It’s the summer of conferences, conventions, and gatherings of all sorts, in so many different places. There are snap elections, presidential nomination conventions, the Paris Olympics, documentary conferences, and Thierry Fremaux’s wish to have a Cannes “free of polemics,” despite the presence of heavily armed gendarmes patrolling the streets and testing new biometric surveillance technology. In gathering, we create images and reports. Some of them are mundane. And some of them become talismans, like the photographs and videos of a former American president fist-pumping with a bleeding ear. But none of them, alone, are evidence of our togetherness or divisiveness.
Because these documents, such as documentary films, are not merely snapshots in time. These images—and all images—are, as stated by cinematographer and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson in her keynote address at Getting Real ’24, “ongoing relationships between the people who made them and the people who see them, as long as they last.” That is, it’s up to us, in the now, to negotiate what happens after gatherings. To bestow certain stories with the power of being told and retold.
Ten years ago, MoMA held a mid-career retrospective for Bill Morrison, whose entire practice is devoted to reimbuing meaning into discarded images. This year, film institutions are once again spotlighting his work in series and retrospectives. In the interim, his avant-garde excavations using degraded films as the source material, narrative spine, and object of critique have recently morphed to encompass digital archives. In our cover feature, Carmine Grimaldi examines Morrison’s body of work to draw a formal and political continuum between the old work and new.
A different type of retelling occurs in the transformation of Lawrence Wright’s New Yorker articles to the nonfiction bestseller God Save Texas, and then from page to screen. Robin Berghaus vividly pieces together the stories behind the making of the three-part docuseries, which is also named God Save Texas. Outside of the U.S., interest in Argentine experimental filmmaker Narcisa Hirsch’s oeuvre is undergoing a steady revival. Victor Guimarães and Lucía Requojo dive deep into the work of the maverick feminist filmmaker and writer, who passed away this May.
The “Making a Production” strand follows the last issue’s focus on creative documentaries with Sudipto Sanyal’s profile on NoCut Film Collective, a trio of young filmmakers whose solidarity and patience extends from their production practices to their critically acclaimed filmmaking. For “What’s in My Bag,” we asked Emmy Award–winning cinematographer Victor Tadashi Suárez to give us a peek at his tried-and-trues on productions of every scale, from intimate, indie verité to streamer-produced interviews on sound stages. Attorney Michael Donaldson returns to Documentary to notify us about U.S. legislation that could protect documentary films and outtakes from being subpoenaed in court. “Screen Time” continues with capsule-length reviews on notable new late summer and early fall releases.
To drop us a line, write magazine@documentary.org. Thanks for your continued readership and support.
Abby Sun
Editor, Documentary Magazine