1. Documentary should be used for revolutionary mobilization. Passiveness is enough! Indifference is enough! Compassion fatigue is enough! “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated.” Documentary should reflect injustice while demanding emancipation. Documentary should raise critical issues and prepare an interactive atmosphere for mobilization and action.
2. Documentary should be politically incorrect. Political correctness is the manifestation of postmodern censorship. People are dying everyday because of stupidity, superstition, religion and outdated mentalities, while we comfortably justify our ignorance and acceptance under the pretext of tolerance, or the fear of neo-colonialism. The documentarian has the right to question and criticize with no respect for any belief.
3. Documentary should be iconoclastically unethical. The documentarian is a social reformer and has his own intellectual moralities. Reform cannot occur without crossing the social boundaries of norm and acceptance. Ethics are based on social norms. Ethics are designed for limitation and acceptance. Ignoring ethics is justifiable for the documentarian if reform is achieved as its consequence. Reform cannot occur without sacrifice.
4. The documentarian should be free from issues of representation. Everyone should have the right to represent. Everything should be subject to representation. Issues of representation are repressive and restricting. Discursive imperialism is an illusion. Localism is a fallacious dream. Speaking for, speaking with, speaking about and speaking against anyone and anything is possible. As Linda Alcoff expresses:
“A retreat from speaking for will not result in an increase in receptive listening in all cases; it may result merely in a retreat into a narcissistic yuppie lifestyle in which a privileged person takes no responsibility for her society.”
Retreating from other mentioned acts of speaking would also result in the same lack of responsibility and indifference.
5. The documentarian is free to determine the aesthetics and modes of representation. As an artist, the documentarian should enjoy absolute stylistic freedom. He can use anything from a grainy image, an eyesore object or shaky camera movements to perfectly exposed images, ideally crafted objects and smooth camera movements. He is free to choose the genre of his work, or invent one if necessary. He can choose and combine mediums to satisfy his artistic needs and realize his vision.
6. Documentary should be decommodified legally or (if necessary) illegally in order to reach the masses on a global scale. As John Berger stated:
“The unachieved positivist utopia became, instead, the global system of late capitalism wherein all that exists becomes quantifiable –– no simply because it can be reduced to a statistical fact, but also because it has been reduced to a commodity. In such a system there is no space for experience.”
Decommodification will crack this system. Artwork will become accessible for everyone. The artist’s message will reach beyond the artificial boundaries of capitalist ownership. The “space for experience” will be revitalized and change will become more feasible.
7. There are no restrictions or defining borders between documentary and fiction. Documentary as Walker Evans stated, “is a very sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear.” Documentary and fiction have always overlapped and influenced each other. This process of influence is ongoing as the realms of documentary and fiction are constantly redefined. As John Corner describes, “Extensive borrowing of the ‘documentary look’ by other kinds of programme, and extensive borrowing of non-documentary kinds of look by documentary, have complicated the rules of recognizing a documentary.” How can something with this degree of alternation be defined and restricted? It is the documentarian’s right to challenge these definitions. He should explore, employ, and combine elements from both of these forms of representation to convey his message.
8. Documentary does not need an artist statement. A work of art should speak for itself. Statements made by the documentarian will weaken and trivialize the work. Interpretation and decoding is the viewer’s challenge. The artist is not responsible for simplification and digestibility of his work.
9. Documentary should be made non-literally, through the extensive use of tropes. Truth as Werner Herzog explains, “can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.” Literality is outdated and has no evident connection to the real. Therefore, it should be discarded. The documentarian’s job is to detect, revitalize and extract the hidden poetry, which is buried under the surface of reality. This task requires the extensive utilization of literary and visual techniques, and tropes.
10. The documentarian is the sole creator/organizer of the work. Documentary work is based on the subjective understanding of its creator. Any form of creative collaboration without hierarchy will disturb and alter the authenticity of this understanding. It will cause disturbance of interpretation. Therefore only the documentarian should have creative control of his creation. Collaboration is possible, but under the supervision and organization of the documentarian.
