His Excellency Jean-Daniel Lafond
Speech on the Occasion of the Calgary International Film Festival
Calgary, Sunday, October 1, 2006
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The camera is like a razor blade. It slices into what’s real, taking samples to piece together what could be called the language of reality.
The camera produces an illusion of what’s real. It depicts what may be true rather than truth itself, all the while revealing the artificiality of the image.
A film (particularly a documentary) sometimes serves as a good conscience. It can speak to the truthfulness of the words heard and things seen, of possible truths but never The Truth. As such, it can alternately be a tool to expose and reveal but also an instrument for intellectual exploration or poetic adventure.
So really, anything goes. There is no categorical imperative dictating the angle or axis, the nature of the frame or its composition. Filming demands a new take on understanding what’s real.
A camera without conscience would be little more than a recording device, fulfilling the mechanical needs of observation, voyeurism, espionage or surveillance. But even without conscience, the device is not without intent. The filmmaker’s job is to create that connection between conscience and intent while clarifying the intent of filming. Which led French filmmaker Jean‑Luc Godard to remark: “It is no use having a clear picture if the intent is blurred”.
Fortunately, the camera, by its very nature, reveals, exposes, provokes. It is a tradition embraced by Leacock and Michael Moore, Pennebaker and Maysles and many others. This exposure does not necessarily get to the heart of the matter; it remains on the surface of what is immediately visible without digging for meaning, without going in search of the world and life of others.
For me, documentary filmmaking, at its apex, is a doubly passionate look at life, through filming and editing, which are inextricably linked.
It is impossible to talk about the language of documentary film without emphasizing the slow and patient task of editing.
For me, the research and script are the written work done before the film, whereas editing is the written work that comes after. My method generally follows this formula: tell a story about what’s real that depicts both reality and its complex truths while stimulating the imagination and engaging the audience.
I believe, as Quebec writer Jacques Ferron once said, that Reality is hidden behind reality. Indeed, the truth is not set in stone; there are often many truths, and it is this complexity that the film must convey at the risk of sparking controversy.
But what a risk, given that controversy is a natural dialectic as we construct what is real, because there is no one, single truth, except for those naïve enough to believe in the so-called “media truth.” In the search for truth, confrontation is unavoidable.
My brand of filmmaking rests on that philosophical precondition. It is the essence of my research, my preparatory writing, my aesthetic choices, my filming and editing style.
The audience is engaged by this connection to reality. It does not have the luxury of remaining on the other side of the screen, like careful observers of the events of history, passively observing the unexpected twists as individuals meet. I do everything I can to ensure they have no choice but to abandon their role as witness-spectators. I do everything I can to draw them inside the film through controversy, to awaken understanding. When it works, the film has succeeded. It’s what’s happening now, I think, with American Fugitive, The Truth about Hassan.
In that particular case, the controversy is linked to the flow of the film, which refuses to wrap up a story that involves one of the critical issues currently facing our society. When the film is over, the game has barely even begun. Essentially, my work in writing and editing the film consists in pushing the audience to take the ball and run with it. The denouement is a collective process.
I speak to individuals, telling of an individual destiny. As a result, I have an individual writing style, unique to the intent and to my relationship with that intent. At this point, I’m not looking to make others happy. I’m trying to be as real and as fair as possible to the reality of those involved, to the situations and events. I refuse to close the door on multiple truths. I believe it is important to leave the door open, for facts and opinions to be respected, not cancel each other out, just as it is important for me not to yield to trends or self-censorship.
For a long time, we wanted to push documentary film into a category other than sociology, education, journalism; we wanted—we still do—documentary film to become part of a kind of highly complex vision of what’s real: where there is hesitation, where there is doubt, where there is hidden intent, some of History’s obscure intentions. This is not unlike painting or the theatre; it is akin to all other artists striving to represent, to better construct what’s real and hidden beneath the appearances of reality.
In making the films that I do, I am following a path that is as philosophical as it is cinematographic. I challenge the “media truth,” which rests on the illusion that it is possible to say all there is to say about an event, a person, a situation, a destiny—because I know that it is not possible. Instead, I try to say all that can be known about that event, that person, that situation, that destiny to spark a new awareness that will inspire the audience and society to pause and reflect. My job as a filmmaker thus remains necessary in the quest to uncover what’s real, somewhere between truth and controversy.
