PANEL DISCUSSION
DOCUMENTING REALITY:
ETHICAL ISSUES IN THE DIGITAL AGE (15/03/2010)
The growing use of digital recording and image processing methods, the documentary on the internet, the weakening of the artist’s vision and the ethical dilemmas faced by contemporary filmmakers were discussed during a conference organized by the 12th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival at the John Cassavetes theater (which was broadcast live through www.tvxs.gr) which took place on Monday, March 15, coordinated by Mattheos Tsimitakis.
Director/Producer Peter Wintonick, Korina Pateli, lecturer at the Department of Communication and Internet Studies, Cyprus University of Technology, director Christos Karakepelis and Wilma De Jong, professor at the Media and Film Studies Department of the University of Sussex were asked to analyze the role of the contemporary filmmaker and his place in the age of the internet.
Dimitri Eipides, Artistic Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival welcomed the speakers and the audience saying: “This is an effort we are making to bring the audience in touch with worthy representatives of the documentary genre. We have organized 11 similar events and three teleconferences, with the participation of people who bring images and experiences from all over the world”.
Mattheos Tsimitakis noted that the changes taking place in the mass media are changing relationships in the chain of production, distribution and consumption of films. “Issues such as who controls the media, who pays for a film that speaks about reality and under what conditions, who consumes the product and with what criteria, all these are involved with technology and the economy of the media for the moving image , whether we are speaking of a dark theater or the internet”, he noted. The changes in a documentary’s production process and are the reason for today’s conference, is the relationship of the filmmaker with his subject, the questioning of the representation of reality on television and alternative web collectives, the distribution of documentaries and the power of the web.
Director Christos Karakepelis referred to the danger of a director’s getting carried away by the ease with which he can record an image using new technology, and thus losing the particular vision that characterizes a filmmaker. “The tele-visation of film production and the goal of a mass audience that has been imposed by television stations have undermined the deeper delving into reality and the essence that characterized documentary films”, he said. He continued: “The documentary is not reportage, it doesn’t need information, it needs senses. Screening a documentary on a computer will never be the same as screening it in a dark theater and with a group of people in order to provoke their senses and their reactions”. Using his films “House of Cain”, and his latest “Raw Material” as an example, he noted that digital cameras and the digital format are not really as flexible as we think. “Video, with the easy immediacy of using rec and pause, lures the filmmaker into shooting infinite hours of material hoping that this anarchistic material will become a film in the end. I believe that on the contrary, we should shoot in a more restricted fashion and more strictly. Esthetics and plasticity are absent from video”, he stressed.
Wilma De Jong spoke about the challenges contemporary filmmakers have to face in dealing with the immediacy of the internet and the dictates of television networks which for the most part finance the production of documentaries. Ms De Jong differentiated the meaning of deontology from the development of technology, explaining that deontology is based on ethics. “In every historical period people felt threatened by technology. But they always found ways to set limits and take actions based on their conscience and their ethics”, she said. The role of television has been restricted to serving advertising interests, with the result that they have a great influence on their products, one of which is the documentary. “They ask you to make your work more attractive and rounded so that it appeals to a wide audience, they can sell it to more advertisers and maximize their profits”. Referring to digital technology, she said that the internet has created a new dynamic audience which has opinions, and at the same time has spurred a tendency to exhibitionism. “People broadcast their life on youtube, they upload unprocessed material of their private moments for no apparent reason. The drastic expansion of pornography is a clear example of this trend”, Ms De Jong noted.
Korina Pateli took a different viewpoint. She defended digital technology and claimed that internet users who record and interpret their daily reality are composing a mini documentary of their lives. “I come from cyberspace, I’m always online and I have uploaded many personal social moments to the net. I believe that the internet is a new, independent medium which has no relation to television and creates new challenges for filmmakers”. Ms Pateli used her doctoral thesis as an example. This was based on a service provided by the American company AOL, something like the ancestor of today’s Facebook, in order to say that the internet is not just a simple platform for the exchange of messages and the manipulation of the users. “At one point, AOL left free, on the internet, files with personal user data which were about their thoughts and other personal things which they had recorded online. One of these, the thoughts of one user was “I love Alaska”, which can be found for free on the internet. I believe that a new culture in documentary making is happening, which I call a documentary culture”. For Ms Pateli, the ethical dilemma is mainly found in the way in which traditional documentary makers deal with the reality of their subjects. “I believe there is a real issue of snobbery there. They aren’t interested in the reality lived by their subjects, but how they can best record reality as they see it. The issue is, where do we set the limits”.
“We live in an era where we are watched and we watch events 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We are an extension of our computer and our environment is full of digital technology which makes us be online constantly”. With these words the director Peter Wintonick began to discuss his position, adding that the traditional documentary has given way to the so-called “doc media” which are made and broadcast on the internet. Referring to ethics and deontology, he noted that they are important issues that any filmmaker must keep in mind during production. “I don’t believe there is a single film which doesn’t raise some ethical issue. At least not in my work”, he said. Then he referred to the ancient Greek philosophers to demonstrate that ethical issues have concerned humanity for hundreds of years. Speaking of deontological issues that should concern young people and active filmmakers he stressed that: “We must always ask ourselves who the documentary we are making serves, who is financing it and for what reason. Can we make films on any subject, no matter how extreme? How neutral is our presence and what are we doing to get our subjects’ consent? There are cases of hidden cameras which caused harm to the interviewees when the documentaries were screened.” Mr. Wintonick concluded by saying that filmmakers must build their own personal code of professional conduct which they will cling to absolutely throughout their documentary’s production process”.
