10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival –
Images of the 21st Century
March 7-16 2008
PRESS RELEASE
MASTERCLASS
JOE BERLINGER AND BRUCE SINOFSKI
The creative duo Joe Berlinger – Bruce Sinofsky spoke about the secret of their successful collaboration as well as the difficulties of process of artistic creation during the Master Class they gave on Friday, March 14 at the John Cassavetes theatre at Warehouse 1 at the port, in the context of the 10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
The Artistic Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Dimitri Eipides opened the Master Class by welcoming the audience and the directors. Peter Wintonick, journalist, director and documentary producer said of the directors: “They have made extraordinarily original films. I am genuinely envious of their work, I admire the fact that they are still active, still working, and I believe they have not been adequately honored by documentary festivals”.
Joe Berlinger, speaking about their long term collaboration, noted: “We joined forces against an environment that was not particularly friendly towards the genre we decided to serve. Over time, a special relationship developed between us, but we always each had the space, the time and the freedom to work on his own, personal things. We complement each other, I take care of the legal and financial matters, and Bruce takes care of the technical ones, but we both make an equally important contribution to the final result.”
“Something magical happens when we collaborate artistically, we matured as people and as friends together, and developed as individuals. These types of relationship are not easy in life, particularly in the artistic arena”, Bruce Sinofski said. He noted that during their collaboration they have only disagreed once: “Working alone has many positive attributes, but we like working together because this helps us simplify some things as far as the process is concerned”.
Referring to Paradise Lost, Joe Berlinger commented: “We received criticism from documentary makers because we didn’t clarify our position on the subject. We wanted to place the audience in the position of the jury, so that it could decide for itself”. “We didn’t set out to campaign on behalf of three young men accused of the murder of another three”, Bruce Sinofski added.
Speaking about how they work, Joe Berlinger stressed that they try to not exhaust research before beginning their film. “It’s fascinating to discover what has really happened through the film itself”, Joe Berlinger said, and his collaborator agreed completely, saying: “What ruins a film is predictability. We don’t want to know how it will end, because if we know, then the audience knows”.
Speaking about the qualities of the film Metallica: Some kind of monster, Bruce Sinofski noted: “We had 1600 hours of footage and we saw all the material again from the beginning, so as not to miss something interesting. This took us more than two months”. Joe Berlinger added that when they did the editing, they had 2-3 different versions in mind in order to find the right structure.
Commenting on their television work, they both agreed that making documentaries for television is different from making them for theatrical release. They used the series Iconoclasts as an example. They said these are “films for rapid consumption”, which take less time, but they added that their income from television gives them the ability to make the film work they like.
Both directors then referred to their next projects. Joe Berlinger is preparing a film about the Amazon and toxic waste that has appeared in the area from oil drilling, and Bruce Sinofski is making a series of six episodes for Discovery Channel which deal with the reactions of nine prisoners in a maximum security prison when they are placed in an educational program that teaches them about film.
