Creative Nonfiction Film #1: An introduction to the season

Alex Heeney 0:19

Hello, and welcome to the third season of the Seventh Row podcast. I'm your host, Alex Heeney, editor in chief of seven throw. This season is called the creative nonfiction season. And the season will consist of interviews with some of the most exciting boundary pushing documentary filmmakers working today, many of whom either have a film that has just come out in cinemas or is just playing festivals around now. And so each episode will, will involve me kind of introducing the film and the filmmaker and why, you know, they're interesting and why we think that they're with spotlighting, and then there will be an interview with the filmmaker, where they're talking about their work and, and more specifically, not just their work, but about their thoughts on genre on what is documentary on the particular type of documentaries they're working on. And on what they are trying to achieve, through working in nonfiction, why they like working in nonfiction. And what they're trying to do that, you know, maybe hasn't been done yet in nonfiction, or that they're trying to innovate on.

Alex Heeney 1:37

So as I record this, and release this, the season is still a bit of a work in progress, but I can tell you what you can expect in the first couple of episodes. So in our first episode, today, I'll be introducing the season and discussing what is creative nonfiction. And then episode two, our first sort of media episode of the season, I will be talking to the director, Sophie Fiennes about her new film, The Four Quartets, which is a film of a stage production that stars and was directed by her brother Ralph Fiennes. And I talked to Sophie about how do you capture live performance on screen and all of the challenges there are in trying to

Alex Heeney 2:22

translate a live performance medium, done, and certainly that will be one of the things I discuss. And that film has just been released.

Alex Heeney 2:34

Later in the season, on episode four, I will be talking to Sam Green, who kind of does the opposite stuff, he makes live documentaries. And we'll be talking about his film 32 Sounds but more specifically about this genre that he has kind of helped to invent of live documentary, which is essentially you have a film. That's, that is a documentary, but then there's a live component that is on stage that is, you know, slightly different every time that is intended as performance. So those two are both working on kind of opposite ends of that spectrum, one bringing theater into film and one bringing film into the theater. Interestingly enough, both of those interviews were like Sam Green I talked to in 2022, the day after his Sundance world premiere of the film's is very fresh, new thoughts on the film. And Sophie, I talked to her about a week ago. But she was saying that it was you know, really one of the first time she's had a chance to actually talk about the work. So they're very thoughtful conversations, which have not been filtered through months and months and months of press tours, saying the same thing over and over again. In the final episode of our season, we talking with Penny Lane, who has been a huge inspiration for me personally, and also for seventh thrill and all of our work on documentary and who in fact, gave us the term creative nonfiction. She has a new film that's still on the festival circuit still looking for distribution, catch it. If it comes to your city. It's called Confessions of a Good Samaritan. It's a personal documentary that is all about kind of getting inside the director's head and putting us in her headspace, while also being a film about going through becoming an altruistic kidney donor where you donate your kidney to someone you don't know, which is something penne did in 2019 and documented. So those are the episodes that I have got in the can are almost in the can so far and the other ones will probably be a couple others are still a little bit of a work in progress, but we'll all announce them as as the season goes on.

Alex Heeney 4:51

So what is creative nonfiction film, I'm going to try and give you a bit of a backstory of how we got this term.

Alex Heeney 5:00

and the sort of journey that I went through, starting with, you know, interviewing various filmmakers for seven throw, which then turned into two ebooks on documentary. The first was just about a bunch of different approaches to documentary called, in their own words, documentary masters volume one. And the second really delve deep into creative nonfiction. And that was subjective realities: the art of creative nonfiction, and those are both available on our website, I'll put a link to them in the show notes.

Alex Heeney 5:35

For me, a lot of that started that journey of interest in that kind of started in the early 2010s. And there were a few filmmakers that really made me think deeply about what documentary is and what it can be and what the possibilities of it are. And a lot of those filmmakers are and those interviews that changed my thinking are in our first book that we published on documentaries called, in their own words, documentary masters, part one that came out in 2018, but has interviews not just by me, but interviews that go back to the early 2010s.

Alex Heeney 6:08

And so some of the people who are in there are Penny Lane, who is the documentary filmmaker, who gave me the term creative nonfiction, which gets used a lot to talk about writing and books, but had not really been transported into the realm of film. And she is kind of partly responsible for that. And so are we, because we've been using the term quite a lot. And I've noticed it is showing up more and more in other places. I had talked to her about her documentary nuts, which was an animated documentary, I think, seeing a bunch of animated documentaries, nuts, being one of them. And 25 April, where there's an interview about that in our next ebook, but documentary subjective realities really started to make me go Oh, like you can do weird, almost fictional things in documentary. And then I talked to Joshua Oppenheimer, about his film, the look of silence, which is in again, that interview is a documentary masters part one. And we talked about sound design and about creating a magical realist sound design for the look of silence. And that kind of blew my mind as like.

Alex Heeney 7:20

Even just like being really thoughtful about sound and documentary was not something I've even thought about. And a lot of people haven't, that's one of the things Sam green. And I talked about when we talked about 32 sounds and it's also something that you know, is what caused him to make 32 Sounds was to explored sound and documentary. So that book had a section in it called creative nonfiction in there were interviews with various documentary filmmakers, including Penny Lane.

Alex Heeney 7:49

There's also a whole section in that book of interviews with Frederick Wiseman, who's another filmmaker who obviously had a huge influence on me Who, who, you know, if you've seen his films, they're, they're going to change how you think about documentary. There's a whole pile of interviews that I did with him on several of his films, including national gallery, and in Jackson Heights, and ex libris. And also there's a little piece that compares how he thinks about documentaries compared to Gianfranco Rosi, who I talk to you about fired, see, and they kind of have like polar opposite views of how they approached documentary. So that's really interesting.

Alex Heeney 8:26

Anyway, the story is that's kind of like the starting point, that was the starting point for me and as can be a good starting point for you to to understand, like this journey and where this podcast is coming from, and you can get that, in their own words, documenting masters, part one on our website, seven dash ro.com. I'll put a specific link to it in the show notes. But then, when the pandemic happened, we started doing this series of talks called that we called lockdown film school. And the first of them was one on creative nonfiction, which we did with Penny Lane and the emerging Canadian filmmaker, Carol Nguyen, and we talked about creative nonfiction there. And that conversation is actually in our book subjective realities. And that conversation is kind of what tomorrow took the team had seven throw at the time over into being interested in making a book about this, which had sort of been my pet interest for a long time and then became a bigger interest among the whole seven throw team.

Alex Heeney 9:24

In that book, which you can get at subjective realities.com We, we try to unpack like what is this idea of creative nonfiction. And part of it is this idea of subjectivity in in filmmaking, and how documentaries don't have to be this objective journalistic object, but can actually be a great way at telling subjective stories. And I'm sure if you've listened to the semi robotic cast before, then you know that we're really interested in how you get inside people's heads in films and to quote Celine Sciamma, who also wrote a book about she has said that

Alex Heeney 10:00

cinema is the only art form ever, where you can share someone else's loneliness. You can also get that on a tote bag from us. So that's something that we really explore in the book subjective realities. And in that book we, we ask essentially five questions. The first is just generally what is creative nonfiction. And that includes our interview with Penny Lane and some other folks who weigh in on that. And we have a case study in there about how nonfiction films get funded. And the challenges of getting these, you know, more out there boundary pushing documentaries made and what funding programs are, have existed or do exist to help directors do that.

Alex Heeney 10:46

The second question we asked is, where's the line between fiction and reality? And in that, we talked to a bunch of people who have made films that kind of have some fictional component in it, or even a fiction filmmaker who in Mirage, or ima, who did residue where he was really using documentary sound within a fiction film. And that's also where we've housed the case study that I put together on animated nonfiction filmmaking, which has become a big interest of mine. And in that that's where you can find the interview with Leann Puli, who directed 25 April, which is an animated documentary, as well as interviews with three other documentary filmmakers who made animated films, including Jonas Poehler Rasmussen, who did flee, which was nominated for three Oscars.

Alex Heeney 11:38

We then also look at how can nonfiction reframe and reclaim history and it's almost all interviews with Canadian filmmakers where they're talking about reclaiming stories of marginalized people. And so that could be stories of black history in Canada, trans narratives, stories about indigenous people. All of those things are a part of what is covered in that. And then we ask a question of how can a nonfiction paint a portrait of a person and we look at a bunch of character studies. Some of them are self portraits, and some of them are, you know, where our director is really giving us a character study of somebody either, you know, somebody that they have access to right now as in Eliane rehabs Miguel's war, or somebody you know, that maybe existed in the past, that we're recapturing on film. And Gillian Armstrong does that it with women he's undressed for she actually hired an actor to play that to play the costume designer Orry-Kelly about whom the film is that got a little convoluted there. And you know, how to bring him to life through showing us his work through having an actor play him and a script, where he tells his own story and also through, of course, the interviews with experts. So that's just a handful of them. There's also a really fantastic essay about Chantel ackermans films by Lindsey Pugh where she talks about news from home and no home movie and how Akerman gives her own portraits of herself and portraits of her her mother in those films.

Alex Heeney 13:30

And then we ask the question, how does nonfiction filmmaking have the power to heal and we talked about, we talked to filmmakers who are in the process of making their films they have, you know, gone through some personal growth or given a space to other people to go through personal growth. And one of those is Robert Greene, whose film Procession was a film where he worked with survivors of abuse in the Catholic Church. They kind of created these reenactments of what their experiences their these traumatic experiences were. And they worked with a drama therapist, and through the making of this film, they found a sense of healing and that's in the film. And that's something that Robert Greene talks about in his interview with Orla Smith in the book.

Alex Heeney 14:20

And then we kind of end on this note of, you know, how can creative nonfiction change our conception of cinema and we're talking about live documentaries there. There's an interview with Joe Bini by Orla Smith, where he talks about his film that he made little Ethiopia and he also talks about the film that he co directed with Sam green 1000 thoughts which is a documentary about Kronos Quartet, in which Kronos Quartet actually plays live on stage and it's like a symphony concert in which they are playing with the documentary is talking to them and they are talking back to the documentary and then Sam green is narrating as well and it's it's a really pretty amazing experience.

Alex Heeney 15:00

That's sort of where we left it. These were sort of some of the most exciting films that had come out in the last few years that we had happened to cover it and gave a good, you know, overview of some films that are pushing the boundaries, what we recommend checking out how different filmmakers think about these topics. What are some of the questions documentary filmmakers are asking with their films? That came out in 2021. And there have been a lot of really wonderful documentaries since then that are continuing to push the boundaries. We got a bunch of interviews with the filmmakers about some of those films on our site, we've continued to keep up with that. And on the podcast, we have also done a bunch of episodes where we have had discussions about creative nonfiction films, several of which are films that are featured in the book or are directed by people. In the book. For example, we looked at Christine the fiction film and Kate place Christie in the nonfiction film directed by Robert Greene, who's interviewed in the book and talked about how those stories had different possibilities available to them when told as nonfiction versus fiction and what, what that meant. And we talked about reclaiming history in documentary, through the film's John were reclaimed and no ordinary man both of which are featured in our book. And we've talked about Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary city hall with ex libris. And of course, Wiseman is a big part of the documentary masters book. So I was looking for a way to sort of continue this conversation in a way where you can actually hear the voices of, of the filmmakers and still get, you know, some political commentary from seventh row in this case, it's mostly just me. On this season, this podcast season was kind of was born, partly because there were so many films all at once that I thought were really worth talking about, and talking to the filmmakers about.

Alex Heeney 16:59

So on the season, I'll continue to pick up on those questions that we raised in subjective realities and talk about how these films are continuing to find answers to them in 2023. So please join me for episode two, where I'll talk to Sophie finds about the Four Quartets.

Alex Heeney 17:22

While you're waiting for new episodes to come out if you want to kind of go back and and prep for the season I really recommend listening to Episode 99 where you can hear our conversation with Penny Lane and Carol Nguyen that you know really pushed our understanding of creative nonfiction it inspired us to write the book subjective realities. You can of course also get our two books on documentaries. In their own words, documentary filmmakers, Volume One and subjective realities subjective realities is that subjective realities.com. You can find documentary Masters by looking at our list of ebooks and I'll put a link to it for both of them in the show notes.

Alex Heeney 18:04

If you'd like to hear us talk about creative nonfiction more generally, I really recommend going back to Episode 123, which is from Sundance 2022, where we talk about the history of the festivals, programming of creative nonfiction film, and then how that coincides with how creative nonfiction film has been made and seen in the US in the last decade. I also recommend checking out this year's episode from Sundance 2023 episode seven of our Sundance season where we talk about the highlights of the documentaries at the film festival, most of which are all approaches to creative nonfiction film.

Alex Heeney 18:44

If you'd like to hear us talk about some creative nonfiction films in depth I recommend checking out to members only episodes there's episode 67 where we discuss Frederick Wiseman's ex libris and city hall in great depth, and Episode 95, in which we talk about no ordinary man and John were reclaimed and how the two films use different creative techniques to reclaim lost history.

Alex Heeney 19:12

If you want to become a member of seventh row then you can also listen to our entire archive of podcasts which features a bunch of podcast episodes on documentaries like the ones as well a discount in our bookstore which is a great idea if you are going to get those two books. So to become a member, you can go to seven dash ro.com/join

Alex Heeney 19:36

If you want more information about this season, you can go to seven dash ro.com/creative nonfiction pod. That's no dashes inside there. It's just one word. I'll put a link to it in the show notes so seven dash ro.com/creative nonfiction pod.

Alex Heeney 19:54

You'll be able to find links to the show notes for each episode and all of the episodes and some info about the season to come you can also sign up for our newsletter to stay updated on when new episodes drop. I think I'm going to drop them approximately every week ish. And then probably on Fridays, but you can sign up for the newsletter to get an up to get up to date info on what's going on. If you go to our website for the season, you can also download a free excerpt from our ebooks objective realities, the art of creative nonfiction, so just head to seven dash ro.com/creative nonfiction pod again, I'll put links so that's all for this very long introduction to our do creative nonfiction season. If you want to find me interact with me, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at BLS and asked BW e s t Cineaste.

Alex Heeney 20:51

You can also find us slash me through seven rows, Twitter and Instagram accounts which are at seven zero s ENTHROW. or shoot me an email I love getting emails from people listening to the podcast. It's great to hear that people are actually listening and I love to hear what you're thinking about it. So you can reach me at contact at seven dash ro.com. That's contact at s e n t h dash r o w.com. And if you would like to do me on the podcast to solid I would super appreciate it if you're enjoying the season if you would rate and review the podcast. Rating is super easy. You don't even have to like give us your name. You don't have to write anything. You don't have to come up with a screen name for it. But if we can hit I think it's 200 ratings then I can get our podcast indexed on Rotten Tomatoes. The way our site is which would help even more people find the podcast. Alright, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai