“Why I choose Documentary Filmmaking?”

Filmmaking is sometimes an advocacy in escapism, expression, rebellion, propaganda and so much more. Having to understand this journey in choosing your choice in advocacy is truly an unstable one with no right answer to have you excel in this career path. And I speak more than mere self-reference since I am but student of cinema and on the learning curve but I speak in behalf of my mentors Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, Gaspar Noe, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Stanley Kubrick all well known in their authorship  But documentary filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Asif Kapadia, Laura Poitras, Joshua Oppenheimer have made an equally indominable marks in the way they speak their stories.

Documentary films speak a truth viable through the screen through story and narrative through real life events and people. There is a certain thrill in constructing narratives that thrill and captivate, like Mr. Kapadia’s Oscar winning documentary feature Senna Based on the ever-thrilling man of speed from Brazil, Ayrton Senna. Having to know his death to be a matter of public record but there is an entire journey in understanding the man behind the wheel through archival footage, interviews, home videos and more. All laid out in an overarching narrative. Or the slow immediacy in Errol Morris’ 1988 feature The thin blue line about finding a Murderer and the following events that lead up to the investigation in finding this killer. His film had such an impact over the audiences and people of power, that it reopened the case leading to better reports and results. Finding the killer. Such an impact. A meaningful use of the mediums. Having such power to enter one’s mind and question the question is what baffles in the line of art that is documentary film-making .