f 84 The presid.ent nnd the iru'age

pelpetr-rally unstable, vulnerable to interpretation ancl forever bciug recontextu-alised and reassessed. Within this frameq'ork, the performances by the presidentsand candidates themselves are comparably performative and serve as remindersthat to tr1' to enforce the distinction bern'een the 'real' person and the perform-ance is ftltile; the politician is necessarily performative. In the next chapter, thisnotion will be discr-rssed in relation not merely to those in front of the camerabut also to the perfbrmati\re doclrmer-rtary, films tl-rat in and of themselvesackr.rou4edge the inhe rent instabiliw of represe nting reality.

6 The performative documentary

This chapter will discuss the performative documentary,, a rnode which er-npha-sises - and indeed constructs a film around - the ofien hidder-r aspect of perform-ance , whether on the part of the documentary subjects or the filmmakers. Whenone discusses performance and the real event, this fusion has more usually beenapplied to documentary drama, lvhere a masquerade of spontar-rcity can be seento function at an overt leve l. It is useful to note the discrepancy betr.veen perfor-mative documentaries and dramas that adopt the style of a documentary byusing, for instance, hand-held camera lvork, scratchy synch sound recording andad-libbed dialogue as one finds in Ken Loach's Cathy Coyne Hoyne. Loach, theexponents of Free Cinema at the end of the 1950s (L)'ndsay Anderson, KarelReisz and others) and the British tradition of gritry drama that ensued - forinstance BBC social issue dramas such as The Spongers (1978, directed by Rolandfoffe , written by Jim Allen) or Granada Television's docudrama or.rtput of the1970s to early 1990s - a1l approach 'realness' from the opposite perspecrive tothe filmmakers to be discnssed here , assuming proximity to the real to reside inan ir-rtensely observational sryle. The docudrama output of the past 30 years rspredicated upon the assumption that drama can legitimately tackle documentaryissues and uncontentiously use non-fiction techniques to achieve its aims. It thusbecomes possible for drama to perform a comparable functior-r to documentary:Cathy Come Horne raised public awareness of homelessness and prompted thefounding of Shelter, whilst Granada's Who Bornbed Birwingham? (f990) leddirectly to the re-opening of the case of the Birmingham Six. Continuing in rhistradition, Jimmy McGoyern's Dochets (1999), about thetLiverpool dockers'strike, confused the boundaries between fact and fiction further: dockers andtheir wives collaborated u'ith McGovern on rhe script and some appeared along-side actors in the cast.l

Within such a realist aesthetic, the role of performance is, paradoxically, todraw the audience into the realiry of the situations being dramatised, to authen-ticate the fictionalisation. In contrast to this, the performative documentary usesperformance within a non-fiction context to draw attention to the impossibilitiesof authentic documentary represenrarion. The performative el€ment within theframelvork of non fiction is thereby an alienating, distancing device, not onewhicl-r actively promotes identification and a straigl-rtforward response to a film's

186 We performatipe docwmentalY

content. There is, however, an essential difference beween films that are perfor-mative in themselves and those that concern performative subject matter, fre-quenrly in conjunction (as in the work of Errol Morris and Nicholas Barker, tobe discussed here), with an elaborate and ostentatiously inaudrentic r.isual sryle.The argr-rment posited throughout this book has been that documentaries are anegotiation berween filmmaker and reality and, at heart, a performance. It isthereby in the films of Nick Broomfield, Molly Dineen, Errol Morris or NicholasBarker that this underlying thesis finds its clearest expression.

Bill Nichots in Blurred Boundaries, a little confusingly (considering tl.re famil-iarity of the term 'performative ' since ]udith Butler's Gender Trowble was pub-lished in 1990) uses the term the 'performative mode' (following the didactic,the observational, the interactive and the reflexive modes)2 to describe fihns that'stress subjective aspects of a classically objective discourse' (Nichols 1994: 95).Conversely, this discussion will focus upon documentaries that are performativein the manner identified by Buder and others after I. L. Austin - r.ramely thatthey function as utterances that simultaneously both describe and perform anaction. Austin's radical differentiation between the constative and performativeaspects of language (the former simply refers to or describes, the latter performswhat it alludes to) has been expanded upon and relocated many times in recentyears, but rarely with reference to documentary.3 Examples of words that Ar-rstinidentifies as being 'performative utterances' are 'I do', said within the context ofthe marriage ceremony, or 'I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth', said whilstsmashing a bottle of champagne against the vessel's side, his reasoning being that'in saying what I do, I actually perform that action'(Austin I970:235). Apar-allel is to be found between these linguistic examples and the perforrnative doc-umentary which - whether built around the intrusive presence of tlte filmmakeror self-conscious performances by its subjects - is the enactment of the notionthat a documentary only comes into being as it is performed, that although itsfactual basis (or document) can pre-date any recording or representation of it,the film itself is necessarily performative because it is given meaning by the inter-action between performance and reality. Unlike Nichols, who finds it hard to dis-guise his latent wariness of the performative documentary mode, supposing thatthe more a documentary 'draws attention to itself', the further it gets from 'whatit represents' (Nichols 1994:97), this chapter will view the performative posi-tively.

The traditional concept of documentary as striving to represent reality asfaithfully as possible is predicated upon the realist assumption that the produc-tion process must be disguised, as was the case with direct cinema. Conversely,the new pe rformative documentaries herald a different notion of documentary'truth' that acknowledges the construction and artificiality of even the non-fic-tion film. Many theorists would view this reflexivity as breaking with documen-tary tradition - but this is only valid if one takes as representative of thedocumentary 'canon' films that seek to hide the modes oF production. This,largely, has been the way in which the documentary familv tree has evolved, withthe relative marginalisation of the more reflexive documentary tradition exempli-

The performatite docurnentnry Ig7fied by early films such as Man. with a Movie carnera, A propos de Nice, Land.without Bread and continuing inro the work of Emile de Anro'io. Jea. Roucharrd Frerrch cinima 'rrlritl, chris Marker. Just as legitimate is the

'ie*, that thenerv performative documentaries are simply the most recent artic.lation of thefiln-rmakers' unease at this very assllmption of rvhat documentaries are about,that, like the previous films discussed i' this book, the films of Broomfield,Michael Moore a'd others have sor-rght to accentuate, not mask, the means ofproduction because they realise tl-rat sr-rch a masquerade is impossibly utopian.The erroneous assumption that documentaries aspire to be referential or .consta-tive' to adopt Austin's terminology (that is, to represent an u'complicated,descriptive relationship berween subject and rext), is being specifically targetedi' perfo.native films, which are rhus n.t breaking with the factual filmmakingtradition, but are a logical extension of that tradition's aims, as much concernedrvith representing reality as their predecessors, but more aware of the inevitablefllsification or subjectification such representation entails.

A prerequisite of the performative documentary as l-re re defir-red is the ir-rclu-sion of a notable performance component, and it is the i.sertion of such a per-formance element into a non-fictional context that has hitherto provedpr.blematic. If, horvever, one retlrrns to Austin's speech models, then the pre-sumed diminution of the films' believability becomes less oFan issue: what a film-maker such as Nick Broomfield is doing when he appears on camera and invoice-over, is acting out a documentary. This performativiry is based on the ideaof disavowal, that simultaneously signals a desire to make a conventional docu-mentary (that is, to give an accurate account ofa series offactual events) whilstalso indicating, through the mechanisms of performance and Broomfield'sobtrusive presence, the impossibility of the documentary's cognirive function.Nick Broomfield's films do this quite literally, as rhe convenrional documentarydisintegrates through the course ofthe film and the performative one takes over.The fundamental issue here is honesty. The performative element could be seento undermine the conventional documentary pursuit of representing the realbecause the elements of performance, dramadsation and acting for the cameraare intrusive and alienating factors. Alternatively, the use ofperfonnance tacticscould be viewed as a means of suggesting that perhaps documentaries shouldadmit the defeat of their utopian aim and elect instead to present an alternative'honesty' that does not seek to mask their inherent instability but rather toacknowledge that performance - the enactment of the documentary specificallyfor the cameras * will alu'ays be the heart of the non-fiction film. Documentaries,like Austin's performatives, perform the actions they name .

Style, meaning and the performative subject

As indicated earlier, there are rwo broad categories of documentary that couldbe termed performative: films that feature performative subjects and which visu-ally are heavily srylised and those rhar are inherently performative and feature tnerntrusive presence of the filmn"raker. Following ludith Butler's discussion of it in

f88 The perforrnatite d.ocwtnentary

Bod.ies that Mattet the most notable single film to fall withir.r the former caregoryis Jennie Livingston's Paris'is Burning (1990), a documenrary about rhe NewYork black and Latino drag balls of the late I9B0s. As a resulr of its subject mat-rer, the issue of performativity has dogged Paris is Burning, and the film itselfhas been (rvrongly) viewed as performative. For the most part, Butler,s orvn dis-cussion of the film focuses on content) above all the issue of drag and ger-rderproblematisation, only touching upon the issue of filmmaking at the end (Butler1993: 136). Caryl Flinn goes one step further in her ana\'si5 when commenring:

Recent documentaries like lennie Livingston's pnris is Burning (1990) anddocumentarl, criticism - influenced by poststructuralist and postmode'risttheory - have cast the concept of pre existing ,reality' and its attendanrnotions of autl-rer-rricity, trurh and objectivity into permanent qlrestion (e .g.,Allen, McGarry, Nichols, Rosenthal). In facr, it is no stretch to say that doc-umentary films, in many ways more so than other cinematic forms, revealthe constructed - indeed, performative - nature of the world around us.

(Fl inn 1998:429)

Flinn is here conflating form and content and is asking paris is Burning to pcr-form a dual function: to be both a documentary concerned with performativiryand to be a performative documentary, which, in the main, it is not. Flinr.r thenunproblematically lists parallels berween Pnris and Michael Moore's Roger andMe srch as the manner in which both'send up ... images and behaviour sup-ported by corporate America' (p.432), without negotiaring the issue that inRoger it is Moore and thereby the film that are sending up corporate America,whilst in Parisit is the subjects of Livingston's film that are doing so. As Butlerobserves, Paris is Burning would have been a markedly different film hadLivingston reflexively intruded upon her subject or implicated the camera in thefilm's 'trajectory of desire' (Butler 1993: I36) - that is, had it been a performa-tive film in the Moore mould instead of remaining a film observing performativeactions.

Par'is is Burning remains a documentary about the issues of drag, and as suchoffers a useful discussion of performativity. Livingston's technique is to juxtaposcimages of the balls with commentary and interviews with drag queen ,walkers'(those who participate in the balls). The interviewees are aspirarional, they dressup under various categories of chic whiteness (.Execr"rtive Realness', .HighFashion Eveningwear', 'Town and Country') which they seek to emulate and bemistaken for. Throughout, there is an ongoing discussion about'realness'which,in the words of Doria' Corey, one of the more senior drag queens, is .to look asmuch as possible like your straight counrerpart ... not a take off or a satire, no -it's actually being able to be this'. To be real, rherefore, is to pass for straight andto not be open to 'reading' or 'shade'which are differing levels ofcritical repar-tee engaged in after having detected and found fauit in the 'realness' of some-one's performance . The successful performance is that which cannot be read. Onthis level, Paris is Bwrning plays a game with its audience inasmuch as its inter-

The performative d.ocwruentary 189

viewees, however convincing, will al*,ays be open to 'reading' because we know,b)' virtue of the interview/performance juxtaposition, that they are perform-ing/taking on another identity when ar the drag balls. As a lesyk, the more sig-nificant episodes of the film as far as an examination of performativiry isconcerned are those whicl-r occur beyond the parameters of the balls. There arefleeting moments in Paris is Burningwhen the film itself becon-res performatir,e,expressing the notion that the documentary - like the drag perfornrances it cap-tures - is epherneral, fluid and in an unstable state of redefinition and change.One such episode (although rather clun.rsily self-reflexive ) is the film's first inter-view with Pepper Labeija. Pepper is filmed asking 'Do you wanr me to say whoI am and al l thatf ' to which one hears Livingston reply' I ' rn Pepper Labeija.. . ' ,a command which is in turn mimicked by Pepper hinrself as he begins again 'I'mPepper Labeija ..'. with a roll of the eyes. More significantly perfcrrmative are thecouple of forays Livingston makes onto the 'real' streets of Manhattar-r to film'real' rich, privileged whites in their designer attire. These sequences, by beingintercut with the balls and inserted into the ongoing dialogue about realness anddrag, take on a strange) performative qualiry of their own, throwing into disar-ray the notion - upheld by the majoriry of the film - of a'realness'that can be'read'. The rich r,vhites (who, in contrast to the interviewees, do not appear toknow they are being filmed), through rheir contextualisarion within the dis-course of drag) start to look no more authentic than their black and Latino imi-tators; the difference between originals and mimics becomes hard to 'read' in afilm where performing is the norm. For the most part, however, Paris is Burningis a conventional film that espouses such stabiliry but just happens to be about agroup of individuals who do not.

The performarive potential of documentary can be interestingly introducedwith reference to its other: the faux dootmentary) fictions which emulate and arestylistically interchangeabie with nonfictional texts. Faux documentaries such asTltis is Spinal Tap and subsequent films directed by Christopher Guesr (who rnTap plays guitarist Nigel Tufnel) such as Best in Show and A Mighty Wind., kol:ertAltman's Tanner'BB (discussed in the previous chapter) or Man Bites Dog drawattention to the potentially entertaining realisation that fact and fiction can beindistinguishable . This essential performativity is exemplified most horrifically bythe last of these, Man Bites Dog, a film about a fiim crew making a documentaryabout a serial killer; as the filming progresses, members of the creu' get suckedinto participating in the killings (including a particularly obscene gang rapewhich functions as a prelude to yet more murders) as opposed to merely filmingthem. It would take a Martian who knows nothing about cinema and satire tonow mistake Spinal Tap for an aurhentic documentary as the Guest 'school' hasbecome a significant comic sub-genre in itselt although these films are superfi-cially more authentic than Man Bites Dog, which, as if warning against its horri-bleness, intimates in its very first scene (the murder of a woman in a traincarriage) that it is not to be believed. Filmed as a srandard fictional sequence, rhescene shows the rvoman - though pleading for her life - not pleading directly (asone surely would do ir-r such a situation) to the characters supposedly shooting

I::

190 The Peffirmatiue docurnentnrY

this snuff movie of her imminent murder. This is the converse of the moment inTbe Trunenn Show when we re alise the characters are inhabiting a set as, like acharacrer in a standard fiction film, the first victim in Man Bites Daa maintainsthe pretence that this is for real and that the apparatus and crew ar! not there.That the rules of the /zar documentary are o'ly superficially adhered to in ManBites Dog by this lack of awareness of the camera distances it from other films inthe genre, which are almost invariably built upon an ackr-rowledgement of thefilming process (through interview, for example, or the deployment of 'wobbli,cam' plritd techniques) and which are) as a result, more closely affiliated in termsof style to 'real' documentaries. ]ust as the dog shows irr Best In show are onlydistir.rguishable from crufts a'd other actual dog shows by virtue of bcrngincluded in a christopher Guest movie in which interviews such as that with thedog ou,'er who has two left feet have served to i.clicate that this is a piece ofcomic fiction, so the folk acts in,4 Mighty wind.are frequently .,.,,-,readable' ren-ditions of the real folk acts featured in No Direction Home, for example,Scorsese 's documentary about Bob Dylan's early career.

This reflexivity is an importanr synergy between the faax documentary andthe performative documentary. As with the performer-based direct cinema films,which many recent performative documentarists cite as i'flue.tial on their work,performative documentaries feature individuals who are performers and/or com-fortable with the idea of performing on firm, but whereas the ethos behind theearlier observational films was to use subjects so used to performing that theywould not notice the potentially intrusive documentary cameras, the ethosbehind the modern performative documentary is to present subjects in such away as to accentuate the fact that the camera and crew are inevitable intrusionsthat alter any situation they enter. It is significant that several of the filmmakersto be discussed here have cited as primary influences the chief exponents of directcinema or their successors; Nick Broomfield, answering questions at the NFTduring a season of his films (i' 1996) singled out Donn pennebaker and Fredwiseman as major influences on his work (the former being formally thanked attlre end of soldier Girls), and Nicholas Barker, when researching signs of theTiwesrsatd the series would be an extension of the observational mode. In factwhat happened in the cases of both Broomfield a'd Barker is that they evolvedradically different and innovative sryles ofdocumenrary that replaced the obser-vational with the performative .a

The performative element of Nicholas Barker's work stems from the correla-tion of a minimalist visual style and the self-consciously constructed perform-ances he eiicits from his subjects. At the front of the feature film (fnmade Beds(1997) there is the apparent oxymoron 'rhe characrers in this film are real', a lit-eralness that arose out of necessity, as those who attended the film's l-ondon andNew York test screenings 'were convinced they were watching highly naturalis-tic fictio'' (Barker 1999). The ambiguiry creared by this.residual complexrtyaround the nature of performance is a development of Barker's earl ier seriessigns of the Times (BBC, 1992) about interior design and perso'al taste . Each ofthe five parts abides by much the same format: a pre-title montage of images ar-rd

The perfornr.ntite docwwentary 191

comments, follolved by a series of seven or eight interviews rvith individrials orcouples about their homes. The films are episodic and non-narrative; the inter-vielvees are loosely grouped around a theme (couples, mothers ar-rd daughters,singletons, those rvho see themselves as being a'little bit different'), but are notsubsequently used to develop a cumulative argument. In this, Signs of the I'int'esis quintessentially observational, and yet it differs markedly from the style ofclas-sic observational documentary. \A/hereas observational documentaries tradition-ally remain unreflexive, Signs of the Times is analytical of the voyeuristic impulseclose observation prompts in its audience and, in its self-conscious visual style,also reflects its subjectivity and authorship. The series proved hugely influenu'alin terms of the development of British television documentary, BBC2's Mod'ernTitnes (the channel's replacement for the more conventional, people-based 40Mi.nutes) beir.rg one such 'slavish imitation' (Barker 1999).5

Signs of the Times abided by a n'ranifesto of rules that ir.rcluded:

rninimal artifice in lighting; where possible shooting everything frontally andat the height of observation so you never looked down or up at anything;no arty angles, no angles that screamed elegance or style; very few close-ups;no dissolves; everything had to be shot on widescreen; no music.

(Barker I999)

As Barker nolv adnrits, 'whenever anyone gets into manifesto mode they are gen-erally protesting too much' (Barker 1999), but his forensic approach to docu-me ntary achieved rwo notable things: the dissection of his subject matter and thedissection of documentary convention . Signs oJ'the Tirues is minimalist, srylisedand possesses a srylistic uniformity that gives it a clear idendry and lends it afetishistic intensity, mesmerised by superficialities, appearance and detail. In thatit challenges notions of fixed identity or truth and prioritises the moments ofinteraction between filmmakers, camera and subjects, Signs of the Tiwesis perfor-mative, repeatedly capturing the tension befween the realness of the documen-tary situation and its artificialisation by the camera. lust as it is somewhatperverse to alienate the spectator through the dislocation of sound and image(Barker adopted a technique whereby he 'would either give vou too much tolook at and nothing to listen to ... or I would give you something spectacularlybanal and a rich display of words' II999]), so it is equaily Perverse to maintain adistance from the series''characters'. These'characters'are performative on rwocounts: they are performing their words by being the embodiments of their iden-tified tastes and attitudes, and they perform their interviews in such a way as toraise questions about spontaneity and documentary authenticity. These alienat-ing performances stem from how they are eventually filmed and from the inter-viewing methods employed. In the first instance, Barker would record hissubjects using a digital video or High 8-mm camera from which he madedetailed transcripts, he would then distil those transcripts and selecting passageshe u,anted his subjects to repeat when it came to the actual recording, returningto them (with Super 16-mm cameras) for the f i lming and coaxing them into

I92 The perJbrtnatitte d.ocunaentary

're-articulating somerhing they had said before' (Barker 1999). This is r.rot acompletely ur-rusual tectrnique, but one that is, in signs of the Tiwes, taken to anexrreme, in that the characters clearly signal this lack of spontar.reiry through howthey interact with each other, look at the came ra and pose for it. In this, the sub-jects in signs of the Times are ,like the walkers in paris is Bu.rning, playing withconcepts of 'realness', giving an approximation of themselves; the diffbrencebeing, however, that the scripdng is done very much by Barker, the or.ertly con-trolling director.

The dualiry at the heart of the series' fetishistic involvemerr with the imageand its subjects revolves around both engrossing us ir-r the subjects' narratives anddistancing us from its characters by imposing a heightened, reflexi'e visual sryle.The close-ups of accessories, ornaments and fabrics fu'ctior-r as weightymetaphors for the conflicts they symbolise : in one of the mini-narratives of theopening film 'Marie-I-ouise collects bric-a-brac', one woman (Tricia) is accusedby her partne r of spoi l ing his spartan mansion f lat with her cl*t ter, an invasiorrillustrated by a montage sequence of rricia's ornaments gradually encroachingupon the surfaces of an empty shelf unit. Like Freud's concept of the fetish asthe indirect purveyor ofsexual desire, the series'way ofrevealing the charactersof its subjects is via a perve rse interest in minutiae - many interviews start, forexample, with close-ups of details such as tl.re subjects'shoes. This fetishistic cycis, by associatior-r, applied to the people's performances: the mannered andrehearsed way in which they speak, their direct address to camera and theirpainterly poses. we are invited not to observe but to scrutinise them, their man-nerisms, their words; the effect of this scrr.rtiny functioning as an indication thateacir time these people speak they are doing so with their audience very much inmind, Just as they are putting their houses on display so they are presenringthemselves for assessment. These subjects are not caught unawares or merelytalking about themselves in an unpremeditated fashion, rather they are consciousof their involvement in a performative event, one that is simultaneously a descrip-tion and an enactment of their lives and lifestyles.

This challenge to preconceived notions of realness is taken further in (Jnwad.eBed's,Barker's feature film following, over the course of several months, four sin-gle New Yorkers (rwo men, Michael and Mikey; rwo women) Aimee and Brenda)in their pursuit ofrelationships. Barker takes the prepararory techniques used insigns of the Times mrch further, ending up rvith 'a formal script which was thennegotiated with the principal characters who were then directed under morc orless feature film conditions to perform it pretty much as we'd agreed' (Barker1999). with rhe performances from rhe characters he sought ar.r .illusion ofspontaneity' (Barker 1999), thus imposing another perverse marriage betweenseemingly incompatible eiements that, in tunl, are reflected in the film's eouivo-cal tone: warm and interested on the one hand, distant and analytical on theother. The structure of flnmade Balris eoisodic ancl non-cumulative in thet, bi,the end, although we have gained intimate insights ir-rto the four characters, theirstories lack conventional closure. Instead tl-re film offered a detailed compositeportrait of not jr.rst four individuals but also the generalised issue of daflns.

The performntitte d'octt'tnentary 193

(Jnmad.e Bed: is less brittle than Signs of the Tirnes and builds up empathyberween spectators and thc characters' al l of whom have a preoccttpation with

which we can sympathise: weight, stature) age, financial insecurity. Althor-rghBarker consciously refuses to furnish his spectators u,ith traditional biographicalilformation about tl-re four characters (rnaintailing that 'as soon as I give 1'ourhat information, I provide an easy handle for your prejr.rdices' IBarker 1999])lre shows their rulnerabilities and invites us to sylnpathise rvith them. Unmad'eBads is iess obsessed r,vith its owlt style and more responsive to the personalitiesof the characters being filmed. The younger Michael, for exampie , who seemsparticularly self-conscious (about his height) and angry at the u'orld, is often keptat a greater distance than Brenda, who, from the outset, is more than happy to

conficle in the came ra, discuss her maturing body whilst scrutinising it in the mir-ror or admitting that money is her sole motivation for wanting a man'

Interspersed throughout lJnrnad.e Beds and functioning as couuterpoints to

these long interviews are sequences shot, from a distance, through winclows, looking in at anolrymous Nelv Yorkers as they go about their intimate, daily routiles.These montage episodes make cxplicit the film's voyeurisnr. Barker restaged scenesthat, 'with or without binoculars' he had witlessed over the seven or eigl-rt mouthshe spent in NewYork researching (Jnmad.e Bels, scenes that he'only half under-stood' (Barker 1999). These scenes (reminiscent of Rear wind'on, and similarlyreceptive to fantasy and reinterpretation) were then reconstructed using people

who were nor rhose Barker had originally watched. clearly directed (using walkie-

talkies, lights) and filmed over long periods of time Barker maintains that at the

rimes these subsidiary characters forgot they were being filmed. This idea of seeingthe details of an intimate scene unfold without ftilly con.rprehending their signifi-cance is crucial to (Jnrnnde Bed5 and to ttre voyeuristic impu.lse it enacts. Thestrangeness of these interludes makes us reassess (rather like the 'real' Manhattan,.qrl.rr.., in Paris is Burning do) the remainder of the film. what is being played

out here is Barker's discovery of the role windows play in New York:

The thing about New York is rhat most people in the city share a windowwith another vyindoq and one of the really interesting things I discoveredwhen I first started living there, was that there was a sociai contract betweenthe people who looked onto one another, so that people would be entirelyhappy to share their nakedness or theif daily toilet rituals with the windowopjosite, because that intimacy was reciprocated, but they all felt that if any-body elr. shoulcl see their daily pattern that it would be a violation of their

Pnvacy' (Barker 1999)

windows granr access but they also alienate; this duality provides the temptationt".onrtru.r, out of detai led frrgrnents o[people's l ! ' 'es' the f2p12s1' 6f whn they

are because 'you don't have elough information to assernble your narrative and

so fill in the gaps with your ou'n imaginings and fantasies'(Barker 1999). This

has repercussions for how (Jnwnde Badssuggests we look at and assimilate the

194 The Perforwative docuwentarY

more conventional documentary image: out of snippets we construct wholestories and characters rve can identify with and tvhose 'realness' we find credible.

The formalised use of the camera) framing and self-conscious performances byall the four protagonists in Unmad.e Beds might yield intimate and revealingdetails, but our knowledge remains compromised by the alienation imposed bysuch stylistic mamrerisms. The performative aspects of Unrnade Beds suggest thatsome things will forever be withheld from us. Although Barker describes himselfas a portraitist, remarking that the scrutiny of the 'surface texture' can reveal'certain underlying psychological truths', he does not give an intetpretatior-r oftl-rose 'psychological truths' and in fact intentionally represses the m b1,, fbr exarn-ple, withholding conventional biographical information pertaining to his charac-ters such as age and profession or by keeping back, until late in the film,discr-rssions of issues (such as Aintee's weight) that might touch on such 'truths'.This alier.ration is echoed directly in Unmnde Bed.s' style and narrative form. Whatwe retain immediately from watching the film are details of the characters'appearance, sartorial taste and verbal or physical mannerisms. Because Barkerhimself does not then mould these ostensibly superficial observations into a morerounded portrait, we as spectators are left to manage the contextualising for our-selves and imagine, as Barker describes he did as he watched strangers throughwindows, what these details tell us about the characters as a whole. We will neverknow whether or not our supposit ions are correct.

There is a linear logic to the way in which time passes in Unwade Beds thatcan be correlated with the consistency of the film's visual style. Although lessrigidly conceived than Signs of tbe Tirnes (there is, for example, a richly evocatrveuse of music), Unmade Bed.s stilrl demonstrates a uniformiry of style, using a staticcamera, getting the characters to pose , framing them so our awareness that thesepeople are being filmed is never lost. The paradox of this regularity is that itaccentuates the film's fragmentary nature - that it remains most intrigued by sur-face texture, and elects not to construct out ofits assembled detail either a tra-ditionally closed narrative or conventional portraits of its protagonists. JudithBuder articulates in her introductory discussion to Paris is Burning,'There rc nosubject prior to its constructions' (Butler L993: 124). Unm.nd.e Bed.s avoids beingthis dogmatic, and instead suggests that what we see in the film is a compositeof what the characters bring to the film (much of which might remain hidden)and what the film itself can reveal.

From a very different standpoint the same could be said of Errol Morris's doc-umentaries, documentaries that, like Barker's, have been thought to prior:itisestyle over content (discussed in the following chapter, for instance, is J.Floberman's evaluation of The Fog of Wa4 of which he says, rather bitchily:'McNamara's bad teeth and liver spots nonvithstanding, the beaury of The Fog ofWar is enrsrely skin deep' (Hoberman 2004: 2I and 22). In fact, like Barker's,Morris's stylistic excess and visual refinement do not merely display a heightenedaesthetic se nse but become in themselves elements of a performative documen-tary discourse, the visual flourishes not being mobilised to dismantle in order toshed doubt upon the documentary endeavour but in order to uphold it. Linda

Tl'te perforrnntitte- d ocutnentnry 195

williams offers Morris's Tlte Tbin Blwe Line (1988) as a prime example of whatshe terms the 'postlrodern documentary approach', namely tl-re desire to access'traumatic historical truths inaccessible to representation bV any simple or single..mirror with memory" - in the v6rit6 sense of capturing events as they happen'(Willianrs 1993: 12) . The event under scrutiny in The Thin BIue Line is traditionalir-rvestigative terrain - the 'true ' story of Randall Adams, convicted of the murderof Dallas police officer Robert Wood in 1976. Morris's research led him to inter-view David Harris, Adams' principal accllser and also in prison fbr murder, and tothe eventual extractior.r of his'cryptic but clramatic'(p. I2) telephone confessionto wood's murder, played at rhe conclusiort to The Thin Bltrr Liw. As a directresult of the documentary, Adams u'as released, although he brought a court caseagainst Morris .o As Signs of the Tirnes altered the subseque nt course of British tel-evision documentary, so The Thin Blwe Line has prove d hugely i1f'luential overdocumeltaries i1 both cinema and television, primarily because of rvhat Williamsdefi1es as its 'film-r-roirish beaury, its apparent abandotlmeut of ciuema- r'6rit6 real-ism for studiecl, often slow-motiou, and higl-rly expressionistic reenactments of dif-ferent witnesses' version of the murder to the tune of Philip Glass's hypnoticscore'(p. 12). Wil l iams rr,vice refers to somerhing inTheThitt Blwe Lim as'hyp-notic' - Glass's score and later Morris's pace (p. l3). In fact, much of TIte ThinBlue Line does not appear particlllarly 'hypnotic': the interviews are interestinglyframed and atmospherically lit, but they are largely eyewitness accolrnts thatimpart classic documentary informatiol; what Williams and others have mademuch of in relation to Morris's documentary is its use of 'filler' reconstructions ofthese eyewitness accounts that re-enact the various atld contradictgry accounts ofWood's murder. The stylisati6l of these - their extreme chiaroscuro lighting' theirslowed pace, the use of Glass's portentous music - all serve to underline both theimportance of the contradictory accounts and their possible affiliation to fiction,as Morris has created a mise-en-scineclosely allied to feature films. (The closest ref-erence points for Morris's mise-en-scine and use of music are probably to be foundin the work of David Lynch).

ln Tbe Thin Bltle Line and Morris's subsequent docume ntaries the slipperinessand indeterminacy of .the rruth' is principally signalled by how this ove rwroughtvisual style becomes linkecl to a scePticism concerning the capability or not of thedocumentary to represent such a truth. ln The Tl'tin Blwe Line this scepticism isenacted via the multiple and contradictory dramatisations of eyewitnessaccounts; in a later film such as Mr Death (1999) it emerges through FredLeuchter's obsession with the evidence he thinks he fails to find amidst the rutnsof the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz. Leuchter's painstakingresearch - taking scrapings from the walls ofthese ruins and analysing them forevidence ofextermination etc. - leads him towards a conclusion that goes againstreceived historical fact: that the death camps existed and that they killed in excessof six million Jews. The parallels between Leuchter's search and documentary aremany. Most importantly for an undersranding of Morris's films is the suppositionthat what you see only partially serves as an indicator for what a documentarycan reveal about a subject. The tension between what Morris and we 'know' to

196 The performntive documentary

have beeu the case atAuschwitz and Leuchter 's denial of t l -r is using as'evidence'the findings Mr Death has filmed him gan.rering is the same tension tl-rar under-pins all of Morris's films, narrrely the often contradictory relationship benveenq'hat individuals think they know./rvould like to believe a1d rvhat actuallyoccurred. To complicate matters) the latter it is frequently irnpossible to demon-strate r,vith ar-ry certainty.

The qualities inherent withir.r Morris's style proclairn his clocumer.rtaries'essential performativiry As a director he is endlessly, obsessively preoccupiedrvith how '"ve (Morris and the audiences of his films) look at and are shownimages; that we can bring ro them fantasy and prejudice and can thir.rk vge fathomthem rvith only incomplete knor.vledge of the events they depict. The conclusionfrom l'atching Morris's films can only be that the image and/or the clocumen,tary can reveal a truth but not all the truth(s) of a story ancl oue that is, if wl-ratwe desire tion-r a docunlelltary is an answer to all the questions u,e might havebrought to the documentary before we started viewing, mutable ancl complex aswell as imperfect or incomplete. Several factors in Morris's visual style proclaimhis films' performativiry. There are his freqr,rent curs to black durir.rg inrervie,"r,s(he does not mask his edits with 'noddies' or cut aways ro hands) a'cl otherdevices that serve as distanciation techniques. Through his srylisation he alsoconfirms the artificialiry of the docrimentary production process, thereby cor-r-firming the existence of a life beyond the image and beyond the figure whomight be talking, a confirmation rhat, rather tautologically, affirms the centralityto this process of the performative masquerade. Morris's documentaries are char-acterised by a feeling of 'presentness', a feeling that we are witnessing the eventsas they are at the monenr of filming, with the suggestion that, had the film beenmade at a different time, then the representation of these events might have beendifferent. A trait shared with the much more overtly 'present' documentaries offilmmakers such as Nick Broomfield, Moliy Dineen or Michael Moore whosefilms mimic the act of following individuals and subiects in order to make filmsabout them is the fact that Morris's films also chart ttre process of discovery thatmany retrospective documentaries omit.

Morris's films, in that they nor only mimic the act of foilowing a subject buralso enact the process of factual and intellectual discovery rhat goes into com-pleting a documentary, are performative. Morris's best documentaries are char-acterised by this intellectual unfurling: rhey are built around somerimes ellipticalimages and the links benveen sequences only truly become clear as the spectatoris invited to re-assess images already viewed in the light of later revelations andevents. Through Mr Death, Fred Leuchter - as he becomes more convinced thatAuschwitz was nor a death camp - appears himself to change, but it could be thatour interpretation of him, altered by the film's gradually expanding porrrair,imposes a change on him. Towards the end of the film, there is a sequence inwhich Leuchter reveals to camera that he was nor paid for his revolutionary lethalinjection machine and that it is still for sale for the price of maintaining it. Hissmile by now seems far more diffident, less brazen than it has been, as if he hasbeen affected by how he now understands hirnselfto be perceived.

Tl'te perfortnntitte docuruentary 197

ln Morris's documeptaries revelation exists in tandem with self-revelatiorr;they do not start from an immediately perceptible , determined point of vierv ar-rdiustead e t)act their subjects' alrd Morris 's nvin process of discovcrv and unde r-standir-rg. Thev often contain a surprise piece of knorvledge that changes every-thing: from the course the filn-r's investigatior-r takes to the spectators'responses.Just strcl-r a r-noment occlrs '"vhen David Harris, during an interview in Tbe ThinBIu.e Line, raises a hancl to scratch his head, revealing that he is liandcuffed andin prison himself. This accidental revelation transforms and makes us reconsidereveryrhing that has preceded it (it is r.rot so dramatic, but this casual indicator ofHarris's situation is a sl-rock tactic not unlike the late revelation of the dragsirrger's 'true' sex in Tht Crfing Gawe). As with the Neil |orclan film, beir.rg toldfir-rally that Harris is being interviewed in prison makes us rvonder whether wesl-rolld have underst<tocl this earlier - rdre the r his orange shirt might have alertedr,rs to his incarcerati<-rt-t - attd n'onder why Morris's strategy had been to ligl-rtthese interviews in such a staglr, color-rrful \,vay as to deflect atterltion fronr this(the reddish lighting in particular complements Harris's sl.rirt and so deflectsattelltion from. it). Morris's docurnentaries are unpredictable and a conventiorralsense of closure is rarely imposed; he saves Harris's confession for the very enc{of The Thin Blue Line in the same way as he saves until the final sequence of ?DaFog of war Robert McNamara's most shaming, shameful refirsal to answer awk-ward questions about his political career. If they l.rad come earlier, both Harris'sconfession and McNamara's most emphatic evasion would have determined ourresponses to whatever follor,ved, a causaliry drat would have run colrnter toMorris's performative desire to maintain his films' presentness and flexibility.

Issues of authorship in the performative documentary

What has occurred within the last decade (and performative documentaries areat the forefront of this) is a shift towards more self-consciously 'arry' and expres-sive modes of documentary filmmaking. Reflexive documentaries, as they chal-lenge the notiol oi film's 'transparency' and highlight the performative qualiryof documentary, will emphasise issues of aurhofship and construction. BothBarker and Morris make their authorship expiicit, not thlough personalisationbut through formulating a consistent and flamboyant visual style. The questionof authorship has traditionally proved a thorny problem for the documentary' asthe recognised interve ntion of an nutewr disruPts the non-fiction film's supposedallegiance to transparency and truthfulness. As, however, this book has arguedagainst the uncompromised rendition of the real being an attainable goal fornon-fiction, the presence of the autew is not so problematic, for one of thecorollaries of acceptir-rg that documentary canrtot but perform the interactionbetween realiq and its representation is the acknowledgement that documentary,like fiction. is authored. As with the theorisation of the a,tttearin the realm ofnarrative fictior-r film, what appears to Pose particular difficulties where documen-taries are concerned is the ar-rthor-director. A familiar charge levelled at docu-mentary directors - who, through a variety of means such as voice-over,

i98 Tlte performative docanoentary

aPpearance on camera and ovcrt stylisatior-r have signalled their control over theirwork - is tiat they are r.reedlessly egotistical in not allorving the subject matter to'speak for itself'. But as Nick Broornfield has countered, no one accuses Alanwhicker (or other presenter-reporters) of beir.rg egotistical. The signposting ofthe documentary author-director or his or her overt intrusion crystallises docu-mentary's fundamental conflict benveen subjecrivity and objectiviry. one rcpcr-cussion of the establishment of a docr,rmentary canon that has historicallymarginalised films emphasising the aurhor's presence is that it has been too read-ily assun-red that the repression of the author has been necessary to the imple-nrcn tat ion of ob ject iviry.

cuhninating in rhe recenr work of filmmakers such as Michael Moore, MollyDineen and Nick Broomfield, rvho are active participants in their films, docu,mentary has an established tradition of the performer-director. These filmmak-ers, to varying degrees, participate in their films because they are interested indiscovering alternative and less forrlally restricri'e ways of gctting to rvhat the1,perceive to be the essence of their subjects. The means by which they achieve thisare not those conventionally associated witl-r truth-finding post-direct cinema asthey entail breaking the illusion of film, rhereby' interl-rpting the priyileged rela-tionship between the filmed subjects and the spectaror. l{ecently, many moredocumentaries are emerging that take for granted the existence and inevitablepresence of their filmmakers, directly demonstrating the inherent performativiryof the non-fiction film. The overt intervention of the filmmaker definitively sig,nals the death of documentary theory's idealisation of the unbiased film by ask-ing, categorically and from within the documentary itself: what else rs adocumentary but a dialogue between a filrnmaker, a crew and a situation that.although in existence prior to their arrival, has irrevocably been changed by thatarrivalf what author-performer-based documentaries reiterate are the twrnnotions that a documentary is its own document and that the interventionistdocumentary filmmaker is a fluid entity defined and redefined b)' every contextin which he or she appears. The author-performer is thereby one constituent ofa film's ongoing dialectical analysis. As Broomfield comments in an interviewabou Biggie and. Tupac (2002),in ttlritl films the audience is nor granted anyinformation about the filmmakers behind rhe cameras, going on to concludeabout why he abandoned that way of filmmaking rhar 'it's

'ot the presence of

the camera that changes people's behaviour, it's the relationship they have withtlre people behind it' (wise , D.2002: t8). In Broomfield's films the relationshipwith tl.re people behind the camera is explicit. Before discussir.rg tl.re rise of the'star director' with specific reference to Nick Broomfield, this chapter will focuson the work of Molly Dineen, a filmmaker (director and camerapersor.r) wl.ro sig-nals her presence through the persistent use of her voice off-camera, but whonevertheless works in a lnore straightforward observational way and leaves hersubjects to visually dominate her films.

The second chapter of this book examined the historical rarity of the fen.ralevoice-over, with particular reference to swnles, a documentary that creates a com-plex dialectic around irs woman narraror. since sunless 0982) or Hnndsvorth

The perforrnatire docuwentary 199

Songs (1986) - a documentary by members of the Black Audio Film Collective thatis also noted for its use of female narrationT - the female voice-over has becomemore commonplace, and yet it is more in the realm of the female authorial narra-tior.r that a major shift has occurred. In late I990s British television documeutary,the presence of the woman director's voice is rvidespread (a vogue that probabl,vwould not have started had it not been for Dineen); the presence of Dineen's voiceindicates a desire to use the voice as commentarv. as a mealls of claiming controlof the fi1m.8 Ciass and gender issues are particularly significant factors withinDineen's work, hence the interu'eaving of herself into dre concerns of her docu-mentaries. Bill Nichols' use of the word 'r'oice' to signal both the physical voiceand tl-re filn.rmaker's authorial imprint is strikingly pertinent to the work of coutemporary women filmmakers such as Dineen, as what this trend towards the inclusionof their own commentaries and interjections most forcefully suggests is a grorvingdesire to reinstate the personal, subjective aspect of the physical voice.e The filmsof Molly Dineen are manifesdy personal visions, inscribed with her subjective pres-ence via the physical intervention ofher voice.

With this intervention, a filmmaker like Dineen is also signalling the con-structedness (a preferable term to inauthenticity) of all documentary by f<rrmu-lating an alternative 'realness' around her desire to show the nuts and bolts ofdocumentary-making. This standpoint is actually enacted towards the beginningof Geri (f 999), Dinee n's documentary about Geri Halliwell following her depar-ture from the Spice Girls. Soon after she has agreed to make the film, Dineentravels by train with Halliwell from Paris to England. During the course of thejourney, Dineen films Geri on the telephone to her lawyers offering assurancesthat she has 'complete control' over the documentary. Dineen immediately con-tradicts this, asking Halliwell why she should 'spend months following youround' only to relinquish control of the docurnentarg subsequently explaining'after Halliwell has interjected that she would stop herself being shou'n in toomuch of a'bad light', that any film is a negotiation beween filmmaker and sub-ject. Since Horne from the Hill, her first full-length documentary which she madewhilst still at the National Film and Television School, Dineen's work has beenpredicated upon this understanding of documentary as a dialogue, althoughDineen herself has argued that her documentaries are dictated entirely by thepeople in them, constructed around her intrusion into their lives. This mutual-ity is illustrated by Colonel Hilary Hook in Home frow the Hill (BBC2' 1985),after Dineen has asked him whether or not he is happy. Hook replies: 'Blissfully,in your presence; otherwise I represent divine discontent'. lvhat so many ofDineen's subjects acknowledge is that however well the filmmaker gets to knowthem (and Dineen, like Cirris Terrill, 'goes native' for the long researcl.r/shoot-ing period), the difference between them (without her camera and with it) willremain. Dineen's work is consistently illrrstrative of this dilemma, althoughbetween Horne frorn the Hill and Geri her approach to the twin issues of per-formance ar-rd authorial control has altered substantiall,v.

Dineen's early style - very much indebted to observatioual cinema - is exem-plified by Heart of the Angel (BBC,1989), a film about the A,ngel Underground

fi

200 The peffirmatite documsntary

statiorl in London, prior to its temporary closure and modernisation. The filmhas no explanatory voice-over and elects) in spite ofthe station's decrepit state,to remain apolitical and to focus on the characters Dineen encounters. BecauseHeart of tbe Angel sideltnes political issues (later series such as The Ark, ht theCotnpany of Men and The Lords' Tale tackle bigger establishments and thernes) itis exemplary of Dineen's method of interacting lr'ith her subjects. Dineen's intru-siveness is kept to a minimum r,r'hilst the performances of her subjects are max-imised; her authorial control, therefore, remains covert. As with many 1960sdirect cinema films such as Saleswan, Heart of tbe Angelis reliant upon the subjects' perfonnances for and to the camera; as Dineen says, 'People know thatthey're quirky ar.rd eccentric. They feel different. It's why u'e all like rvatchingeach other' (Cleave \99I:.26).I t is also why we l ike performing ourselves forothers. Heart of the Angel opens with one such performance (deeply remir.riscenrof Paul's monologues in Saleswan) by the ticke t collector in the furgel's lift pro-claiming to the customers that they are 'all gonna die - the exhaust fumes fromcars are gett ing very serious'. Unl ike the Maysles'f i lm, however) a sense of ironype rmeates Heart of the Angel, and the subjects - including the ticket collector -knowingly act up to and for Dineen and her camera: a grolrp of 'Fluffers' (thewomen who clean the Underground runnels at night) sing wl.rilst taking the liftdown to the platforms; another 'Fluffer' parodies a striptease whilst changrnginto her overalls. Likewise Dineen does not hide her own presence, using hercharacteristic coaxing questions from behind the camera throughout all herfilms. Whereas some of her contemporaries use similar techniques aggressively,perhaps t<l catch their subjects unaware (Moore, Broomfield), Dir.reen does so toenable her subjects to talk more expansively about themselves, asking broad andostensibly flimsy questions just to get her subjects to open up. Because of this,her films will seldom be political and sometimes her quesrions appear slightlyinane: for example, after the Angel's foreman has said he likes Yorkshire because'it's so wild', Dineen adds 'do you like wild placesl'; she is responsive rather thanproactive, and elicits, in this instance , a further description from the foreman ofhis paintings of Yorkshire landscapes.

The most memorable and emotive of Dineen's conversations in Heart of theAngel is with the man in the ticket office who, throughout the film, has beenprickly and argumentative, having asked Dineen early on: 'Do you think God putyou on this earth to point that stupid little cameraf ' Dineen could be said to spe-cialise in the mollification of leathery men (most obviously in Home frorn theHill. Here the ticket man reache s the stage when he too is forthcoming on cam-era, initiating a dialogue with Dineen by stating, ostensibly unprompted, 'I coulddo with a change'. Dineen's gentle) general questions subsequently try to coaxthe ticket selier into expanding upon rhe significance of'change' and what hewouid have liked to have been different. Although he denies being depressed,the ticket man ruminates on death and the meaninglessness of life:'No-one asksto be born ... you're born, you live, you die'. Dineen's role in this conversationis ambiguous; partly she manoelrvres the situation so the spectator forms a strongidentification with the ticket seller (alwavs easier to ensineer if universal emo-

Tbe perforneative rlocumentarl 201

tions and desires are being discussed), and partly she maintains her (ar.rd our) dis-tance. The mechanism that enforces this equivocation is Dineen's use of hervoice. \4hilst her voice establishes notions of friendship and intimacv, it remainsthe tool rvith which to signal the essential artificialit)' of the filming situation.The realisation that this moment of revelation takes place in an inherently artifi-cial environment likewise imbues the perfbrmances of Dineen's subjects. In thecase ofthe ticket office man, juxtaposed against curious and personal revelations(Dir.reen: 'What would yolr actlrally like to achievef '; ticket man: 'I don't reallyknou' ... I'd like io have been taller ... had a better education') are ironicallyinforn-ral exchanges u'ith Dineen that once again empl-rasise the forn-raliry of theset-up. This conversation (irltervierv being too formal a term) concludes with ashort chat that does jr.rst tl.ris:

Tichet m&n:'You think I 'm gorgeous'.Dineen:' I t l -r ink you're wondcrful ' .Ticket ruan: 'Can I drink mv water nowf 'Dineen:'Yes'.Tichet mtLn: 'Thank you'.

The ticket man is here doing several things: he is reflecting back at Dineen heruse of flirtation to elicit good answers to her questions from male subjects; he isindicating that Dineen is ultimately in control of rvhat he says and does ir.r frontof the camera and that he, at times, doubts her sincerity; he is, through thisknowingness, shedding doubt on the authenticity of his previous words, Prompt-ing us to ponder the multiple levels of his performance. Dineen's documentaries,more clearly than many, are negotiations between the reality before she arrivedand intruded and the artificial environment generated by her presence. Withinthis, Dineen is perpetually oscillating between relinquishing and asserting con-uol.

This is a problem that becomes more apparent in The Ark (BBC2,1993), aseries following events at London Zoo at a time when they are threatened withclosure, because it is also an issue-led, institution-focused film that ostensiblydemands more than a sensitive interaction with personable and eccentric charac-ters. Unlike the comparable BBC series Tlte Howse, that similarly fearures a grandorganisation at a moment of crisis and threat, Dineen does not approach her sub-ject with a critical eye and objects to 'the modern trend for trying to catch peo-ple with their trousers down' (Lawson 1995: l0). The -4rfr is less overtly criticalof its subjects than The Howse and lacks a voice-over comparable to fancisRobinson's arch commentary. Although the last of Tlte Arh's three parts is abeautiful, subtie piece of documentary filmmaking, there is a slight listlessnessabout the series as a whole, stemming from the more pronounced absence ofDineen's actual and metaphoric voice. Subsequently in her career, a significantsrylistic shift occurs, as she begir-rs to introduce more of her own voice-over andtl-rereby begins to overtly structlrre her work around her own sensibilities andobservatior.rs, a change that becomes very noticeable u,ith Iz tbe Com'pany of Men

202 The perforrnative documentary

(BBC2, 1995), her series about the Prince of Wales regiment during their tourof duty in Northern lreland. Besides personalising the films to a greater extent,this irrcreased voice l.ras the effect also of making In the Clrnpany of Men noreconventional, not a loose, non-didactic observational documentary series ofrvhich Dineen is an instrumental part, but a structured observational series (morein keepir.rg with the 1990s shift towards the formalised formats such as docu-soaps) that does the thinking for us. The transition to a more authoritative stylewith In the Cornpany of Men makes Dineen into the series' principal subject asrvell as its auteur, and marks the shift towards a more concrete embodiment ofthe director-performer. It is significant that with this increased presence comesan increased focus on gender and difference. Still Dineen nudges the soldiers torespond to questions that are personal and apolitical, despite the regiment's rolein guarding a border poiice station and despite Dineen's first bit of voice-overlocating the action within the period around the first Northern Ireland cease-fire .

The oper.rir.rg interview is with the regiment's commander, Major CrispinBlack.r0 He holds Lrp a copy of The Tatler ('just to conform to stereotype') ar-rd,in one of his many reflexive references, urges Dineen to put on u'eight'so thatwe can at least have sexual fantasies about you'. In the Cowpnny of Men is anotherof Dineen's elaborate flirtations with a band of unlikely men who, Ltntil Geri,have been the rnost prominent points of interest in her work. Contentiously (par-ticularly considering the time given to the 'Fluffers') Dineen has referred toHeart of the Angelas 'avery political film, about male slavery. They'd give overtheir unopened pay packets to their wives, especially the Irish ones' (Billen 1995:9). Such an unguarded comment encapsulates her work's essential tendency(epitomise d by In the Company of Men) towards glorifting and exonerating mas-culiniry. This is so in Horne frorn the Hill with its essentially soft treatment ofHilary Hook, Heart of the Angel,in particular the interview with the ticket officeman and the night-time sequence with the underground maintenance men, andThe Arh in its uncritical attitude towards David |ones. Dineen, who also operatesthe camera in her documentaries and creates films that are intensely attuned toissues of sexual difference, clearly does not wish to repress her male subjects' flir-tatious references to her, just as she rather obviously in Henrt of the Angeltreatswith greater sensuality and warmth than she does their female counterparts the'Fluffers' the male Underground night workers. Dineen's films are not often self-consciously srylised, but the use of carefrrlly directed lighting to errrphasise thecontours of the men's grubby torsos in this tunnel sequence is marked, as is themen's boss's comment to Dineen 'Do you have to stop my blokes from work-ing, ehl' Dineen explains this concentration on men as 'an ego thing - you wantto be accepted by the most unl ikely people'(Lawson 1995: 11), which makesfilming sound like a series of conquests (she did go out with one of the mainte-nance workers for a time), but is not entirely accurate. She also enjoys engagingwith men, not women - which is what makes Geri a surprising film.

The self-reflexive referencing of Dineen, her wispy though persistent middle-class voice, her ir-rcreased presence as the narrator of her films and the fact thatshe will never (as the cameraperson) appear on screen) have specific gender con-

!.

The petformative docwn+entary 203notations. Dinee. remeins an absent, f'etishised body consta'tly evoked bi. heron-screen (usually male) subjects; she rrakes use of tl-re camera t, forqe an rnt,-rnacy n'ith people , br.rt also to preclude closenessi l-rer subjects ,r. ul-*.ry, ,..r-,through her eyes a'c'l her apparatus, rvhilst Di.ee' is represe'tecl o'ly by hervoice. whereas this has, at t imes, bee'treated as a posit ion'f weakness, here i tconnotes strength. Diueeu perfornrs an archetypal fer-nininiry that is concernedand curious, coaxing an intir-r-racy and carnaraderie out of her willing male sub-jects whilst never reli'quishi'g her omniscienr, camouflagecl p<.rsitio.. Iro'icall1,,hou'ever, because Dineen's films are largery drir..e' by her desire to extract com-peliing performances fiorn her subjects, the audier.rce fir.rds itself conpelled tofocus upor-r Di'ee''s perfirrmance as *,ell. As she later also takes o' the role ofnarrator, the flirtatious, feminine voice from behir-rd the camera seems less scn-uinely curious and more scheming.

Flirtirrg rvith crotchery old men retLlms as a central point 9f rnterest in TlceLords' Tale, whilst in befir,een is Geri, in which the hierarchical relatigpshipbenveen Dineen anc'l lrer subject, Geri Halliwell is not so much abor-rt gender clif-ference as about class. Lr Dineen's need to spell out that she is in control of thedocumentary, she is partly col'pensating for the fact rl-rat Geri is about a fen-ralesubject wl.ro is far more fhrnous than she is. Geri is not simply a biography of anindii'idual, but an examination of celebrity, r.r.hicl-r inch.rcles a certain amount of'dialogue concerni'g Halliwell's image. Dineen has a very defi.ite, sin.rple viervof Hallir'vell, namely that behind her exterior performance as the recenrly rejectedGinger spice, there is the 'real' Geri accessible to the filming process. when shefilms and questions a tearful spice Girls fan looki'g over Gi'ger memorabilia onthe eve of an auction at S.theby's, Dineen asks the girl why she is mourning theeffects of Ginger rvho, after all, was nor the real person Geri Halliwell. The girlis sad and confused: to her, Ginger is rear. Halliweil herself wants to believe inthis basic split benveen real and fake, forever promoting her .real', rninimallymade up self-i'.rage and co'trasting this with her previous alter ego Ginger, acharacter she says was 'base d on rny wild-cat days'. Halliwell .o-., ,.ror.;

", lik.-

able but wholly unaware of the multipliciry of her performances a'd of thefragility of her distinction betwe en the real and the fake. As a film, Geri substan-tiates Halliwell's self-perception, treating the post-Ginger Halliwell - whethershe be at home with her mum or at a UN press conference following her instate-ment as ambassador for birth control - as unproblematically ,real'. This placesHalliwell in a subordinate positior.r, which, despite her command of the visualimage, Dineen does little to dispel or qualify. Instead, Halliwell,s inarricr-rlac1,concerning he r in-rage and her desire for fame is shown in the context of her hav-ing lost conrrol to Di.ee' (the persor.r who is now rnanipulati'g her image).Preceding the conversation about control on the trai', Dineen comments lnvoice-over:

I was becorning intrigued by the situation. I srrorlcl have realisecl there'd becomplications, thongh. Geri got on the phone to her lawyer, to tell him thatI was takir.rR over the film.

204 The perJbrruatit,e tlocumentarl

Tl're oster-rsible purpose of this piece of voice-over is to locate the subse cluentconversatiotl; because, however, that conversation is about the struggle for con-trol between filrnmaker and subject, tl-re very fact that Dineer-r prefaces it bytelling us what to expect, ensures that the sequence is illustrative of Geri's lackof control over the film. So, Geri's perfornlance of herself and her <lbsessiotl rvithhgu, others perceive her is more a rnanifestation of fragility than of strength. Thisis deeply ironic, considering Dir-reen's own preoccupation rvith how the meu tnlrer filn-rs vrew her.

Despite her fame , Halliu'ell's image is filtered through Diueen's PercePtion ofit. Geri's relative weakness is, in substantial part, the result of the impositiot-r ofa social hierarchy. Through the middle -class tone of her voice , the demonstrationof her owt-t articulacy and the critical use of narration, l)ir-reen emphasises herintellectual sr-rperiority over Halliwell. Geri is eqr-rivocallv both a celebratiou ar.rda snobbish criticism of inarticulacy as it pursues a liberated Hallirvell ferventlyseeking a serious role for herself and trying to dcfirre her aspirations, btlt nothavir-rg the vocabulary with rvhich to express tl-rern. Dineeu's focus on this strug-gle is, in itself, far front generous and Hallirvell is set up ou several occasions ouiyto be slrot down. Geri is a smug ambush docunre ntary, inte nt r-rpou wrestlngcontrol fi'om its subject withor-rt telling her - and flaur.rting the fact that it hassucceeded.

The Lords' Tnle (2002), a documentary chartir.rg and commemoratirlg theabolition of the hereditary peers from the Hor,rse of Lords, offers a quintessen-tial example of Dineen's developing authorial style: it features several crusry oldrnen, it offers a humanist portrait of the peers' demise rather than a political cri-tique of it and it is constructed around both Dineen's observational cameraworkand her persistent narration. The compatibility benveen these latter two formalelements is becoming strained, as the unobtrusive, responsive carnerawork slillconforms to the conventions of observational documentary lvhereas her voice -over has become even more intrusive. The beginning of The Lordl Tale rsextremely voice-over-heaq/ as Dineen elects to tell the story of the Blair govern-ment's decision to abolish the hereditaries through *'ords and not through thejuxtaposition of images. This is in contrast to earlier films such

^s Heart 0f the

Angeland it makes The Lord'f Tnlefar more didactic. True, as the narration saysat the beginning, the government refused to take part in The Lord.f Tale andurged its members to do the same, but it is clear from the outset that Dineen hastaken rather a liking to these old buffers and does not believe, as sire intimatesearly on, that their abolition rvill necessarily be'any guarantee of democracy'.

As a testament to a significar-rt political moment) Dineen's languid, gentle filmstands up as an important one , not only because of what it is about, but alsobecause of how it is made. Despite its hear'ry narration, The Lordl Taleis still anir.rtensely old-fasl-rioned, traditional observational documentary and as such, inthe era of reality television, it is part of a marginalized - if not disappearing - sub-genre. In an interview given a year after the documentary's release (as sl-re ispreparing for tl-re Grierson British Documentary Awards, 2003 where shereceived the trustees' award) Dineen draws attention to the specific impact of

T-he petJbrmatite dlcutnentnrt zos

realiry television on docur-nentary output as she courrlents, 'I think realiry tele-visior-r is fantastic', although its success she realises has meant that authored doc-umentaries l ike hers are no\\, f ighting over'only a feu'slots'(Br-own, M. 2003).In the same intervierv Dineen also remarks that 'I have r-nade the same film mostof t . t . ty 'career, about inst i tut ional chauge'(Brorvn, M. 2003). Focusing on inst i-tutional change has been au irnportant strand u'ithin the obscrvational tradition,linking Dineen's u,ork ro tl.rat of Wiseman and Broomfield, for example. Theconsistency 's,ithin Dineen's r,vork, rvhilst giving her oenvre its identifiableauteurist stan-rp, is anodter reason fbr The Lords'Tale seen-ing quaint and old-faslrioned: it is produced by Edrvard Mirzoeff, editor of 40 Minutes and Dineen'searly champion, and, despite beir.rg broadcast by Charrnel 4, bears all the hall-rnarks - with the addition of narration * of Dineen's ."vork for that quintesse ntial1980s strand. The style , holevel, frts the sr-rbject nlatrer, particularly as Dineenis - as she is in all her institutional documentaries in one wav or another - mau-ifbstly sympathetic to the old gr-rard about to be replaced b), rhe ne.,..

Dir-reen's adrniration for and tenderness towards the hereditarv peers is sig-nalled by her proximity to rwo peers in particr-rlar: the Earl of Romney and LordWestbury. The fonner rapidly becomes a sort of confidant r""'ho tells Dineen theuames of some of his fellor,v peers, wl-ro invites Dineen to his (relatively hr-rmble )home and rvho talks her through elemenrs of the abolition process, ftrr exampleshowing her'the leaving photograph'of all the hereditaries together for the lasttirne. In general Dineen films Romney - as well as some of the other peers - tnextreme close-up, so his face takes up the whole screen) the effect of rvhich is tosuggest, alongside tlre twinkle in Romney's eye as he whispers things to the sideof Dinee n's came ra, a strongly conspiratorial camarade rie be nveen fihnmaker andsubject.

As Dineen informs us in voice-over, a deal had been struck berween thehereditary peers and the government whereby 92 of the 750 hereditaries in theLords would be allorved to stay in the House for the time being, Lrntil the gov-ernment finally decided how to replace them. The 92 were seiected by ballot,and l,ord Westbury was one of those u'ho srood for elecrion, but lost. There isone sequence rvith Westbury in particular that is exemplary of Dineen's merhod,filmed in his office as he is clearing his desk and preparing to leave the House ofLords, extremely reluctantly. Dineen is talking to Westbury in front of his desk,now covered in removals boxes. A fellow peer (Lord Mowbr.ay) comes in andWestbury calls over to him: 'Have you met this heavenly bird, she wants ro inter-vier.v you because you're one of the fortunate' (Morvbray is staying). Despite abrief exchange with MowbraS it is extremely clear that Dineen is not interestedin interviewing him at all, and is far more interested in scrutinising the inconsis-tencies between Westbury's feigned detachment and the fact that he is really sadat having to leave (and interested. it has to be said, in retaining ver enother exam-ple of a male subject flirting rvith her). After his farewell drinks and after havingassured Dineen that he will shed no tears because 'this is much too serious',Dineen edits together a sequence of Westbury ieavir-rg his of,fice, one is led tobelieve for the last time. There has just been a short exchange betr;r'een Westbury

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206 Tl'te perJbrtnative docunoentary

and his wife, u,ho tells him horv tct turn on the video recorder at home forCoronation Street (the in-rplications here are various: that Westbury never goeshome; that his rvife does everything for him; that he rvill be lost r,vithor-rt hisoffice, bar and cronies and Lady Westbury \'vants to t-nake sure his cornfcrrt blan-ket is there fcrr him). As Westbury goes, Dineen films him fiom behind, holdinga static shot of this elegant old rnan trudging up some steps ancl along a corri-dor. There is a long pause as she holds the image before cr-rtting it. As u'ith theequally lingering shot of Paul at the end of Salesman, this shot of Westburv ispregnant u'ith poignar-rcy and signifrcation. The grextness of observatioual doc-umentary ofter-r lies in its abiliry to Llse one shot or sequence as the ernotional dis-t i l lat ion of a f i lm's overal l meaning. This shot of Westbury is just thatrepresentative rnoment) as the old institution finally gir.es $ray. Underscorir-rg thisare the film's concluding shots of preparations fcrr the forthcomir-rg Queen'sspeech (at which rhe abolition of tl.re hereditaries is to be announced) and ofTony Blair and members of his cabinet striding into their charnber rvith brr"rsquepurposefulness. In tl.ris juxtaposition not or.rly does The Lords' Tale signal thechanging of the guard but it suggests the brutality and mediocriry of the ner,vorder that has triumphed over the experience and kindliness of the old. Dir-reenmight not set ollt to make political films, br-rt her docr-rmentaries alrvays manageto convey an archaic, humanist, conservative political message . In tone as well asin subject matter she has continued to make the same filn-r.

With Dir-reen's recent move towards clain"ring her filn'rs by adding lter or,vnauthoritative voice-over to her already prominent conversations from behind thecamera) she has moved towards becoming a 'star director'. It is ironic thatDineen's most overt bid for stardom came rvith Geri,afim about stardom, forthis is a common factor among star directors of documentaries. The morefamous Nick Broomfield becomes, for instance, the more famous the subjects ofhis films. Although they are frequendy bracketed together (both British,National Film and Television School graduates, both direct and perform a tech-nical role in their films, both 'author' those films through direct interventionsthat are not edited out), Dineen and Broomfield offer different types of docr-r-mentary performances and elicit differer.rt performances out of their subjects.Ironically, considering her implied opposition to Labour policy in The Lord.s'Tale, dving the 1997 British general election, Dineen was brought in to directthe Labour Party's most distinctive campaign film: a casual portrait of Tony Blair,chatting with Dineen and spending time with his kids. Tony Blair comes acrossas a 'Good Thing', an urbane, intelligent guv who has done ordinary things likeplay in a band but who norv just happens to want to run the country. As Dineenhas often stated in interviews, her aim is not to embarrass her sr-rbjects of stitchthem up, but to take a mediatory stand: 'What I like to do is get people who arefair game and then not make them fair game at all' (Billen 1995: 9). It seemslegitimate to speculate that the in-rage- and rnedia-obsessed 'new' Labour Partywould have viewed this conciliatory tone (ar.rd her femininiry) as Dineen's nostsignihcant credential: she offers a kind, witry portrait of Blair, but one that is ulti-mately not threatening, critical or undermining. One senses that 'new' Labour

The perfornr.ative docutnentary 207

would not have commissioned Nick Broomfield to make a can.rpaign fllm fbrthem.

The'star director': Nick BroomfieldBBC2's The Late Show ran an item entided 'How to make a Peter Greenarvayfilm' ir-r n,hich mundane clips from Nationn'itle vere transftrrmed into mearrrng-ful, choreographed moments once they had been set to insistent Michael Nymar.rmusic. Greenaway's style is f<rrmulaic, so too, it could now be argued, is NickBroomfield's - so much so rhat in 1999/2000 he (rvith rhe assisrance of his ong-inal carneraperson/collaboraror |oan Chr-rrchill) starred in a series of VolkslvagenPassat television ads brandishing his distinctive boom and askir.rg his genelic a*'k-ward questions. Broomfield is British docunrentary's 'star director', he is a recog-

'isable face, has had a season of films ar rhe Narional Film Theatre (1997) anclhas been a topic for discussion in gossip columns. His trademarks are filnrs builtarouud the tortuotts chase after elusive subjects and the collapsed ir-rterview thatsometimes, as i ,r ' t Trachittg Down Magie, fhi ls ro material ise. tVhen l(trrt andCou'rtney was released in 1998, several joumalists expressed their disillusionrner-rtwith' the Broomfield f i lm'(see Spencer 1999: 63).t t The simple fact that t l .rerehas been a Broomfield backlash - arguably concluded after Biggie and Tupac(2002) with the release of the more politically significant and serious Aileen: TheLtfe nnd. Deatb of a Serial l{iller (2003; co-directed rvith loan Churchill) - is res-tament to his star sratus. Since Driting Me Crazy (f988), Broomfield hasappeared in his films as the hassling director enacring the process of making adocumentary, hounding his subjects and wearing them down until they finallygive him a story. Broomfield's fiims (despite l.ris indebtedness ro direct cinema)have become supreme examples of the director-performer model; he is theundoubted antlur of his films and their very sffucture proclaims that, withoutl'ris intervention, there r,vould be no films.

The central issue in how one perceives Broomfield's work is the specific per-sona he performs on camera. Towards the end of Driting Me Crazy - a docu-mentary following the rehearsal period and performance of the all-black musicalBod.y and Sozl - scriptwriter Joe Hindy exclaims 'I don't think you're adorableany more, Nick', a sentiment echoed in Heid.i Fleiss: Hollyuood Madam (1995)when, once again after some time, Madam Alex, one of the film's three protag-onists, shouts at Broomfield down the telephone : 'You're such a greedy fi*****pig. I'm so sick of you'. Broomfield's on-screen persona is the srveet, ingratiat-ing, slighdy gullible buffoon; it is only late in the proceedings (if ever) that hissubjects realise that this is an act, a ploy on Broon.rfield's parr to get the materialhe wants. In one interview, Broomfield cites an unlikely precursor in Pier PaoloPasolirr i . whom he mer drrr ing the f i !ming of Ths Csttter!:1t.),Tl! t : i i t Englaird i i iI971. He saw in Pasolini someone who, though ostensibly reserved himself,generated chaos around him, observing that, whilst other film crews 'were alwaysincredibly ordered, almost military, with a clear chairr of command', Pasolir.ri's'seemed to operate with a purposeful anarcl.ry'(Broomfield 1993:46).

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208 The perfonnatite d.ocumentary

Broomfield's particular admiration for Pasolini's 'abiliry to use chaos to a creatiYeadvantage'(p.a6) could be describing his own Post 'Drir iTLg Me Crazl f i lms, forall the documentaries that revolve arollnd his on-screen performance are exer-cises in control led chaos. The 'coutrol 'aspect relates direct ly to Broornfield'sperformance of himself: he remains sweet, dogged, usually unflustered, whilstarounc'l him his films almost implode. The anger of Joe Hindy and Madam Alexsrems from their belated realisation that Nick Broomfield the documentary film-maker is not synonymous \vith 'Nick Broomfield' the charmir.rg man with MickeyMouse earphones and boom who extracts information from them. An interest-ing aspect of horv critics and spectators re late to Broornfield's u'ork is that theytoo sometimes fir-rd it hald to accept the dichotomy: after the screening of HeidiFleissat the 1995 London Fi lm Festival, one member of the audience during thecnsuing Q&A session asked Broomfield to expand upon the fact that, rvhilst l.reappears a little stupid on screen, he seems intelligent in real life . Broomfield'stactftil response was to reiterate that his sn-lile)r persona has pr"oved ntost usefulin gettir-rg his subjects to open up on camera.

Broomfield's self-performance fuels tl-re debate around 'realness'. PeterWollen rn 1974 Lrsed a formula to specifically illustrate this schism in relation toauthorship and the fiction film, arguing - from

^n a'uteur-structuralist perspec-

tive - that the auteur \s only tl-re ide ntiry discovered within the te xt and does notpertain to the individual beyond its parameters.l2 Adopting Wollen's equation,Nick Broomfield + 'Nick Broomfield', the inverted commas signifying the ver-sion of the a.uteurto be found rvithin the films. It is over-simplistic to argue thatNick Broomfield, the author beyond the frame, is irrelevant to how one viewsand interprets the films in which 'Nick Broomfield' appears; rather it is thedialectic between the two that motivates the documentaries and informs ourresponses to them. The subject 'Nick Broomfield' is constructed on screen fromwithin the documentary frame, whereas Nick Broomfield the auteut'remainsomniscient and detached (a role that is partly articulated through Broomfield'sown narration for his films). Complicating matters is that the two are indis-putably the same person, they just perform different functions for the Purposesof making a documentary and it is this difference and the dialogue that ensueswhich informs the fiims. Quite graphically, Broomfield's dual presence articulatesthe idea that documentaries are the resr,rlt of a dialectical negotiation berween thereality that existed before he arrived and that which subsequently becomes thesubject of his films. Why is the performative documentary problematicf Mostimportantly, it is problematic because it throws into sharp relief previously heldnotions of fixity of meaning and documentary'truth'; in a film in which all reli-abie significance is generated by and through 'Nick Broomfield' the performer-director, there is necessarily a tension between the subjects before and after hisarrival that is never fuily resolved. The true stories upon which Broomfield's doc-umentaries are based are comprofitised, filtered through the structured chaos onthe screen.

Nick Broomfield's films could not always be characterised thus, and it is illu-minating to compare the later documentaries with those he rnade with ]oan

The performntive documentar"y 209

Cl-rurchill. Although itisin Driving Me Orazy that Broomfield first appears on-scree n as lris films' a.gent prlllcnte ur, it is the e arlie r Lily Tomlin: The Film Behin.dthe Shon, (1986) about the A.merican comedienne rvhich proved to be the cata-h'st for a change of approach. Despite its tide, Lily Towlitt. is a straightforu'ardfilm in the direct cir.ren.ra mould that fcrllols a perfbrn.rer, ir.r this case Tomlin,preparing her one-rvoman Broadrvay show Ze Senrch for Signs of Lr.fe in theUniverse. Subsequently Broon.rfield describes the 'nightmare' that filming lllr,Tonolin became r.vhen, following an exchange of rvrits, the resulting film rvasseverely compromised:

The film was a \rery pale reflection of r'vhat hacl been a very miserable expe-rience. But i t occurred to rne that i f u,e'd had the miserable experience onfiln it rvould have at least been amusins.

(Brorvrr M. 19961 421

Prior to this, Broomfield had collaborated on several observational documen-taries, many of which - such as Tattooed Tenrs (1978), about the CaliforniaYouth Training School, and Sold.ier Girk (l9BI), abolrt women US Armyrecruits of Charlie Company, Fort Gordon, Georgia - followed in the FredWiseman mould of showing the workir.rgs of institutior.rs and official organisa-tions. The filn-rs are serious, politically motivated and sr-rbject-driven, concen-trating on material that is still the standard fare of observational documentaries.Even though (as in both films cited above) Broor.nfield and Churchill single outa handful of individuals to focus upon, such figures are used as representativecharacters tl-rrough whom the workings of tl-re ir-rstitution/organisation can bestbe conveyed, so - in a generic sequence repeated l8 years later in Soldiers To Be- a brutal, aggressive Sergeant shouts at new recruits for making their bunkssloppily. As with Molly Dineen's early films, the Broomfield- Churchill collab-orations use interventionist mechanisms only sparingly and functionally - forexample, conveying factual informati.Jn that assists the spectators' understand-ing of a sequence through short subtitles. The films' emphasis is on the subjectsto such an extent that, at the end of Sold,ier Girlswhen Private |ohnson (one ofthe film's principal characters) is leaving, she spontaneously turns and bidsfarewell to Churchill and Broomfield. Although the image of Private Johnsonembracing Nick Broomfield is caught on camera and is not omitted from thefinished fihn, he is only glimpsed fleetingly in the corner of a frame as if sig-nalling the filmmakers'surprise and self-consciousness at this violation of a keyobservational rule- For the most part, Soldier Girk and Tattooed Tears serve asexen.rplary illustrations of the ttlritd-derived tradition: they feature personalisedsituations that carry witl.r them more general political connotations; they makestatements through observatiorl as opposed to through interventionl the1, sub-limate the fihnmakers' opinions to those of tl.re people they pursue, altl.roughelements such as edit ing, a greater identi f icat ion with the 'vict ims' rather thanthe figures in authority and tl-re subjective camera rvork serve to implicitly con-vey'uvhat those opinions migl'rt be .

210 Tlte performatbe d.ocumentary

Both early films contain several moments that could legitimately be termed'classic riritt, when observation becomes synonymous with insight ar.rd theacquisirion of knowledge . Sequences that dwell upon Ronnie, orre of the youth-ful prisoners in Tnttooerl Tearg being forcibly restrained or Private Alvez rnSoldier Girlsbeing punished for lack of motivation by having to dig, well into thenight, an ostensibly useless grave-like hole both manage to imply criticism of theactions they show simply by the length of time that is dedicated to each and theby the manner in which the fihnmakers focus upon the suffering, victimisedRonnie and Private Alvez. Both sequences offer covert commentary on theeverlts rhey depict.

Broomfield's subsequent style evolved out of a frustrated awareness of thelimitations of the observational mode. He articulates this most directly in rela-tion to Drhing Me Crazy rvhen commenting 'l'd always wanted to examine thedocumentary form and I'd become sort of disenchantecl with the narrow param-eters of this style of filmmaking. All too often what you look at on TV is verycleaned up and dishonest '(Paterson 1989:53). In a later interview he adds:'There's no point in pretending the camera's not there. I think wl-rat's importar-rtis the interaction bet'uveen the film-makers and those being filmed, arrd the audi-ence is aware of that interaction so they can make decision of their own' (Wise,D.2002: I8). I f one examines even the much earl ier work, the tensions are vis-ible within the films themse lves. During the restraint sequence in Tnttooed Tears,Ronnie snatches a quick, furtive glance to camera) this transgressive look high-lighting the immutable wall between the subjects and the filmmakers of observa-tional films. Similarly throughout Sold.ier Girls there is the suggestion that thefilm's protagonists are knowingly acting up for the camera and hence unable t<rmask the film process's lack of spontaneity. Part of the power of Sold.ier Girlsresults from its e nactment of this tension between what should and should notbe included in an observational documentary - moments such as Private Halllearning how to perform the role ofSergeant by joining in Sergeant Abing's sus-tained, personalised attack on Private Alvez following her fit of screaming afterbeing made to dig the hole. Abing begins with the groundless intimidation 'youdon't deserve to be out there in sociery you might kill someone out there, Alvez'(Alvez, after all, was originally accused of lacking motivation as a recruit) towhich Hall adds:

You know Alvez there's something about you that tells me you might be thetype that wor"rld take a lveapon and go up on top of a building and start jusrpicking offpeople in the street just for the heck ofit, because you're so apa-thetic, sooner or later it's bound to turn to hate.

Besides contradicting herself. Hall delivers this fanciful diatribe in the deliberate,slow manner of someone who is both assr-rming an turlamiliar role that she iseager to perfect (in this case the part ofthe brutalising sergeant) and is trying tosound convincing despite having to make up what she is saying as she goes along.This and other similar performances in Soldier Glrls imply, through their very

Tlte perforrnative docuwentary 2llawkwardness, that they are stri'ing to seem una\\.are of tl-re fil'-r makers'Dresencebut ar€ finding this impossible . It is moments such as these that subrtr,.,t,ateBroornfield's conrendon about 'dishonesry,. Nor only are l-r is and churchi l l ,sfiln-rs characterised by such textual cracks and tensior-rs, but they illustrate theunu'orkabiliry of tl.re observarional ideal by striving too hard to mask the neces-sity fbr more formally structuring de'ices such as vorce-over or direct authorialinterventior-r.

Broon-rfield's transition to a more openly authorecl style also coilcicles q,itl.rth.c tern.rir.ration of his partnership (both personal and professional) with Joa'churchill, although she has continued to operate rhe camera on some of his laterfilrns such as Traching Dotun MaLgie and l(urt nnd Cowrtnel, and ultimatelyretunls as co-direcor of Aileen: The Life and Denth of n serial l(iller. rf onereturns to Broon-rfield's statement about his growing disillusionnrent u,itl-r hismethods at the time of Driving Me crazy, what also becornes evident is his fi.s-tratron at not l.raving bee. able to show (in Lity Tomlin, for example) therurechanics and pracricalities of documentary fiimmaking. An indispensabie corol-lary of making tl.re shift towards appearing on camera is Broo'rfieli,s ,ow prove 11desire to 'exanrine the documentary fornr' by clismantlir.rg it. Fronr being goodgenre films, Broomfield's documentaries become anti-documentaries in whichan analysis of the non-fictiorr film takes the form of a perverse enactment of whata documentary should n.t be: a fihn n-rade up of telephone conversations, argu-ments before and after inteniel's, discussions between director and creni chatswith incidental characters. In this sense Broomfield's post-Driting Me crazyfilms, with their formal and physical marginarisation of their central subjects,come to echo the dichotorny berween director and performer that NickBroornfield embodies when appearing in his films. Just as rhere is a fundamentaldistinction to be drawn betwee' Nick Broomfield and .Nick Broomfield,, sothere is an equally significant differentiation to be rnade befween the docur'en-tary a'd 'the documenrary', the former signifying the films' putative subject andthe latter the resulting film. The contrast is most graphically illustrated by a'unsuccessful film such as Trach,ing Down Magiq a film, ostensibly aboutMargaret Thatcher, which contains very littre of rhatcher (and certainly noproper access to her) and becomes instead a film about - not just featuring - rheperipheral characrers such as the neighbour on Flood Street who took Thatcher'sold lavatory from the skip in front of her house. Traching Down Magie,despiteamusingly se lf-deprecating moments like Broomfield's piece of parody documen-tary conmentary 'I'd almost given up u.hen, in a remote spot in the heart of theEssex countryside, we found Francis wheen', fails because it cannot bringtogether the rwo components of the dialectic. The success of Broomfield's oer-formative documenraries is directly dependent upor.r the collision at some pointbetween the proposed conventional documentarv subject (Eileen wuoin...Eugene Terreblanche, Heidi Fleiss, Mada.rs and clients of a Newyork fetish par-lour) and the unconventional, osrensibly srramboiic performance of that sublecton film; the documentary and the .documentary' ryl.rr, meet as rnust NickBroomfield and 'Nick Broomfield'. The intervieu, situatior.r is the usual olace for

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these rneetings to occur, and films that lack a substantial intervieu' u'ith theirpivotal figves (Mn44ie or I(urt and Cowrtney) prove Llnsatisf,/ing because anyserious intent behind the films is lost altogether.

Broomfielcl's most cohesive and powerfr-rl film is Tbe Leader, His Driper andtbe Driver's Wife (I99L), a docunentary about Eugene Terreblanche, the leaderof the neo-Nazi Alrikaner Resistance Movement (the A!\E) in South Africa,made at a time r,vhen apartheid u,as crumbling. Srill reminiscent of the earlier,more obviously committed films, The Leader is the apotheosis of Broomfield'samalgamation of political content and performative sryle, and so representsanother turning point in his career. In subsequent documentaries the balance hasshifted more (some would say too far) torvards the performative, any seriouscommentary becoming quite clearly the films' secondary element. Like all ofBroonrfield's later auteut,performer filns, The Lead.er parallels the amassing ofthe docun-rentary story about Terreblanche with the experience of n'raking thcf.ilm; inevitably, much of the action revolves around travelling and establisl.ringcontact with Terreblanche and a variety of intermediaries, most notably his driver'JP' and JP's wife Alita. Like Michael Moore's performance at the centre ofRoger and Me (1989) in which he unsuccessfully tries to get Roger Snrith, thcchairman of General Motors, to come to Flint, Michigan to confront comparlyrvorkers whose jobs are being cut, Broomfield's performance in The Leader issuccessful because it appears rooted in earnest commitment rather than simplee gomania. Despite flaunting the comic de tail of the story (like so many trophies),The Lead.erpowerfully enacts) through the mechanisms of the performative doc-umentary, the real decline of the AMIB from sinister, sizeable power to impotentpolitical sideshow. The documentary opens with Barry Ackroyd, Broomfield'scameraman, being floored by a punch from an angry A!\lB member at a packedrally, but ends with a counter sequence at an AWB parade that was expected toattract 5,000 but which is attended only by a meagre few (Figure 6.1); it con-tains several incidental travelling sequences during which Broomfield's voice-over cataiogues episodes of AWB brutaiiry whilst the body of the film showsTerreblanche unable to control his horse, getting angry when Anita points aioaded gun at him and JP leaving the party. The performative elements of TZaLeadnr ostensibly marginalise the documentary's substantive material, only toreflexively re-invoke it.

This correlation would not have occurred if the interviely with Terreblanchehad not taken place - if, that is, the conventional documentary had not met itsperformative counterpart. A.lthough Broomfield encounters Terreblanche on acouple of occasions prior to this interview, these meetings are insubstantial; theinterview itself (which comes two-thirds of the way through the film) likewiseappears, on the surface, to be ir-radequate, a 'non-interview' in the words of manycritics. To back this up, the interview (in JP's estimation, 'the worst he's everseen') comprises an arglrment between Terreblanche and Broomfield concerningthe latter's lateness for an earlier appointment and Terreblanche's repeated mis-understanding of one simple question: when had he decided that the AWBwould l-rave to go to war against the blacksf Turning up a ferv minutes late for

Tbe perforrnatiye d.ocunentary 2I3

Figure 6.1 The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wifb (True Stories)Source: Courtesy of BFI Stills, posters and Desiqns

the previous appointment was a deliberate ploy ro anger Terreblanche, for .NickBroomfield' the prottocateur is heard to mumble sweetly that the reason he andthe crew were late was that they were 'having a cup of tea'. Throughout thisargument, Ackroyd holds the camera steady o' Terreblanche (from a low angle,ironically suggesrive of power and superioriry). secondlg whiist the inrervrewmay not yield very much substantial discussion of the Al\E's poiicl', it showsTerreblanche, not Broomfield, to be the buffoon of the encounter (it is signifi-cant that, for this sequence, Broomfield remains out of frame), as the leader mis-interprets the o'ly question the director is heard to put to him, understandinghim to have asked when he u'ill go to war) not when he decided he would haveto go to war. Broomfield rephrases the question severa.l times, each time labori-ously making it clearer, but Terre blanche obtuseiy misses the nuances. The essen-tial performative power of Tbe Lead.er is that it spontaneously captures ancl playsout the disintegration of rerreblanche 's power ar.rd concomitantiy that of theAWB, for however manipulated and preconceived the film might be,Broomfieid's way of

'raking films ensures that'there is never an opportuniryto

do a second take' (Broomfield quoted in Macdonald and cousi's 1996: 364).The issue of 'realness' as it pertains to The Lead.er, His Driper nnd the Driper\

wr'feis, from the audience's perspective, relarively unprobrematic, as the disrinc-

214 The perflrnoa.tfue d.0cutnent&ry

tion berwee n Nick Broornfield the clirector and 'Nick Broomfield' the enacrmcntof hirnself lbr the benefrt of the documentary, appears clear cut. Tl.re latte r func-tions as a tool of the fbrmer, rtuorkir-rg to manipulate the figures of the documen-tarl', notably Terreblanche; the persona ir-r inverted comlnas) therefore, is anacclrrate simulation that nevertheless remains separate from his real counterpart.If one turns to the perforrrative film as created by the jlrxtaposition of these rwofigures, then the identities of tl-re docume ntary and the 'docurnentary' are like-wise it.rtact. A documentary is deemed perfbrniative if it forrnally illlrstrates thenotion that a documentary is ar.r unpredictable act. The way ir-r which the perfor-mative works in The Lead.e4 however, r"rltimately suggests that the pre-existingfacts upon r,vhich it is based - like the actual Nick Broomfield - do exist. Certainof Broomfield's later fih.ns (most notably Heidi Fleiss) problematise this simple,reflective interpretation of the perfbrmative by not abiding by the simprle binaryoppositions examined above. Concomitantlv, these later films show a nrovetowards the clichdd Nick Broomfield film that is nrore about l.rir.n than about hissubjects. As the films become more fixated on the 'Nick Broomfield' persona andas that persona increasingly don-rinates the documentaries' actiou, so tl-re filmssubjugate their proposed subject matter to a ntore focused, insistent interest inthe issues of performance and 'realness'. It is also significant tl-rat the subjects andsituations of these latest films are similarly preoccupied with perforrnance and'realness': Fleiss is a hooker and madam, the mistresses of Pandora's Box inFetishes enact sadomasochistic scenarios, Courtney fove is all actress. In tandemwith these complications, the previously straightforward Nick Broomfield *'Nick Broomfield' distinction is itself (irretrievably perhaps) problematised.

In l{eid.i Fleiss: Hollytuood Mad.arn (1995) all definitions of reality, of lvhat isthe truth are thrown into confusion; it is far from clear, by the end, where theboundary betureen the director and his persona lies (if anywhere), and it is like-wise entirely unclear whether the film succeeds in revealing any even superficialtruths about its three protagonists: Heidi Fleiss, Madam Alex (for whom Heidifirst worked) and Ivan Nagy (her lover and maybe ersrwhile pimp). As the con-fusion mounts, the documentary becomes fixated on this triangular relationshipand on Fleiss in particular, leat'ing virtually untouched the facts surroundingHolly'wood's 'Madam to the stars' - the catalysts, essentiaily, for her arrest (onpandering and narcotics charges) and also for the film. At rhe outset, and formuch of the film, Broornfield appears in control; similarly we, his audience -upon seeing the familiar, formulaic mechanisms in place (the telephone calls, theschmoozing, the dogged pursuit of his subjects, the obtaining of significantaccess and intervier,vs) - are lulled into a sense that we are indeed, once more, tooccupy the privileged position of those whom Broomfield lets in on the act. Thechain (one element leading to the next unril the filmmaker gers close to his orher main subject) is a fundamental characteristic of the investigative documen-tarl', and the feeling of security renrains intact in Heidi Fleisswhile Broomfield isable to follou, leads that take him from one friend or ex-employee to anorher inhis successfr-rl endeavour to build up a portrait of Fleiss. Likewise, the manner urwhich Broourfield subsequently intercuts intervier,vs with nvo of his protagor-rists,

TIte performative documentary 2I5

Nagy ar.rd Alex, suggests that he (as puppet master) is playing one ofTagainst theother, thereby controlling them and how they are perceived. Ifthis is suggestiveof Broomfield getting to the heart of his documentar)' subject, then this confi-cience is validated by his arrival at Heidi Fleiss, whorn he interviews extensivelywhilst she is ont on bail and in rehab.

However, h Heid.i Fleiss tb,e Pasolini analogy of the controlling director sr,rr-rounded by orchestrated chaos crumbles, so that the inverse becomes true: thatBroornfield is thrown into chaos as control is seen to reside with the subjects hel.ras sought to manipulate. The film's final interviervs with Nag1, and Fleiss bothsuggest that it is tl-rey who have bee n stringing Broomfield along rather t\an wcewrsa.Nagy mocks him for being 'an idiot' rvl-ro 'is not in the club'and maintainsthat he is still seeing Fleiss (a statement he substantiates with a srnoochy tele-phone call to her); Fleiss, whilst denying her and Nagy are still together, likervisctaunts Broomtield by saying 'you're missing something, Nick ... you're rvay off,Nick. Byc'. Broornfield adopts a particularly flirtatious manner r'vith Fleiss, main-taining that 'We had a very t.lirtatious garne -playir.rg relationship; and if wehadn't I don't think I 'd have got the intervierv'(Brown, M, 1996: 42), also say-ing that, by the end of filming, he had 'a problem with Ivan' and that it u'as thefilm's exposure of their relationship that ultimately precipitated Fleiss' break uprvith lrirn (p.42).Is a relationship based on faked flirtation, hou,ever, likely to bewon by the filmmaker or the madamf 13

Broomfield's more recent work has been unimpressive and increasir-rgly slightand self-centred, that is, until the release of his second documentary about AileenWuornos, the notorioLls serial killer who was finally executed in Florida at thebehest of Governor leb Bush on 9 October 2002. Since making Aileen Wwornos:The Selling of a Serial lQllerin1993, Broon.rfield had kept in touch with Wuornos,principally via her best friend Dawn Botkins (Wood |. 2005:228), who wrote toWuornosivery day and to whom (as shown at the end of the second film) her ashesare returned after execution and cremation. The catalyst for this second documen-tary was Broomfield being served with a subpoena to appear at Wuornos's pre-exe-cution uial, after she had cha-nged her plea for the murders she had committedfrom self-defence to murder in cold blood. This documentary, which Broomfieldmade in collaboration widr loan Churchill, strongly implies that Wuornos in partchanged her plea in order to bring closer her day of execution and categoricallystates that their informed belief is that Aileen Wuornos lvas insane and should nevcrhave been executed. As Broomfield says outside the jail to the assembled pressreporting the executiorl: 'We're executing a person who's ntad'.

Having arguably spent eight years making films (Heidi Fleiss, Fetisbes, Kurtand Coartney, Biggie and. Twpac) that u'ere amusing and clever more than theywere either politically significant or even personally involving, with The Life nnd.Deatb of o Seriol IQller Broomfield returned to documentarv filmn.rakins with asober purpose. Two - manifestly interwined - features mark out the secoudAileen Wuornos film out from its immediate predecessors: Broon-rfield's keennessto voice l.ris own opinions on the issties raised by the case and his dimir.risheciphysical presence in front of Churchill's camera. As with Michael Moore's filn.rs

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216 Theperforw.ative docurnentary

(for exanrple his reladvely restrained and peripheral performance \i Fahrenheit'9/ll)

t1eie is, crudely speaking, an inverse correlation beft'een the exte.t of

Broomfield's serious involvement in l-ris sr-rbject matter (and indeed the serions-

ness of the subject matter itself) and the amount he appears on scree l1; the less

he features rhe more seriously rve should take the documentary. ln Aileen: The

l;y, ,ra Death of a Serial IOIler Broomfield's appearances are further 'alidatedb1, his actual .,ri. ,, a key clefence u,itness in Wuornos's pre-execution trial.

Broomfield at first <1oes not realise why exactly he was issued rvith a subpoena,

but it soon becomes clear that the prosecr-rting attorney is keen to discredit

Broomfield's first film about wuornos as it contained, if believed, evider-rce that

she had been so badly represented in the first instance by her la$1'er steve Glazer

that her initial conviction fbr murder could be for-rnd to be unsound' The pros

ecution play o1 a video monitor the 'seven ioint ride' t9 visit wuornos in prtson,

during which Glazer (who is driving) is shown to smoke seven joints of mari-

juana. Glazer at some point has ciranged shirt and the prosecutir-rg lawyer makes

much of this, insinuating that Broomfield pasted together two different

sequences, an allegation that Broomfield on film denies ar-rd later refutes out-

rigirt, after checking his rushes. Broomfield's presence as a witness adds yet

"ioth., performative layer and consolidates the sense of his own personal invest

melt in the film's argument that Aileen Wuorngs was ilsane ar-rd so should not

have been executed.It was Wuornos's rvish that Broomfield be granted her fi1al interview before

execution. As he is when on the witness stand, Broomfield (in keeping with his

low profile through this film relatively) is nervous as he begins by asking

w,ror,ros how she feels, to rvhich she replies 'I'm prepared. I'm alright with it'.

Broomfield has clearly sought ro put on record three things: that wuornos

believed that she killed in self defence (illustrated during an earlier interviel'

when he asks wuornos - who thinks he has stopped filming - whether or not she

murdered in self defence, to which she is heard to reply'Yes'); that the abuse she

suffered as a child - abandoned by her biological mother, beaten by her grand-

father and probable bioiogical father and sent to live in the woods near her

hometown follor,ving the birth of a child when she was just 13 - had a direct

in-rpact on her later acrions and mental health; and finally that, as a consequence

of her life and her time in prison, she rvas not sane. Although wuornos in this

fi1al interview refuses to "rtr*..

Broomfield's questions about the killings, sl-re

reveals rhe extent of her paranoid obsession with the police who handled her

case: that they knew about her after the first murder, but hushed this up as they

u.anted to let her become a high profile and lucrative serial killer; how they

placed her uncler surveillance from before she started killing; and horv, in jail, the

g.,rrd, had controlled and torturecl her using sonic radio waves boomed into her

cell via the intercom system. Aileen wuornos cuts short this intervieu' after

Broomfield (who had just interviewed Ajleen's mother Diane) telis Aileen that

her mother had asked fo. h.r- daughter's forgivet-ress. Later he maintair-rs that 'I

thought, in a way, askir.rg l-rer for forgiveness might be of some solace to Aileen'(wood I.2005: 23I), but the f i ln.r shorvs Ai leen turning on Broomfield, her

TLte performative dontmentary 217mad' intensely dark eyes staring accusi'gly into the camera lens as she asks forthe inte^'iew ro be terminated a.d walks awav, giving Broomfield the finger. Aswuo.ros leaves the interview roorn, Broomfield is heard to utter a'apol.gedc,timid 'I'm so sorry'- ar atre'pr to bri'g her backf To exonerate himselo wher.rasked rvhat prompted him to say this, Broornfield ansrvers:

Because I felt that the intervierv rvas such a disappointment for hcr.. .obviously she rvas disturbed by the fact that she was goi.g to be execureclthe next day and, frankly, who wouldn't ber But I felt that mavbe shetho,ght that I'd let her dowr.r, and it j'st seemcd such a sird way to be say,ing goodbye to somebody.

(Wood J. 2005: 231)

This is yet a'other shambolic and, in con'entional terms, u'satisfhctorvBroonfield interview, but u'hat it also conveys, extremely strongly, is that, on theday prior to lrer exec'Lion, wuornos was l]ot of sou.d mjnd,. Ailoen: The Life anrtDeatb of a serial IGller is Broon.rfield's least showy fih.n since he began apiearingin ther.r'r, but it is also his most sincere and motivating film at least since T/rzLeader, His Dri'per an.d the Drivet's wife.'the two documentaries are tonally quiredistinct, but they serve as oppositior-ral reminders of how effective a'd affecungBroomfield's autl.rorial involvement can be. whereas The Leader chartecl thedernise of tl-re white supremacist movement in South Africa through irony ar.rdhunour, the second Aileen wuornos film offers a more sombre indictment of ajustice system that Broon.rfield has labelled 'primitive' and ,barbaric' (wood J.2005:229). The latter, though superficially imposing narrarive closure ar the endwith wuornos's death and burial, also remai's open as it raises the whole issue ofwhether or not a documentary can actually change the course of events; it clearlymatters to Broomfield that l-re failed to prevent wuornos's executiorr and so thefilm's attack on leb Bush and the legal system he sanctions conrinues.

ConclusionBroomfield's very technique encapsulates the idea of documentaries as not

'ec-essarily determined or closed, but rather as dialectical ancl open to reinterDrera-tior.r. This remains a constant factor linking all the documentaries here cliscussecl.The performative documentary is the clearest contemporary exponent of thisbook's underpinning tl.resis that the documentary as prescribed by advocates ofobservational realism is an unrealisable fantasy, that documentary will forever becircumscribed by the fact that it is a mode of represenrarion and rhus can neverelide the distance betr'veen image and event. It is imperative, hor,vever, roacknowledge that this deficiency does nct invalidate thc notioir .f thc

'on-fic-tion film, merely that the nor.r-fiction film is (and largery always has been) awareoF the limitations of the audio-visual meclia. with this ack'owledgement, r.vhatensues when exan]inirlg clocumentary olrtput is an awareness that it is predicatedupon a dialectical relationship betrveen aspiration and potential, that the text

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2L8 The performative d'ocwmentary

itself reveals the tensions between the documentary pursuit of the most authen-tic mode of factual representation and the impossibility of this aim. The docu-mentaries examined in this chapter express these tendencies through the use ofmultiple dualities: in Unmad.e Bed.s, there is the conflict berween the invocationof the furtive, unpredictable act of secredy peeping in at strangers'windows rep-resented via a series of precisely framed, lit and performed cameo sequences; inTlte Thin Blwe Line, there is the shock caused by juxtaposing beautifully craftednoir-ish images with details of a murder; in Geri, Molly Dineen and her subjectGeri Halliwell dispute the question of control of the film ostensibly freely;in TbeLander, His Driper anil the Driter's Wll, Nick Broomfield performs the role ofsweet, chaotic investigative reporter as a means of undermining and controllingEugene Terreblanche's image. From within such a performative framework, thevery notion of a complete, finite documentary is continually challenged andreassessed.

Part fV

New directions