Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1468810
Godmilow strives to disavow all the many forms of documentary as we know it. She champions the "post-realist doc- umentary" as far superior to any other type and offers it as a koan, a paradoxical Zen riddle. Each chapter holds nuggets of insight, but overall the book fails to make a case for post-realism as the way forward for documentary. There are dozens of subheads within each chapter; examples include "Reject the Westerncentric Games Anthropologists Play," "Reject the Cliches of Journalism," "Dodge the Privileged Gaze," and "Exessify It-I Mean Blow it up Big and let us Ponder It." These four ill-de- fined mandates are crammed into less than four pages, leaving important questions unanswered. In 2022, are all anthropolo- gists Western-centric, and who in the age of TikTok holds the "privileged gaze"? G o d m i l o w 's o v e r a l l a n a l y s i s h a s t w o m a j o r f l a w s : o n e a b o u t t h e d o c - u m e n t a r y p a s t , a n d o n e a b o u t t h e documentary audience. The Past: Her term "post-realist" may be unique when applied to documentary, but realism has always been only one of many authentic nonfiction forms. The following are a few examples. Dating to the Soviet rev- olutionaries Dziga Vertov and Victor Turin in the 1920s, through to the city symphonies of Europeans Hans Richter and Rene Clair, to the National Film Board of Canada's Arthur Lipsett and Norman McLaren, to current makers like Jay Rosenblatt and Péter Forgács, individuals and groups have worked to deconstruct documentary form and meaning. Rejecting the "Cliches of Journalism" was the driving force behind the beginning of cinema verité in Canada and in America, by Robert Drew and Drew Associates Leacock, Pennebaker, Maysles. That verité techniques are now tritely and endlessly bastardized does not make these pioneers' work any less remarkable or valuable. Even Robert Flaherty, excoriated by Godmilow (and others) did not claim to present "the real." He was interested in creating a paean to a vanishing way of life and did not dispute the facts that scenes were created for the camera and that indi- viduals were cast to fulfill his vision. "Kill the Documentary" even includes a repro- 55 S P R I N G Q 2 I S S U E B O O K R E V I E W "Hoop Dreams." Ken Burns. P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T P H OT O : A P