Revealing the Multifariousness: Documenting Filmmakers

Approaching the truth, glimpsing the behind-the-scenes stories, and uncovering the personalities: documentaries on filmmakers bridge the gap between the audience and the filmmaker. Walking in the footsteps of virtuosos is an exhilaration constructed elaborately by documentary filmmakers. They examine the peculiarity of filmmaking methods, explore the versatility of the subjects they film, and are never afraid of being subjective. The documentaries act as a tribute to filmmakers, creating flipped roles in which the director in question is a “performer”—or even sometimes absent from the film. 

The most typical method of narration is through tracking the creation of a particular film. Hideaki Anno: The Final Challenge of Evangelion was released in 2021 along with Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the final movie in the Rebuild of Evangelion series. Japanese media organization NHK gets first-hand footage from Anno’s studio for a four-year period and witnesses the birth of the finale. They roughly address Anno’s earlier career back in his hometown and his connection with Studio Ghibli co-founder Miyazaki Hayao. However, NHK focuses more on Anno and his team’s process and uses non-linear editing for their interviews. The documentary draws a touching end to the epic series, recalling a collective memory of a generation, one that loved Anno’s films. 

Using animation to present the course of preparation for a non-animated film is a surprising move as live-action is usually the documentary standard. Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) does just this, recounting director Alejandro Jodorowsky failure in adapting Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune. While Jodorowsky's version of the beloved book may never see the light of day, Jodorowsky's Dune and its accompanying comic book, created in collaboration with artist Moebius, are very much available to the public. Interviews with Jodorowsky emphasize his ambition to “create a prophet” (in his words) and explain the difficulties of realizing it. A vast number of storyboards serve as both transitional segments and visualizations for the audience to better comprehend Jodorowsky’s ideation. 

The Burden of Dreams (1982) records the journey of Werner Herzog filming Fitzcarraldo (1982) in the Peruvian jungle. The documentary reveals the hardships of a crew working in a challenging environment as well as the conflicts among the locals, military, and petroleum companies. Fitzcarraldo is about an opera enthusiast who wants to construct a theater in Iquitos. Documentarian Les Blank accompanies Herzog to the Amazon Basin to document his filmmaking process. Blank’s camera does not always remain on the crew. Instead, it occasionally drifts to the natural world, such as a rubber tree with ants crawling on the stumps, or to pop culture symbols: Coca-Cola logos in local homes and Mickey Mouse on a child’s t-shirt. These scenery shots distract from the main characters of the documentary, presenting a story not centered only on the crew but rather, everything they encounter during filming. 

Herzog is also featured in a 20-minute short documentary, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), directed by Les Blank as well. His persistence is shown when he promises to eat his shoe to encourage director Errol Morris to finish his documentary Gate of Heaven (1978). Years after this wager, the film was released with the help of Herzog. Here, we take a peak at Herzog’s life outside the world of filmmaking and his position as a mentor who treasures the younger generation. He even discusses with a chef how to cook and eat his shoe, amplifying his determination to push people to pursue their dreams. 

Some filmmakers don’t pursue documentaries except for when presented with the opportunity to direct a film about an industry pioneer they admire. These films not only explore the origin of a director’s influence or their private relationships but some also incorporate the documentarian’s personal affection toward the filmmaker. Wim Wenders’s Tokyo-Ga (1985) is filmed without the appearance of its subject: Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Wenders includes his own preferences in the film such as jazz music and makes it a  “Tokyo traveling vlog,” where he wanders the streets of Japan and records elements of Western culture he observes: text in English on passerby t-shirts for instance. 

Shunji Iwai’s The Kon Ichikawa Story (2006) also highlights a documentarians personal style, as the film is imbued with Iwai’s unique techniques. The documentary resembles a “slideshow,” the dialogue conveyed through text rather than voice. Iwai maintains his usage of vertical layout subtitles in All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001), where white text intermittently appears on a black screen. Even without any original footage of Ichikawa from Iwai, the film has a distinct and intimate feel. 

In When Cinema Reflects the Times: Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang (1993), Hirokazu Kore-eda presents the stories of two leading figures of Taiwanese New Wave Cinema on a more macroscopic scale. Kore-eda has openly expressed his admiration and respect for both Hou and Yang, who are the same age and live in Taipei. He includes a perspective of their interactions with Japan’s culture and history in addition to interviews that ask them the same questions. Hou talks about his feature A City of Sadness (1989), which addresses the February 28 Incident of 1947, marking the traces of Japanese colonization left in Taipei. The scene shifts to Hou shooting a commercial in Japan with a Japanese crew. The narrator weaves the entire documentary together by describing the growth of the film industry in Taiwan and its socio-political context. 

The multiformity of documentaries on filmmakers exhibit the multiformity of directors themselves and the variety of filmmaker personas. They connect behind-the-scenes, interview, and original footage to examine the mind of a director and their filmmaking process. Whether the documentarians try to conceal themselves or tell the story in their distinguishing style, this intimate creative process of bonding oneself with the other always brings resonance yet stays on the periphery of the industry.