issues dealt in the entries or the oppression of minority rights in general. The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience has indicated its full support for the initiative of the documentary festival while various student-oriented groups in Duke such as Amnesty international, Duke Human Rights Coalition (DHRC), and International Justice Mission (IJM) are interested in attending the festival for the factual specifics included in our documentaries. However, our initiative should not be only limited to Duke University but be extended possibly to students and professors of various departments such as Communication Studies, Dramatic Arts Public Policy, and Women’s Studies at UNC and NC State.

Synopses

Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom

Playwrights: Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo

“The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of the victors” (7). Written by English playwrights Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, the documentary play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom is based on the interviews and letters of various alleged-Taliban members who are put, “beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of the victors”. It documents these innocent men’s experiences of being held in the “legal black hole” (7). The script includes real-life characters such as Moazzam Begg, Wahab al-Rawi and Jamal al-Harith, whose stories of arrests via falsified reports and unlawful kidnappings by government officials are intertwined with contradicting statements by political officials such as Mark Jennings and Mr. Lee who claim that the prisoners are dangerous men. The function behind the creation of this piece is to show the audience that the military personnel at Guantanamo act as “interrogators, prosecutors, defence counsel, judges, and, when death sentences are imposed, as executioners” (8) and to inspire protest throughout the world to change these unjust and unfair practices. In other words, through legislation, the United States was and still is able to determine whether hundreds of prisoners deserve to live, many of which are not granted that right. Through the interviews and letters of those who had to endure these crimes, the play incites the audience’s desire to act on these in protest. -HR

The TimeLine Theater Company’s Production of

Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom

The Children of Leningradsky

2004 / Russia / 35 minutes

Director: Hanna Polak

Producer: Andrzej Celinski

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, more than two million children had become homeless in Russia. At the capital of Russia, Moscow, approximately 30,000 homeless children were living on the streets. The film takes an obtrusive view of the lives of the homeless children at the underground Leningradsky train station in Moscow. Frightened with violence and neglect, they escaped from their homes and chose to sleep in staircases, tunnels and even garbage containers. To protect themselves from the harsh winter of Russia, they have to sleep on hot water pipes. Even worse, they sometimes end up prostitute themselves after begging or drink vodka, smoke cigar, and sniff glue to get away from the harsh realities. In such situation, in which they rather wish to stay in orphanages instead to make homes at the Leningradsky train station, they are still children who play with each other, sing and dance, miss their parents, and dream for better future.

When Tanya, a 14-year old homeless girl dies from her addiction to glue, the issue of children homelessness at Leningradsky train station of Moscow is brought to the level of urgency. This film deals with the dark side of the Russian society that struggles to live up to the democratic expectation after the fall of the Soviet Union. -GL

The Children of Leningradysky on HBO

9 Parts of Desire

2003/ United States/ 90 minutes

Playwright: Heather Raffo

“God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one part to men.” This teaching of seventh-century imam Ali ibn Abu Talib has become the source of Raffo’s title. As suggested, Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire deals with the atrocities that Iraqi women have undergone merely because they are women.

The curator of Saddam Art Center, Layal expresses her distaste to the dictatorial authority while looking at the portraits of Saddam while sharing her experience of being sexually assaulted.

The tour guide of the bomb shelter, Umm Gheda cries out in sorrow and longing while talking about how she named her child, Gheda(meaning “Tomorrow”), why she refers herself to be Umm Gheda(meaning “Mother of Tomorrow”), and why she has to stay at the very site where her entire family was killed.

A Bedouin woman, Amal blames her obesity for three divorces she had while still longing for the true love.

The American, the representation of Raffo herself on the stage, feels confused of her identity while expressing her dismay to Americans who favor the war.

There are five more female characters in 9 Parts of Desire. Each of females in the play has their own characteristics; however, nine as a whole constitute one woman that Raffo wants to express, the woman who worries about the country, fights against the authority, longs for the family, cries out in sorrow, and seeks for true love.

The Manhattan Ensemble Theater’s production of 9 Parts of Desire in 2005

GITMO: The Rules of War

2005/ Sweden/76 Minutes

Directors: Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh

Production Company: Atmo Media Network

GITMO: The New Rules of War begins by following the story of a Swedish prisoner in the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay named Mehdi Ghezali. He was convicted on questionable claims and detained with no definitive release date or court date. While following Mehdi’s story, Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh uncover the corruption and mistreatment of not only Mehdi, but countless other prisoners at Prison Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay. Along with unjustified imprisonment and lack of due process, the U.S. government corruption extends to the heinous interrogation techniques used in attempts to gain information from prisoners. This extensive list includes hooding, prolonged standing, environmental manipulation, sleep deprivation, meal management, light exposure, noise exposure, face/stomach slapping, increased anxiety by use of aversions, exploitation of phobias of heights, animals, etc., use of dogs and many more. This film utilizes the medium’s extensive access to different types of sources and proves that there is a lot more occurring at these prison camps than the American public knows. Through this use of press conference clippings, newspaper articles, websites, interviews with actual prisoners, phone conversations, government releases of torture and interrogation techniques, government requests for harsher interrogation techniques, pictures from actual U.S. prison camps and TV clippings of government press conferences with Guantanamo military officials, GITMO: The New Rules of War truly shows its viewers that no man, guilty or not, should be treated in such a horrible manner and that action must be taken to prevent this occurrence to continue. -HR

GITMO: The New Rules of War

Relevant Works:

Broadway Review (bottom left picture on poster)

Princeton Library (top right picture on poster)

San Diego Coalition (top left picture on poster)

War Online (bottom right picture on poster)

The Creative Reality Festival: Revealing Social Injustice

Documentaries separate themselves from other versions of film/theatre by its approach to one all-encompassing idea: truth.   Documentaries attempt to relate the creators’ version of the truth to the audience.  This is achieved by creating a world or reality based off of first-hand evidence, whether it is interviews, film footage, diary excerpts, or photographs.  The source material undergoes a process that transforms it from factual evidence into a “creative reality” within the documentary.

The credibility of the “creative reality” that documentarians construct relies both on the authenticity of the evidence and on the connection established with the audience.  Documentarians act as mediators between their idea of truth and the viewer (Reinelt 23).  The main challenge facing artists within this genre is being able to manipulate the materials they have gathered into creating a convincing reality without seeming to manipulate anything at all.  They want the viewer to take the documentary as reality rather than the artist’s take on reality.

This film festival focuses on documentaries that center on social injustice.  Documentarians first identify a shortcoming in the world and recreate a reality for the audience that reveals these flaws.  The main goal is for the documentaries not only to raise awareness about an issue, but also to provide a stimulus for change.  When documentarians produce a successful creative reality, the viewers feel a call-to-action and are impelled to actively participate in the effort to correct social injustice.

The documentary play The Exonerated by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen sets us down in an interview-style show with six people who were falsely convicted and put on death row.  All six of them were exonerated from prison years later, but they had already been emotionally–and sometimes physically–scarred and their lives had been irrevocably changed.  Also, they remind us, they are the lucky ones who were released before they took a trip to the electric chair.  This play is stark, containing little to no blocking or staging; instead, the actors tell their gripping stories without supplementary materials.  This play will be staged in a small theatre to produce an intimate setting.

Similar to The Exonerated, the documentary film After Innocence tells the story of people in the same situation of being wrongly incarcerated.  Instead of taking the audience on a journey with the members through their experience in jail, this movie centers on the people’s reintegration into society after being released.  After Innocence uses court-room and speech footage to give the audience information about the individuals as well as show them the story rather than tell them the story.  The film can be played in a large venue, such as Fletcher Hall.

Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, a play by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, reveals the unethical nature of holding people captive at Cuba’s Guantanamo base without due process.  The play is built around testimonies of five British citizens who were released after being wrongly held captive, and also includes letters from detainees still imprisoned.    The stage is set up like the inside of a holding cell, allowing the audience to experience the bleak, ominous setting.  This play could be staged in a medium-sized setting.

The documentary film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib investigates the abuse, torture, and murder of detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.  It prompts the audience to ask how American soldiers can do such inhumane things as well as how from which point in the chain of command did the orders come.  The film’s ultimate goal is to bring groups together to end the United States policy of sanctioning torture.  The film can be showed in a larger theatre venue.

In Liz Garbus’s HBO documentary Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech, she poses striking parallels between free speech in the past centurysince 9/11, and the very oppressive McCarthyism in the 1940’s and 50’s.  Her film shows that in both situations, patriotism left many Americans stripped of their First Amendment right to free speech.  She follows a few American’s who’s right to free speech have been violated in a world ultra-sensitive to recent issues including terrorism and homosexuality.

Talking to Terrorists, written by Robin Soans and first produced in America by The Sugan Theatre Company (click seasons past, then click 2005-2006), breaks ice on the topic of terrorism.  The stage presents a series of interviews with people involved in terrorism such as terrorists themselves, victims of terrorism, and government officials.  The stage provides a forum for terrorists to tell their stories, remind others of their humanness, and re-establish an appropriate means of overcoming terror. Click here for a review on Talking to Terrorists.

Terrorists are inhumane barbarians and are inherently evil, right?  Wrong.  The BBC documentary The 7/7 Bombers: A Psychological Investigation collects evidence from studies and experts to show that not all suicide bombers are savages; instead, suicide bombers share human traits to which everyone can relate.  This film uses hard evidence to remind us of the humanity of terrorists.

Review of 7/7 Bombers7reviewpdf

In the 1940’s and 50’s, McCarthyism left Americans stripped of free speech, a right for which America is often idolized.  Eric Bentley’s Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: The Investigations of Show-Business by the Un-American Activities Committee 1947 – 1958 exposes and recreates trials, documents, and statements from The House of Un-American Activities during the red scare to show an instance when the American justice system sacrificed peoples’ freedom of speech, which is supposed to be safely protected by justice.

The Yale Repertory Theater performed Are You Now or Have You Ever Been in 1973.

Review on Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: AreYouNow review

The Creative Reality Festival is good because it raises awareness about social injustice and shows some ways people in the Durham/Duke area can help.  More than that, it shows documentary films alongside with documentary plays, putting equal emphasis on both mediums.  Hopefully through this festival, the people will understand that both of these mediums have positive aspects and are successful in spreading the message of the documentary.  One potential outreach partner for the festival is the Justice Theater Project, an organization that describes itself as “an advocacy, activist theater group.”  This group has partner organizations that would help with public relations, and they have experience with bringing public attention to the dramatic arts.  It would be beneficial if the documentary playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen could come to the festival to talk to the audience about the plays they have written and documentary theatre in general.

Production photo from The Exonerated homepage

The Exonerated, written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, follows the story of six people—Delbert, Sunny, Robert, Gary, Kerry, and David—who were falsely imprisoned.  It moves in chronological order, as if the audience is going on a journey alongside the characters.  First the characters give a brief background about themselves, describing their racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds.  Next they tell the audience how they were falsely convicted and sentenced to death row, their trials and tribulations during jail, and ultimately their release.  A majority of the play is simply dialogue, but occasionally the actors will act out a scene as if it were a memory.  The stage is stark, with the actors sitting on stools behind music stands which hold source material.  The play is driven verbally; the actors tell you what happened instead of showing you as it happens.  This set-up makes The Exonerated seem more like a series of interviews with the six exonerated people rather than a play.  This style of documentary was designed to make an intimate connection between the play and the audience.  By revealing the atrocities of a flawed system and the all too real impacts they have on innocent people, the play seeks to impact the audience on an emotional level and call them to action to oppose the death penalty.  By depicting the characters as sympathetic people who were thrust into inhuman circumstances, this play confirms that hope and faith can persevere through the darkest of situations.

After Innocence trailer

After Innocence is a documentary film that focuses on people who were falsely convicted of crimes after they are released from prison years later.  Instead of introducing the audience to all of the main characters at the beginning and following them concurrently, After Innocence presents one person at a time and shows his or her unique story.  These individual stories are tied together by the story of Walton Dedge.  The movie shows the final steps of Dedge going through the legal process of being exonerated, finally being able to return to his parents at the end of the movie.  The movie mainly focuses on the people’s lives after they are set free.  It shows how the people reintegrate themselves into society outside of prison.  Interviews with the exonerated people, film footage from court hearings, and press conferences are the main source material used to provide this documentary credibility.  After Innocence does more than simply reveal social injustice; it also shows what some people are doing in an attempt to fix the broken system, such as members of The Innocence Project fighting to release innocent people still in jail or exonerated people working to get their records expunged. This emotionally charged film shows viewers the stories of people in the lowest part of their lives, but who somehow have the strength to rise above it all and proceed with their heads held high.  They seem almost enlightened, urging for change not only to help themselves but other innocence people who have been victims of injustices.

Actor and director of documentary theater Robin Soans challenges popular beliefs and personal fears by interviewing terrorists from all different parts of the world who fought different causes.  In search of people who care to listen, former terrorists tell stories, complimented by a psychologist and government officials, of how they became and sustained their time as terrorists.  In a series of interviews spanning a period of two years, Soans, who shows a special interest in addressing human conflict, executes a new form of combating terrorism: he sits down and listens to the terrorists, evoking the humanness in all of them.  The frightening experiences of the terrorists help paint a picture of where the true issues behind terrorism lie.  Soans uses the psychologist to translate the stories of terrorists into emotional insight to which all can relate, and he uses government officials to exhibit the gripping conflicts within mankind.  His very personal style of conversation allows his interviewees to open up about their years of pain and guilt.  Sets of this show tend to have very little decoration, its most important prop being a small table where many of the conversations take place.  The telling production of its time, first performed just two months before the 7/7 London train bombing, emphasizes the need to take a new approach to overcoming terrorism.

Co-founder of Moxie Firecracker Films, a production company for independent films, Liz Garbus uses interviews and images to tell people’s stories who were penalized for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech in her HBO documentary Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech.  Drawing a comparison to McCarthyism, Garbus highlights the thin line between free speech and patriotic loyalty since 9/11.  The award winning director and producer question how far  the ideals of American free speech have come since the McCarthy era in the 1940’s and 50’s. In a world that highly values America’s First Amendment right, this film is telling of the issues that jeopardize civil liberties.  Shots of evidence and personal accounts make visible the violation of peoples’ freedoms.  Interviews with her father Martin Garbus, a First Amendment lawyer, convey a professional and historical account of the First Amendment, while keeping information in context to the stories being told.  Interviews with her father, a college professor who was fired for his statements on 9/11, a high school student whose shirt was deemed offensive, a director of an Arabic school in New York, and others, highlight the complex issues that occur when current events endanger peoples’ First Amendment Right.

Creative Reality Festival Presents: Aftermath

For a larger view, click here.

The genre of documentaries has always been very difficult to define. Documentarian Robert Flaherty defined it as “an artistic representation of reality”. If the documentary genre is considered artistic, then documentarians, in a sense, use reality as their canvas. For documentarians, reality is the foundation of the piece, seeing as there is more that goes into the final product. Thus, the concept of creative reality becomes integral in the genre of documentary. We define creative reality as a version of the documentary artist’s reality altered by his or her conscious choices in editing by creating a point of view, selection, and sequence. Choices in editing refer to the deletion or reorganization of footage in order to produce a concise and relevant piece that follows the documentarian’s message. Since the selection and sequence of the documentary is deliberately structured to correspond with the documentarian’s message, documentarians become shapers of reality rather than solely being conduits. Thus, the documentary takes on a certain stance on an issue and displays a point of view through the editing process. This point of view can be created through different techniques, such as direct address and interviews. This staged footage augments the piece’s point of view in that the documentarian is no longer just a fly on the wall but actively interacting and even provoking his or her subjects. The balance between the the real and the creative is a tightrope documentarians must learn to walk on; both the documentarian filmmaker and playwright have an obligation to expose and provoke the truth of an issue without entirely manipulating reality. Integral to forming perspective in a documentary is the techniques used. These techniques are usually unique to the medium of documentary, which can be either film or theatre. The documentarian chooses the medium in a similar way an artist would choose his type of paint; the medium’s effects and techniques have to correspond with the entire product’s message. In the end, the medium, editing, sequence, and point of view have to relate to the most integral part of the documentary: its message. Thus the role of documentarians deepens in that they are responsible for shaping reality in a way that creates a message that conveys a truth to the audience.

The theme we have chosen is “aftermath”. We are focusing on individuals faced with a traumatic event and the events that follow thereafter. What we are interested in is examining is how individuals deal with the consequences of their decisions and how they pick up the pieces of their lives. The three subthemes we chose are the aftermath of assassination, prison, and military life. Although ‘assassin’ comes with many preconceived notions, we chose this as a theme because it reflects a premeditation and scope of violence that isn’t implied with something more generic like murder or violence. For the prison theme, we chose the plays Aalst and Doin’ Time through the Visiting Glass and Aalst and films Troop 1500 and What I Want My Words to Do to You. For the military theme, we chose the plays Another American: Asking and Telling and Reentry and films Ask Not and Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery. For the assassins theme, we chose plays Columbinus and The Execution of Justice and films The Killer at Thurston High and Life and Death of a Serial Killer.

Troop 1500 directed by Ellen Spiro conveys creative reality in that it is a veritable account of reality but is presented in a way that reflects Spiro’s message of victimization among relatives of inmates. This artistic interpretation of reality is achieved through Spiro’s interviews of the inmates as well as having the daughters film and interview their own mothers in prison. Critics comment that these creative liberties on Spiro’s part allow her to broadcast the importance of social groups such as Troop 1500 without completely altering reality.

Doin’ Time through the Visiting Glass by playwright-ethnographer Ashley Lucas also conveys veracity in its artistic interpretation of reality by taking interviews she conducted with over two hundred prisoners and creating a monologue-based play. Although the audience receives second-hand information, the play’s reality lies in the pictures and video clips of prisoners’ relatives, which ascertains its authenticity. Since Lucas herself is the daughter of a prisoner,critics comment on her background also links her to the community she portrays, which gives her credibility as ethnographer and performer.

In her highly acclaimed film, What I Want My Words to Do to You shows producer Eve Ensler as both conduit and shaper of reality. Her off-screen role as producer is supplemented by her onscreen role as leader of a writing program for the women at the Bedford Prison. Ensler facilitates discussion and reflection among the inmates, which allows the audience to feel compassion for these women and to view them not only as the victimizers, but as victims as well. Ensler shapes reality through the dialogues and staged monologues and yet is able to convey the reality of her subjects’ circumstances and plight through the documentary.

Aalst directed by Pol Heyvaert blurs the line between reality and artistic interpretation. Based on the story of a couple from Aalst, Belgium who murdered their children, Heyvaert uses court transcripts to recreate the trial scene, leaving the audience and critics alike unsure of whether these murderers are truly monsters or victims of their case. The play presents the couple dealing with the aftermath of their decision to kill their children rather than subject them to the depravity of society. Through this, Heyvaert creates a new reality in which the line between being a monster and being a victim is thin and blurred.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer reflects Nick Broomfield’s view of a corrupt American legal system in which an assassin who is also a victim is punished. Aileen Wuornos is a victim of not only undiagnosed mental illness but also conservative politicians eager to use her violence as a way to cast the illusion of inflicting harsh punishment. Broomfield’s creative interpretation of reality is accomplished through the way he conducts and displays his interviews with Wuornos. In most of these the camera is focused in on her face to clearly show the audience her every emotion, her wild and unexpected mood swings, and sheer rage towards the system that incriminated her. Broomfield is a provocateur; he and his equipment are physically involved in his film, further enhancing the film’s emotional appeal and its credibility. Broomfield calls attention to the issue of the lack of compassion in the American legal system without completely changing the reality of the Wuornos case. His camera goes silent as she meets her execution.

Columbinus achieves creative reality due to the fact that although it is a factual account of the Columbine shootings, it is presented in a way that reflects PJ Paparelli’s essential purpose of defining rigid social stratifications as the root of high school violence. The distinct division of the play into two parts helps Paparelli express his individual take on reality. The first is a largely artificially constructed discussion of the universally experienced high school social hierarchy and the second is a specific analysis of Columbine’s two specific killers. This distinct organization along with the use of specifically edited archival evidence allows Paparelli to demonstrate his version of reality without actually altering any factual evidence pertaining to the incident but also connecting a historical event to a larger group of individuals who may or may not be touched by this kind of violence.

The PBS Frontline filmmakers behind The Killer at Thurston High convey a creative reality focused on educating its audience on the potential signs to watch for in a high school shooter while maintaining a grounding in the facts of the actual event. The unique perspective of Michael Kirk’s creative reality is achieved through interviews with the family and friends of Kip Kinkle, as well as through editing of the archival evidence. The piece conforms to expectations of a program like frontline where journalistic standards keep the style of documentary filmmaking very conservative in order to be a kind of stand-in for history.

In The Execution of Justice Emily Mann demonstrates to her audience the unjustness of the American legal system. The play’s creative reality is most accurate in its extended courtroom scene where the audience gets to experience the chaos of Dann White’s trial. Mann’s inclusion and editing of archival evidence from the actual trial achieves a demonstration of her perspective on creative reality. According to her critics, Mann is able to infuse this perspective with a unique emotional appeal that allows her audience to perceive the Dann White case through a lens that identifies the legal system as unfair.

Another American: Asking and Telling emphasizes the uniqueness of a diverse group of voices spoken through one-man, the significance of the subject’s verbal expression, and also the play’s relevancy in the media. Marc Wolf is Another American. With nothing more than physical gestures and a change of voice pitch to personify these characters, as h manifests the characters’ worldviews and attitudes exquisitely. Moreover, he believes in Carol Martin’s position on “adher[ing] to an archive makes documentary theatre appear closer to actuality than fiction”, and retains the subject’s individual expression in his performance to maximize the audience’s understanding of each subject. The inherent purpose of this play is to exhibit vital testimonies via theatre verbatim, from those who have been effected or silenced by DADT.

Ask Not directed by Johnny Symons showcases the struggles of homosexual US soldiers and anti-DADT activists campaigning across the country. Despite the assumption that the film is pointing fingers at the US military or the government for the creation and reasoning of this law, it exhibits American citizen’s tolerance of DADT which has encouraged a stagnant political climate that is not motivated enough to fight against this unjust policy. As the audience collects glimpses of homophobia in Iraq, military recruitment centers, and ROTC programs in American universities, the burden of this hidden community becomes noticeably grueling for the selfless individuals who are motivated to serve their country.

Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery is the burial ground dedicated to Iraq war soldiers, and frequently visited by loved ones. HBO’s documentary series records the emotional aftermath of warfare and the mighty burden it presses on families of US soldiers. Section 60 contains exclusive video footage of both the gravesight and the visitors who share their private fears, hopes, questions and sorrow as the war continues and the death toll inclines. The film asks not the question or why, how, when, or by whom, but rather “for what purpose”, as the living question the sacrifices made and freedom gained from their dead loved ones.

Re-Entry by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez is a collection of recordings of Marine’s and their families struggles as they return from war and assimilate to their “home-lives”. The subject of the military family is placed under a microscope as both directors almost wholly preserve the recordings verbatim, showcasing the script as exhibition of the juxtaposition between the conventional and unconventional; one ex-Marine states that when going out for dinner with his family, that he cannot comfortably have his back to the door. Situations similar, and more shocking than these shroud the families of soldiers who yearn to return to normalcy. Re-Entry showcases both the toughened nature of returning Marines, and the undercurrent of fear that traps both them and their families.

As human beings, we all experience a challenging moment in our lives and then are faced with a question: what comes next? Thus, the appeal to our theme is in its universality. Almost anyone can relate to experiencing a catastrophic moment that leaves us picking up the pieces of our lives. Although universal in its main theme, the subthemes allow the audience to gain a new perspective on issues of social justice. The audience can vividly experience the struggles that each subject experiences when faced with the aftermath of a crisis. In this festival, one can gain perspective on what it is like to be a victim of high school social stratification, a mother in prison, or a closeted gay man in the military.

An integral portion of our festival is that it will include both documentary plays and films. The inclusion of both documentary mediums enriches the festival in that it offers a different perspective on the same subtheme. Film and theatre allow the audience to view the subject matter through different lenses. Each medium offers different stylistic and technical aspects that contribute to the overall individual function of each documentary work.

The documentary is a pedagogical tool that is meant to inform and impel the masses to social action. Thus, we feel that our festival theme would specifically apply to several civic groups. Pertaining to the prison and assassin sub-theme, we feel civic groups and other organizations such as the Charlotte Prison Fellowship and the Duke Law Center for Criminal Justice. In relation to the sub-theme on military life, we feel it would serve the interest of organization such as Duke Army ROTC and the Duke and Durham LGBT Associations.
Other non- civic groups that would take interest in our festival would be the Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State Center for Documentary Studies. The Justice Theater Project is also another venue that might be interested since their goal is to perform theatrical pieces that reflect social activism.

Leaders of pre- or post- show discussions can include ethnographer- documentarian Ashley Lucas, who is a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and whose work would be featured in the festival. Another possible discussion leader could be Deb Royals, artistic director of the Theatre Justice Project, who not only teaches courses in performance studies, ethnography and oral tradition at UNC-Chapel Hill but also worked on improving conditions at Central Prison.

With our film festival, we hope to expose the audience to the plights individuals face in light of the aftermath of traumatic events- whether it is after an assassination, in prison, or the military. Integral to the festival will be the concept of reality, since all documentaries convey a reality that has been artistically interpreted for the purposes of bringing social issues to light.

Doin’ Time through the Visiting Glass

“My soul is locked up with him,” laments one of the characters in playwright-ethnographer Ashley Lucas’s documentary play entitled Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass. The play centers around eight characters who portray relatives from all walks of life sharing one commonality—they have a family member in prison. In a 2005 article in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Lucas tells reporter Robert Nott that the play’s focus is on “those who are not judged by the court but who are judged by society…guilty by association”. Organized in monologues, the characters divulge their fears, frustrations, and daily routine with having family in prison. Doin’ Time is a play of characters, hence each monologue is an individual story and unrelated to the other monologues. There is minimal scenery on the stage, yet there is substantial emphasis on the use of media. A slideshow of pictures of the interviewees and Lucas herself is shown intermittently in the piece. Doin’ Time is based on over two hundred interviews conducted by Lucas herself, who also serves as the sole actress of the production. In a review from the Irish Times Magazine of a production at Bewely’s Café Theatre in Dublin, reporter Mika Yoshimoto Murtagh comments that from a beer-swigging, Janis-Joplin-hollering Texan lady to a gay academic [with a] non-convict status…the switch in sociolects is impressive and entertaining”. Lucas’s motivation for the piece comes from her personal background, as her father is serving time in prison. The piece is usually followed by an allotted time for discussion between Lucas and the audience, where issues of prison life are explored.
Director: Maria Figueroa
Playwright: Ashley Lucas
Release Year: 2005

What I Want My Words to Do to You

Critically acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler serves both off and onscreen in the documentary film What I Want My Words to Do to You. Filmmakers follow Eve Ensler as she leads a writing workshop for women at the Bedford Correctional Institution. Many of these women in the writing program were involved in high profile crime cases, such as Pamela Smart, convicted of plotting against her husband’s murder with her sixteen year old lover, and Judith Clark, an Ex- Weather Underground member whose armed robbery led to the deaths of three men. Through the workshop, Ensler has the women express their emotions and confront their innermost issues. The discussions captured on film portray the women’s struggles with adjusting to their new lives in prisons, as well as their sorrow and regret for committing the crimes that led them there. Filmmakers also capture Ensler meeting with five mainstream actresses: Marissa Tomei, Glenn Close, Mary Alice, Rosie Perez, and Hazelle Goodman. These actresses are given a different task: Ensler gives them the prisoner’s writings to perform as monologues in front of the entire community of the Bedford Correctional Institution. Filmmakers capture these actresses’ performances as well as the reaction of the authors of the monologues. In a PBS-sponsored interview, producer Judith Katz comments that after visiting the Bedford prison, her “perceptions of who women in prison are had been shattered”, impelling her to “share that experience with as many people as possible”.
Director: Gary Sunshine
Producers: Judith Katz, Eve Ensler, and Carol Jenkins
Release Year: 2003

Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery

Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery showcases more than our country’s largest military cemetery–it is a theatre of honor, mourning and patriotism visited by the families and friends of deceased US soldiers, and Section 60 is the burial ground for fallen Iraqi soldiers. While it only houses 8% of the deceased Iraqi soldiers, the vastness of the cemetery demonstrates the scores of military members that have given their lives for their people and country just within the past decade. In the film, families and friends visit the gravestones of loved ones and vividly express their feelings towards not only the soldiers, but the military system and the theory of warfare. HBO’s exclusive documentary directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill was not fully supported by the US military but also the families visiting Arlington who chose to be recorded during intimate moments within the cemetery. Mourners speak of voice their memories of the fallen, and concerns for our nation; the viewer’s background knowledge that as the war continues, Section 60 grows, and the heaviness of that truth becomes tangible through the choked voices of the mourners. One topic repeated among the Section 60 visitors is sacrifice and freedom–two juxtaposing virtues that somehow collide and define the motive of the US military. Solidiers sacrifice and compromise their lives in order to gain the freedom of others–but whose freedom? And at what cost? These are the unanswered questions that confound many of the visitors who are left answerless, with the loss of their loved ones. In Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery, HBO has captured the intimate moments between the mourning and the deceased, to expose warfare’s capacity to fragment the lives of it’s citizens.

Trailer – Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery

Director: Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill

Producers: Jon Alpert, Matthew O’Neill, and Rebecca Abrahams

Year: 2007

Another American: Asking and Telling


Documentary theatre is the antithesis of the mass media in the way that it reveals a hidden community–that has been shrouded by the media and supervised by the government–through the medium of verbatim exhibition. Marc Wolf began interviewing people for Another American at a time when DADT existed with little notice among Americans, and when the military was much less involved in wars. The play’s dramaturgical technique communicates the intensity of the character’s fear and hope, enhancing the mood of paranoia that the law has created. This silencing additionally creates as identity crisis among homosexual military members who are forced to not only suppress their sexual identity, but also camouflage it, while retaining their patriotism for a country which disapproves of their identity. All of these unique facets of Another American form an interview-style play whose purpose is to speak out for the silenced and hidden community of homosexuals in the military, and spotlight on the injustices of DADT. Marc Wolf sees theatre verbatim as the strongest medium to showcase Another American because it’s purpose is to “interrogate specific events” such as DADT, which has existed with little scrutiny until recently. Another American exceeds the assumptions of documentary theatre and the topic of DADT through its immediacy in the media, the undiluted expression of the subject, and the difficulty of a one-man show with multiple characters.

Director: Joe Mantello

Playwright:Mark Wolf

Year: 2000

Columbinus

Columbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam is a documentary play upon both their interviews with thousands of high school students across the country and their investigation of archival documents surrounding the Columbine high school shooting. The play’s ultimate message is that the universal social stratification that occurs in high school and the resulting emotional and mental strain creates potential high school shooters. The organization of the play contributes to the function that the play achieves; it is divided into two distinct parts. The first part focuses on the generic stereotypes of high school, with an emphasis on the emotional strain that the social stratification creates upon students. The second part emphasizes the actions of the two shooters in the Columbine incident, portraying them as driven to their crimes by the strains that the social stratification of created by their high school. In the 2005 BlueMonkeyTheatre Company newsletter, Paparelli expresses his intent for this play to spark discussion, asking the universal question “why?” The organization of the play, along with other technical elements such as a focus on character development to drive the plot helps shift the interpretation of the function almost entirely to the audience.

Director: Stephen Karam
Playwright: PJ Paparelli
Release Year: 2005

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer by Nick Broomfield is an acclaimed film that follows the life and execution of Aileen Wuornos, a female serial killer who was dubbed “America’s first female serial killer.” The film explores the reasons for and the aftermath of Wuorno’s rimeS. Broomfield offers an in-depth view of Aileen’s troubled life and seeks to expose the American criminal justice system as completely lacking compassion towards assassins – even those who exhibit signs of insanity. The characters in the film include Aileen, her friends, her estranged family, some of the family members of those murdered, and Broomfield himself. The story of Wuornos in the film is primarily told by Broomfield, but the elegant use of archival evidence and interviews with those who knew Aileen allows the audience to perceive the film as being told by a larger group that is in union about Wuornos being mentally ill. The film begins with the killings, attempts to trace the roots of the killings, and ends with the execution of Wuornos. In the closing of the film, Broomfield makes the assertion that he finds the idea of executing Wuornos “disturbing.” In Broomfield’s creative reality, the assassin becomes the victim and the criminal justice system becomes the assassin.

Director: Nick Broomfield
Producer: Jo Human
Release Year: 2003

Relevant Works Cited.

Troop 1500 poster image: http://www.girlscouts.org/images/news/gstv/troop1500_promo_tumb.jpg

Ask Not poster image: http://www.altfg.com/Stars/a/ask-not.jpg

Columbinus poster image: http://media.timeoutchicago.com/resizeImage/htdocs/export_images/153/153.theat.columbinus.rev.jpg

Another American: Asking and Telling poster image: http://www.thenewgroup.org/9700.htm

Aalst poster image: http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_showAalst

Columbinus image: http://kinemapoetics.blogspot.com/2009/04/columbinus.html

Final collaborative project posts go here!

Duke folks,

This is the place where your under-construction and final project posts for your film/theater festivals should reside.

–Dr. James