DocNZ: How to get people to Say What You Want...
by: Keith Barclay

Screen Hub
Wednesday 25 February, 2009

According to panellist Leanne Pooley, when it comes to interviewing subjects for documentaries, Craft + Art = Magic. It's an easy formula to agree with, but like most things that look easy it's not an easy thing to achieve.

All of the panellists agreed, to a greater or lesser extent, that developing a relationship with interviewees was key to being able to ask – and have answered – the hard questions.

The relative value of open and closed, or leading, questions was debated. Leanne expressed a strong preference for open questions, arguing that they allow an interviewee to go places the interviewer may not have anticipated. Legal eagle David Bigio and journalist Paul Smith felt it important not to overlook the very specific benefits of using closed questions to develop a line of argument.

As a lawyer, David has the advantage that in a courtroom environment 'interviewees' are obliged to answer his questions or they'll find themselves banged up for contempt, in contrast to the situation some film-makers find themselves in, where their subjects are sometimes at risk of imprisonment or worse if they do answer the questions being asked.

Leanne Pooley showed a clip from The Promise, the closing interview with Lesley Martin (the New Zealand woman who was sentenced to fifteen months for killing her terminally-ill mother). Martin described, in harrowing detail, the actual event.

Panel facilitator and producer Sandi DuBowski had to disguise images and voices to protect some of the subjects in A Jihad for Love, a film shot in twelve countries and nine languages over five and a half years exploring the experience of being a gay or lesbian Muslim.

David's outlining of questioning in a courtroom environment was surprisingly applicable to the types of interviews (and interviewees) film-makers conduct while making a documentary.

The terminology was a little more specific – advocacy, examination in chief, evidence, proof - but the intention of the interview, in either a court or documentary making environment, is similar: to persuade the audience, be it a jury or cinema-goers, of the 'truth' of an argument.

It's a very flexible concept, truth. Julie Bridgham's The Sari Soldiers, filmed in Nepal, explores the role of six women whose experiences give them wildly different perspectives on the civil war against Maoist insurgents and the King's crackdown on civil liberties.

One woman's fifteen year old daughter has been disappeared, tortured and murdered by the Royal Nepalese Army, another is an officer in the Army, another a Maoist rebel. Each woman has her own truth about the conflict. In order to protect the women, Julie had to keep their identities secret from one another during the three years of filming.

It wasn't until the six women came together for the first time, to see a pre-release screening of the film in Kathmandu, that they were able to engage in a dialogue and begin a process of reconciliation, acknowledging that there could be other perspectives of the 'truth'.

It seemed that a pattern for capturing successful interviews was emerging, one of longevity. It reinforced comments from the Monday afternoon session on the place of humour in documentaries about the importance of building trust between film-maker and subject.

The session wasn't all doom and gloom. Leanne showed a clip from her upcoming feature documentary Topp Twins – Untouchable Girls, about New Zealand's favourite yodelling lesbian twins (yes, really).

Keith Barclay
Our New Zealand editor, Keith Barclay, can be contacted on 021 400 102

editor@screenhub.co.nz

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