A FILM UNFINISHED: notes from roundtable

“The Silence of the Archive: Roundtable Discussion of A FILM UNFINISHED"

Saturday, April 30, 8:30

Participants: Tom Gunning, Noa Steimatsky, Julia Adeney Thomas, and Johannes von Moltke

Director Yael Hersonski present

 The roundtable’s title comes from the Israeli release of the film’s title – The Silence of the Archive. An odd title, not touched on during the roundtable, that is worth further discussion at a later time.  Here, I’ll briefly summarize what I thought were the most interesting points from each participant, without explicit commentary. It should go without saying that this three day event is a model for rich discussion that the documentary community desperately needs: a Thursday night screening (attended by over 200, I’d guess), followed by a Friday morning workshop (that I did not attend), and a Saturday evening roundtable driven by four academics, representing three disciplines, as well as the director present (attended by about 40). I think my notes well-represent speaker perspectives:

Julia Adney Thomas

The question of how images serve or resist (intended) representation.

The question of the artfulness/craft of the film’s construction – what does this mean given its content?

What does it mean to witness cruelties?

Two primary organizing thoughts: (1) efficacy of images; (2) evidence of images

Interested in the politics of space in the film, or political distances, framed by Helmet Lethen’s text Cool Conduct: The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany. Cites four layers:

1) initial footage;

2) uses of original footage (as propaganda);

3) witnesses (watching original footage);

4) us as audience, consuming edited culmination w/ effects

Primarily discussed closeness and lack of freedom/options suggested by initial film’s framing, representations effectively Taylorize subjects

But also raises question of how initial filmers “saw” subjects

Posits the film was left unfinished due to fluidity of images – “too fluid” to be used

Johannes von Moltke

Raised question of what film offers as historical material, the question of formal and aesthetic considerations.

Asks “what kind of documentary is it?” Offers three suggestions:

1) Essay film – reasons by associations, committed to topics (primarily relationship of memory to history)

2) Ethnographic film, esp. regarding the production culture of Nazi filmmaking

3) Archive film, interested in questions of deterioration, muteness/power to speak

What does it mean that the images we have to work with are from the perpetrators?

Know it was propaganda, but how was it to be used.

Opines that the unfinished nature is due to Nazi shift from denigrating Jews to championing The Master Race, thus project simply abandoned

Tom Gunning

Eases into a soft critique that a value of problematic films opens spaces to discuss the problematic.

Felt that film put him “in contact with Evil”.

Felt “a deep sense of shame”, as sutured to gaze as perpetrator and spectator, as well as film critic/historian, that ‘his medium’ is capable of such evil, and/or, raises question “is film capable of evil?” Cites 1915 court case that first denies First Amendment protection to film arguing that film is more powerful than the press, that it is capable of evil.

Questions how it is problematic to remove a volatile representation such as this from its specificity – does it render the power of the original dramatically lessened? Cites Lanzmann on representing the Shoah.

Elaborates on narration at FILM’s opening that describes Nazi relationship to photography as a desire to use photography’s power to truth-claiming for telling lies.

Image is not only of what is shot but more importantly the perspectival/machine gaze, thus we “are made to inhabit a Nazi gaze” and is very uncomfortable with this move

Wonders what the Nazi’s did not show

Also highly uncomfortable with the fictionalized interviews with original filmer Wist, not only in themselves, but also importantly because the film is primarily a criticism of the original footage as false for uses of propaganda, here being replicated ‘for the other side’

Also worried about the glamorization of the testimony from survivors, its glossiness

Noa Steimatsky

Introduced herself as modernist film scholar that has willfully avoided (for the most past) screening Holocaust films “for whatever reason” that she still does not completely understand. Suggests the Holocaust is still too recent/present

Uncomfortable with Hersonski’s choice to slow and freeze moments of original footage – feels it “gives it a kind of beauty which I find horrifying…which also gives Wist a benefit”

Wonders how the chronology of the original footage matches the chronology in current film

Questions the “cold geometry of the framing…the extreme close-ups of emotionless Wist" character. This coldness acts to tame “the hot wild material of the archive”

Also, like Gunning, uncomfortable with the framing and “high-stylized” representations of the witnesses, they are “casual and expressive”, they have a “retarding effect” on the archival material

Most powerful moment when the photo from the trash is picked up. Hersonski slows and pauses on the photo, but is more interested in the fact that the Nazi filmer actually captured this – what was the motivation in capturing this?

Yeal Hersonski

In response to Gunning’s questioning the appropriateness of the decision to fabricate the interview material, she emphatically says “Hell, yes”.

Stated she “never intended to confuse the viewer [that interviews were not real]…didn’t mean to indicate this is how it was…[if this is the case] I should go back to my drawing boards”. Though stated she was “aware of our own dangerous power as a manipulative filmmaker”

Made point that we are “living during a time when there are so many other documentaries of atrocities”

Fleshing criticisms of THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH: AN URBAN HISTORY

With more titles announced for Full Frame I have to say I was quite surprised to see THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH making the cut. In my previous True/False write-up, I wrote critically on the film while leaving out specific issues I have with the film. In preparation for the FF screening, where I'll attempt to revisit the film if nothing high-priority is scheduled against it, I'd like to give it a second chance.  Before I get the critique rolling, I'll restate my positive thoughts on the film: (1) the idea for the film is potentially great, (2) some of the archival footage is fantastic, and (3) I love that they included interviews from former residents.

Questions concerning decisions made, keeping in mind I took no notes.

Fortunately it does not happen often, but on rare occasions films will use footage multiply in a way that adds seemingly nothing to form or content - PRUITT-IGOE does this on several occasions. There are many clips that are used multiple times, most egregiously in a montage that seems to desire some emphasizing effect that falls utterly flat. We get the St. Louis City Limits sign at least three times (yeah, we get population dropped); a rent sign zoomed in on at least three times - for what effect? A focus-pull from a broken window, presumably in Pruitt-Igoe, used multiple times. Not only is it odd that clips are reused, but odd that these clips are reused - more on this later.

The film seems to want to make a statement about urban decline - as its website states - though the only city discussed is St. Louis. There is an archival graphic (that might appear more than once) that cites population decline for three cities, but that is as far as it goes in being about urban in a way more than St. Louis. There is brief mention of a St. Louis suburb, with some good archival footage about why a white family has left "the black city", but the analysis doesn't go beyond the statement. Further, in taking us to the suburbs, the film (again) reuses a piece of footage of traffic on an interstate (the source of which is uncredited) the suggestion, of course, is a mass exodus from The City, but it feels trite - and its reuse doubly confounding. There might have been an argument in the narration or from one of the Talking Head historians on the decline of cities, but if there was it was nothing that seemed so compelling as to stick with me.

Which leads into PRUITT-IGOE's expert interviews. I think there were three expert interviews coming from two historians and one sociologist, while two of these experts were good, one of the historians added very little. This third historian made several sweeping generalizations, not backed with argument, sometimes on controversial claims - I simply didn't believe much of what he was saying, and some of what he was saying seemed so vacuous as to be inconsequential - much of his narrative reminded me of bad encyclopedia writing adding no substantive context or detail. With increased attention on public housing from historians it would have been easy to get better, and more varied, perspectives on Pruitt-Igoe.

Interviews with former residents. Aside the aesthetics of the interviewees placed in front of a glaring-white back-drop, the fact that there were only four or five former resident interviews used seems negligent. Apparently, in one of the post-screening Q&As, the director stated eight former residents were actually interviewed.  Not only does it seem cursory that only eight former residents were interviewed in the first place - and four or five ultimately used in the film - but it seems even more egregious when one of them reflects on what a testament it is to the community of Pruitt-Igoe that so many have kept in touch over the years. If resident voices were going to be leaned on so heavily for film content, texture, and narrative arc, it seems obvious that a sample of more than eight would be necessary. If the filmmakers had included a wider variety of voices, they could have depicted a much richer community picture without rendering their subjects overly precious and at times meandering.

On the topic of narrative arc, aside the roughly third given to resident voice, and third given to expert voice, a final third of the narrative was driven by not-very-good narration. Much of the narration, like the overly broad statements of the third historian, was presented as a story in wide strokes and generalizations backed by little to no quantification or context. Worse were the faux-insights such as 'history does not [emphasis in film] repeat itself' or the equally inane closing along the lines of 'we need to understand Pruitt-Igoe so we know what to do later'. I know how hard it is to write narration, but this is so cloying it distances the viewer.

Pruitt-Igoe is not explained in context of the larger public housing history of St. Louis, what's more, the contextualizing of Pruitt-Igoe as public housing in the US is also non-existent. The film briefly notes the Fair Housing Act of 1949 as bringing the project into being, with the other smidgeon of context delivered being the suggestion that Brown v Board is what caused the white-flight out of St. Louis and Pruitt-Igoe. Beyond this, the filmmakers have failed to include any quantitative data for any of the history they are telling - including, maddeningly, the omission of dates throughout the film. Further, the most prominent myth the film seems to want to dispel is that residents caused the deterioration of the buildings, claiming instead this decline was due to a lack of maintenance. While this is certainly believable, it would have made sense to do some research regarding what upkeep investments were made as well as what would have been necessary, perhaps even making comparisons to other public and private housing.

Another significant problem is the mess of archival footage that litters the film. As the film sets out to dispel misconceptions about public housing, it would seem that using archival footage of a black, dark-alley hoodlum with a gun, probably general stock footage from a fiction film rather than from an archive of Pruitt-Igoe material, would have been a good trope to avoid. But it wasn't.  While much of the material specific to Pruitt-Igoe seems quite interesting, we also get a fair amount of unidentified general footage that fails to interestingly or organically interact with the Pruitt-Igoe material. Worse, many times footage that is most likely not of Pruitt-Igoe is used in a manner to suggest that it is Pruitt-Igoe, or will reasonably be read as representing Pruitt-Igoe. There is rarely a sense of what or when the archival footage is depicting. There are several occasions that a glimmer of hope is produced by an image, e.g., a children's Pruitt-Igoe betterment society, that I had hoped would finally offer a story that was significant and interesting. Yet again the filmmakers show and fail to explore a piece of the story that could have offered richness and depth.

Marketing for the film repeatedly frames this project, in part, about modernism and its discontents. Invoked by both filmmaker-provided press materials and film festival blurbs, Pruitt-Igoe is "a modernist exercise in utopian habitats" [from True/False] and "that iconoclastic 'failure' of modernism" [from Full Frame]. The film delivers nothing on modernism or utopianism. It might be implied through some of the resident stories of Pruitt-Igoe that there was something utopian about the endeavor, but this is never fleshed out, nor is there much said about the design or planning of Pruitt-Igoe aside mention of green-space. Regarding modernism, I don't recall anything within the film itself about Pruitt-Igoe as modernist or its demise as an end of modernism. The Arch, as iconically St. Louis and iconically modernist, is briefly mentioned, but not framed as modernist and certainly not contextualized within any broader project of modernism.

I am also curious about the film screening Full Frame but not in Rick Prelinger's One Foot In the Archives program, which does include new works that feature archival footage. Curious to hear his thoughts on PRUITT-IGOE if he has experienced it.

I'd still love to get feedback from others who know the film and also promote conversation on issues and implications for using archival materials.