I enjoyed Robert Seidman’s talk with our class on Monday night because he really gave us a good idea of the amplitude of works one can create in this discipline. People who want to work in the documentary field can document about anything that they want to. There are so many different kinds of stories out there waiting to be told-about war, about family, about love. A documentary can tell about a person’s life, it can tell about a particular place; there are so many ways to use the gift of documentary.
Seidman showed us some of his documentaries, all spanning through different times and stories of the world we live in. The documentary that was most gripping for me was Riding the Rails. This film depicted the 250,000+ teenagers who lived on the road because of the Great Depression. This film hooked me in because I have studied the Great Depression, but I did not know of the large number of kids who fled their homes searching for a better life. I would like to watch this on my own time to see the stories of why the children left, how they survived, and how their experiences changed their lives.
Seidman mentioned during his talk that he is an atheist, which I thought was very fascinating because of the documentary he created on the Jewish community. He stated how he would get into many arguments with another very religious man while working on the set because they would want to create the film in different ways. It is interesting how someone’s background can shape the way a film is created.
I looked to Robert Seidman’s talk not as a way for him to show us all the great works he’s created, but a talk to display to us what we can do in the documentary field. I felt inspired after his visit with us and feel motivated to document the compelling stories I see around me.