Real People | Real Stories

Jump to Comments

 

In a little bout of clicking around, here’s something wonderful I found. This short documentary is almost obscenely lovely, fancy in a plainspoken way. A lot of filmmaking went into this. It is the more compelling for it.

I’m digging it because it flirts with the edge of journalism in a way that I am really coming to value.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Convincing story, compelling character and timely… but produced. Camera angles, focus tricks, funny edits, moves… not just coverage, but storyboard. If you come to documentary via journalism–as opposed to through interest in film–this production values thing could be a bit of a hurdle. 

It’s a wonderful portrait. Beautiful shooting. Tons of visual anthropology. Brilliant, motivated sound design. I love the sly unfolding of a story that has several layers.

(Not perfect. Maybe a little bit longish, maybe in nearly eight minutes we could have got more of the gentleman’s personality, less of his persona. (But then, just as I was watching, thinking this, it’s revealed that he’s blind–the glasses aren’t an affectation at all. Bang–Layer.))

But here’s what this is about: I have this small, heartwarming suspicion that this film really is a kind of humanist journalism–the collector guy and his story charm the filmmakers, who in turn decide that not only is it a good story to tell, but what if telling the story leads to the story having a happy ending? Maybe 15 people mail a link to Paul Allen or the Smithsonian. Maybe 5,000 people do.

I mean, I can totally imagine the filmmakers having this conversation: “Hey, so, what say we make this killer movie, with all this texture, the great sounds and this amazing character… and then he gets to sell his collection, and retire in comfort and honor? Wouldn’t that be an honorable use of our medium?”

I love the implicit ask at the end of the film. Only it’s not an ask, it’s an opportunity. This is great storytelling.

“Archive” is an outsized human interest crisis story. Like a particularly polished example of something you’d see in the Wednesday afternoon paper’s “Local Characters” feature segment. It’s not even that much of an exaggeration on the form–it just has scene writing and sound design and production values.

Under the conventions of the old journalism profession, “real” stories kinda sorta aren’t allowed to have these.

Which is a little bit nuts.

(Again, not to speak directly of Mr. Dunne, as I don’t know whether he considers himself a journalist, but) it’s kind of a dirty little not-really-secret of journalism that it is often done in the hope of affecting positive outcomes. Why else are there so many stories featuring the lives of real, sympathetic people befallen by crises that seem unjust and somehow betterable? 

Well, it is in part because the world is full of crises, which insist on befalling people. But it is also, partly, the lot of the journalists to find these folks and tell their stories.

Here it is (and don’t tell the conservatives, they’ll laugh you right off the radio):

The Journalists Think They’re Helping*

At what point does telling the stories become advocacy journalism? And is that a problem? If so, why? Isn’t it partly the job of journalists to take note of the things that are going wrong out there, and then find the people whose stories can help us figure out how to make those things right?

I think that’s kind of the basic engine for a lot of journalism. I am pretty much for it, too. In my experience, journalists who are committed to working in this way have a tough row to hoe. And I think that is why a fair number of journalists end up working for do-gooder nonprofits. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ahem.

*I think so, too.