British - Director | September 23, 1974 -
From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.
Joshua Oppenheimer
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In terms of so-called fly-on-the-wall documentaries, there's a claim that the camera is a transparent window into a pre-existing reality. What really is happening is that the film crew and the subjects are collaborating to simulate a reality in which they pretend the camera is not present.
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No one forgets the presence of the camera, no matter how long it's there.
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Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.
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I first went to Indonesia in 2001 for six months. I was to help a community of plantation workers to make a film documenting and dramatizing the struggle to organize a union in the aftermath of the Suharto dictatorship.
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To put it crudely, 'The Act of Killing' would blast open the space for the more delicate film, 'The Look of Silence,' to do its work.
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I wanted to resist in 'The Look of Silence' making a film that ends with any kind of positive hope I feel in human rights documentaries dealing with human survivors.
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Films can't change the society; they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new forms of social activism.
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I still receive very regular death threats that make it impossible for me to return to Indonesia. I think I could get in, but I don't think I could get out again.
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My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.
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My first memory of cinema is my mother taking me to see 'Silkwood,' which is about a whistleblower at a nuclear power plant.
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I don't like to eat when I watch films because it distracts me. Anything crunchy or in a wrapper is terrible.
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