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The first time I set out to make a documentary, I wasn't sure what my subject would be. As a student in film school, there were many styles of documentary film to choose from, and the possibilities were endless.

As a big fan of documentaries, I wanted to create something that was more than just the nightly news. I believed greatly in Jean-Luc Godard's comment that "Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second." And though Godard was a narrative filmmaker, his films have always had a documentary edge—they're more like political narratives that focus on an idea or a topic, which even scripted expose the truth. Godard is also one of the most taught filmmakers at film schools, precisely because he was so revolutionary in his filmmaking.


But Godard had his own influences. His work was inspired by Russian documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov, noted for his classic film The Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which portrayed a joyous cinematic excursion through the Soviet Union.

Vertov's legendary quote, "I am eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see." sums up the philosophy of his Kino-Pravda (film truth) documentary film series, which focused on the then current state of modern Russia, and his determination to show things as they are, or life as it is.

In film school, Vertov opened my eyes to the possibilities of documenting the truth. Not only was The Man with a Movie Camera a vibrant excursion, utilizing double exposures and revolutionary film techniques, such as attaching the camera to trains, but the film had no dialogue or intertitles, it just existed as a document. This particular film, with all its gimmicks and inventive stylistic techniques, helped revolutionize the way that films, not just documentaries, are made.

Vertov's influence served as an inspiration to many filmmakers, such as Guy Debord and Godard, who created the highly political Dziga Vertov Group, as well as Jean Rouch and other collectives, such as the Free Cinema movement (Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson) in the UK, the "Candid Eye" TV series in Canada and the Direct Cinema movement (Robert Drew, Albert and David Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock) in North America.

When I was in film school, it was this experimentalism that inspired me and gave me the incentive to realize that a documentary can be anything—experimental or narrative, as long as it documents something.

Films like Harlan County, USA, a gripping exploration of a Miners Strike in Kentucky, and Gimme Shelter, the classic document of the Rolling Stones' North American tour that ended with unexpected violence and the death of a concertgoer are great examples of letting the images speak for themselves, without any narration.

Then there are the films of Frederick Wiseman, the noted documentarian, whose many films include Central Park, Domestic Violence, High School and Hospital. These films capture everyday experiences from an observational perspective, regardless of how the subject matter might be. None of the aforementioned films have any form of narration to guide the viewer, which lets the actions captured on film speak for themselves, allowing the viewer to form their own perspective.

And then there's some danger involved. In Harlan County USA, there's always the threat of impending danger as the miner's strike at times turns violent. Or, for example, in Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, a narrative film, yet parts of it were actually filmed during the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where actors and crew were thrust into the violence of the situation. This is the type of guerilla filmmaking that has recently been taught in film schools, giving prospective filmmakers a sense of other ways to document an event.

Film school taught me that making a documentary is more than just capturing an image—it's documenting something without any script or preconceived ideas. As a form of reportage, documentary films capture the truth, giving the viewer an insight into a subject that may or may not be pleasant. They provide an opinion, which the viewer may not agree with, but it's always good to have both sides of the perspective.