DOCUMENTARY SHORTS
I think I mentioned this in class, but on the whole I was unimpressed with the selections in this program. Maybe they used all the good doc shorts to partner with features. I felt like we could have randomly selected any doc from the intro and adv doc classes at UT and they would have worked better. The one standout was Austin filmmaker Amy Grappell’s QUADRANGLE, which took home mucho awards at Sundance.
The story of a group marriage among two couples who swap partners in the 70s, it is told in an unconventional and brilliant way, in a split screen form, where Amy’s parents each tell their story on one half of the screen, mother on the left, father on the right. Apparently the best stories came out of interviews on the go, in the car, instead of formal sit-down interviews, and they needed both of them to fill in the gaps that they other had left. So the split screen essentially makes what could have been the documentary’s weakness into its greatest strength, with each partner driving toward each other, or away from each other, in this split screen. It was also conceived as an installation piece, where our normal conventions of the screen are freed up, giving space for different ideas like this to flourish. All in all, this is the sort of piece I wish that all of you could see (unfortunately it’s on the fest circuit now), because it pushes the boundaries of the form in an interesting way stylistically, and for a purpose that originates organically from the material.
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