It has been almost a year since I saw Trinh Minh-ha’s Reassemblage in a Williams course on documentary films—but I still remember some of its narration:
Documentary. Because reality is organized into an explanation of itself.

As I eventually came to understand, this statement has sarcastic undertone, and questions whether reality can truly be packaged in a neat and objective hour of film. It is the sort of question that arises in many of my Williams classes dealing with social and cultural representation, where issues of authenticity, perspective, and authorship are thoroughly scrutinized. Yet, when someone asks me why I am an American Studies major—and more specifically, why am I interested in documentary films—I usually tell them something about a compulsion to find the stories existing in a common reality. I say this knowing full well that stories do not organize themselves, that someone else’s reality cannot be re-experienced in a completely unmediated fashion. While Williams provides the place to discuss such issues and implications, my field placement in New York should grant a deeper understanding of how a documentary’s story is shaped and developed. I will be working with independent filmmaker Jennie Livingston as she produces her latest project, a documentary called Earth Camp One. My tasks, as her assistant, will include sifting through vast amounts of archival footage and audio recordings to prepare them for potential use in the film. I will be able to observe how storytelling decisions are made—what material is cut and what material is kept—and how that relates to the final product.

It is one thing to speculate in the classroom why an artist, an author, or a filmmaker makes certain choices, it is another to be present in the context they occur. My fieldwork provides the opportunity to see reality made to explain itself, but also—and perhaps more importantly—who is doing the explaining and why.
~Allegra Hyde

Website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennie_Livingston

Students:

Allegra Hyde ‘