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In AN UNFINISHED
SYMPHONY, beautiful black-and-white filmed footage
from the original march is interspersed with
shots of the war. The film uses actual archival
footage, the juxtaposition results in a seamless,
organic, provocative, and powerful tapestry
of history on film.
Photo courtesy of Mike Majoros.
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In 1979, after giving up the
idea of a career as a musician, I moved to the West
Coast to study film at a small interdisciplinary college.
I was immediately bitten by the bug. Here was a medium
that could encompass all other modes of expression‹photography,
narrative, music, and poetry. Previously I had never
been much of a filmgoer, but now my friends and I
completely immersed ourselves in this new world of
cinema. We had several decades of Fellini and Goddard
movies to catch up on. We rented all of Brackage's
films and showed them back-to-back at parties. I traded
my car for a 16mm Bolex, and spent the food money
on film stock. We were ultimately concerned with finding
our "voice", and then developing a politically and
artistically appropriate language to express our ideas.
Needless to say, these early
films were experimental in nature and were deliberately
created in direct opposition to the established "mainstream"
capitalist mode of filmmaking.
Some of them were pretty good.
Others were unwatchable.
Then, I saw some of the early
cinema verite films made by the Leacock/Pennebaker
gang. In a blinding flash I realized that none of
the ideas I had come up with could compare to the
events in the real world that these guys were catching
with their cameras. Films like PRIMARY, and HAPPY
MOTHER'S DAY were already 15 years old, but they jumped
off the screen with their immediacy and rawness.
So I moved back East to go
to graduate school at MIT and study with Ricky Leacock.
I began to incorporate some of the precepts of cinema
verite into my work. When, at the end of the first
semester, Ricky asked me if I was the Ampex salesman,
I realized that I probably wasn't going to become
one of the new disciples of cinema verite, and I began
to question why, after studying film as an undergraduate,
I went directly on to graduate school to continue
the punishment.
It was also at this point
that I became frustrated with a documentary form that
seemed to preclude me from using some of the tools
I had learned while making more experimental work.
That was 15 years ago. Since
then, I've been trying to find ways to integrate a
personal vision into the documentary form. In a sense,
a documentary, at its very core, is merely a record
of the filmmaker's interaction with the subject; whether
that subject is a person, an idea, or a time in history.
It seems obvious to me that since a documentary film
is a subjective work, it is therefore vital to include
contextual clues to the filmmaker's inherent bias
and subjectivity.
My first film teacher started
out class with the simple statement that "there is
no such thing as an apolitical film". Maybe I should
etch this in stone and place it on top of my Avid.
My most recent work is collaboration
with filmmaker and friend Bestor Cram, titled Unfinished
Symphony. It's an anti-war movie, in which returning
Vietnam veterans (of which Bestor was one) band together
to spread word of the horrors of the war, using their
testimony to help shape public opinion. In a larger
sense, it's a film about how a group of individuals
can shape a democracy.
The film is set to Gorecki's
emotionally powerful"Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"
which becomes the primary organizing device for the
film. The symphony's three movements act as "containers"
which "hold" each of the movies three central ideas‹bearing
witness, democracy and dissent, and reconciliation
and responsibility. Structurally, the film is a collage
of ideas, personalities, and events, and in a sense,
it's the ultimate synthesis of my experimental and
cinema verite filmmaking backgrounds. It's is an obviously
biased work, and has little to do with mainstream
filmmaking: In many ways it is the antithesis of traditional
documentary filmmaking. This non-traditional aspect
makes it a potentially difficult movie to market and
distribute, because it seems to live outside the norms
of the existing documentary mode.
On the other hand, Bestor
and I were fortunate to be invited to Sundance this
past January to screen the film in the documentary
feature competition. I had never been to Sundance,
and most of what I knew of the festival came from
the media. A film programmer emailed me a quote from
Errol Morris saying that he prepared for Sundance
by standing in a meat locker for four days while talking
on the cell phone. I got on the plane with this image
of packs of desperate filmmakers roaming the streets
of Park City with a crazed look in their eyes doing
whatever deeds necessary to score a deal.
What I experienced when I
arrived was completely different. Amidst all the hype,
Sundance seems to be primarily about filmmakers connecting
with audiences. I met people who made the pilgrimage
to Utah, who were willing to stand in lines for hours
in order to see films which may never get widespread
distribution. UNFINISHED SYMPHONY had several wonderful
screenings, and Q &A sessions, which made me, feel
as if I were part of a larger community of filmmakers.
Yes, we were interested in getting good press. Yes,
we were hoping to connect with the right distributor.
And yes, I wouldn't have objected to an award.
But on the most basic level,
the festival was a redemption of the simple idea,
that for those of us with the filmmaking disease,
it's completely fulfilling to sit in a theater with
a group of strangers who are looking at your work,
engrossed with the images you've chosen to put on
the screen. I came away from the festival rejuvenated,
and ready to begin another project.
Next year I'm hoping to go
back as strictly an audience member, and maybe spend
a bit more time skiing.
Mike Majoros has been making
documentary films for the last 20 years. He lives
in Providence RI, where he is a member of the
faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design.
