KILL THE DOCUMENTARY, AS WE KNOW IT: DOGMA 2001
1. Don't produce "real" time and space: your audience is in a movie
theatre, in comfortable chairs.
2. Don't produce the surface of things: have a real subject and a real analysis
-- or at least an intelligent proposition that is larger than the subject
of the film. If you forget to think about this before starting to shoot, find
it in the editing room, and then put it in the film, somehow.
3. Dont produce freak shows of the oppressed, the different, the criminal,
the primitive. Please don't use your compassion as an excuse for social pornography.
Leave the poor freaks alone.
4. Dont produce awe for the rich, the famous, the talented, the highly
successful: they are always everywhere and we feel bad enough about ourselves
already. The chance to envy, or hate them, in the cinema doesn't help anybody.
5. Dont make films that celebrate "the old ways" and mourn their
loss. Havent you yourself enjoyed change? How are the "old ways"
people different from you?
6. Keep an eye on your own middle-class bias, and on your audience's: dont
make a film that feeds it. Remember that you are producing human consciousness
in people who are very susceptible to suggestion... and alone in the dark.
7. Don't address an audience of "rational animals": we have not yet
evolved beyond the primitive urges of hatred, violence, and exploitation of
the poor and the weak.
8. Try not to exploit your social actors: just being seen in your film is not
enough compensation for the use of their bodies, voices and experience.
9. Whatever you do, don't make "history". If you can't help yourself,
try to remember that youre just telling a story -- and at the very least,
find a way to acknowledge your authorship.
10. Watch that music: what's it doing? who is it conning?
11. Leave your parents out of this.