How can you not love the literary voice of Michael Rabiger? “Filmmaking is a beautiful and involving art form, one that synthesizes practically every other art form invented, and that makes learning a lifelong adventure. Most significantly, making documentary means you are learning about yourself, and becoming a fuller human being”. What a seductive claim. How are more people not chomping at the bit the instant they read this? This book is about being human and that is the best kind of book to read. The best part is how it reads like a documentary is watched: observe, feel, understand, challenge, learn, and probably more verbs I am not mentioning here.
But it’s true, what he says about us humans, about what we are made of, about what drives us, not our physical matter. We all have some pain, some excitement, some conflict in our lives. We are bound to see that in others. Don’t we expect it? This is the passion that ignites the need to investigate a story. He says strive not to put anything on the screen unless it reveals something. What story will best reveal what drives me, and what will engage others in that revelation?
We seek to preserve, to attach to, to remember, to ask. We are seekers, he says, by nature. Why are we living in this time and place, or at all? Film seems to bring some sort of insight into this question. It seems so perverse to ask. People like to make light of existential phenomena. But when faced with it on a screen, it is nearly impossible to look away. I have something to say. I might not know what it is yet, but I think I have to believe that it’s there.
Whatever conflicts I face throughout my life, I know I am not alone. There is another human on this planet who will want to know and understand it from my point of view. The “social art” is one of the present, but for the future. History is a promise kept and documentary film is the secret handshake declaring a “forever-ness”.