For anyone aiming to be a documentary filmmaker, Jennifer Teixeira should be asked to watch Camila Hall’s 90-minute documentary “Theme”. “Theme” explores the moral responsibilities real-life filmmakers face when they decide to capture people, often in their most vulnerable state, and thus forever lock them in a moment in time that will live through the ages no matter how much the person grows or changes.
Tiexiera (“PS Burn This Letter Please”) and Hall (“Copwatch”) focus on some of the most successful documentaries of the past three decades and the “stars” they made and left in their wake. The director duo explores the psychological impact of being major unpaid participants in commercially successful projects, including “The Staircase,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Wolfpack,” “The Square,” and “Capturing the Friedmans.” Below, Tiexiera and Hall discuss the making of the documentary ahead of its June 11 premiere in Tribeca.
What made you want to make this documentary?
Hall: Jane as a former editor and myself as a producer and director, have seen our participants struggle at various times in the process of making documentaries. We both felt, “Oh my God. How should it be on the other side of the lens?” .
I have interviewed notable docu participants including Arthur Agee (“Hope Dreams”), Ahmed Hassan (“The Arena”), Margaret Ratliff, Michael Peterson (“The Staircase”) Jesse Friedman and Elaine Friedman (“Friedman Families”) but not the directors behind These films, such as Steve James, Andrew Jarecki and Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. why?
Teixeira: This decision was made from the start of this project. However, all directors were aware of the film. But we didn’t want to reach the participants through the directors because we were already studying this power dynamic. So we wanted to come to the subjects and make them have a complete agency free of the past, however many years they may be. This does not mean that the managers were not part of our process. For the past six months, give or take, we’ve been coordinating the film with them. Some were more involved than others.
What do you mean by workshop?
Teixeira: All participants are also our co-producers. They are accomplices in this and they have completely cut off their divisions. So, after they reviewed their departments, we took [those sections] To the directors and they were like, “Well, you know, that’s misleading here” or “That’s a little aggressive here.” In the end, we were not afraid of this process. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t really intense for both of us and confusing at times. We had tough conversations, but it made the movie stronger. There are some directors who inherently think they should be a part of the movie, but that’s not the movie we made.
Hall: The workshop process really reinforced why we chose to shoot with the participants themselves for so long because these relationships are so complex – more complex than we could have imagined from the start. Therefore, people were free to just shoot, open up, and talk in any way they wanted. Then, in the end, they had this opportunity to really think about what they wanted to say and how they wanted to present it during the workshops with the directors.
Commodity is an interesting word to describe the subject of the document. They, for the most part, do not earn money to participate in a document but their lives make a lot of people a lot of money. Do you think subjects should earn money in order to participate in documentaries?
Hall: People make a lot of money from some of these documentaries, like “The Staircase,” and Margaret never saw a dime. You didn’t see a dime from Netflix when [the docuseries was] Sold out to Netflix and never seen a cent from HBO [for HBO Max’s “The Staircase.”]. So, for her, the worst moment in her life right now is not just entertainment, it is funding other children’s colleges.
Did you pay for “topic” topics?
Teixeira: As co-producers, they have a background with us. Paying them – this is difficult. We can’t pay them for their story. That just morally doesn’t sit right with us. How do you trust the story? But I can’t ask someone to take off work, miss childcare, pay their way to the shoot and pay for your meals while making a documentary with us. This takes money out of their pocket, on top of providing us with that confidence. This becomes really problematic. For a long time, it was thought that we – the documentary – provide you with this service and give you this platform. It needs to be reconsidered as a partnership.
While Eileen Friedman isn’t happy with her acting in “Capturing the Friedmans,” most people she’s interviewed, like Arthur Agee, are grateful for their own documentation. What do you hope viewers think about the movie?
Hall: The film is not black and white. It is very accurate. Everyone’s experience is completely different. But I think for us the movie serves two purposes. The first, before you decide to take part in a documentary, you should think and understand what you are getting yourself into. For audiences of documentaries, it’s an opportunity to understand that these are real people, not mere commodities. This is their real life.
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