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The documentary “The Hunting Ground," by producer Amy Ziering and director Kirby Dick, is a powerful documentary about what the filmmakers call an epidemic of sexual assaults on American college campuses.
The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and had a brief theatrical run earlier this year. But it has been criticized by some of the colleges in question for not being even-handed. The filmmakers of “The Hunting Ground” say they stand by their work, but the criticism raised the question — is the documentary journalism, advocacy or both?
Simon Kilmurry is executive director of the International Documentary Association, which supports and promotes the work of documentary filmmakers. He’s also the former executive producer of “POV,” the long-running documentary series on PBS. The Frame's John Horn spoke with Kilmurry about the role of documentary films in the journalism world.
For documentaries that are related to news events or societal issues, are there two distinct schools of filmmaking — one leaning towards objective journalism and one more about advocacy — or are they inseparable?
I would say they are inseparable. The roles of independent documentary filmmakers is to be giving a voice to those who are marginalized in society, and I think Kirby and Amy's work definitely fits with "The Hunting Ground" and "The Invisible War" and their other films. I would say it's probably more of a spectrum rather than a clear delineation.
You used to run the PBS documentary series "POV." Is it essential that a documentary have a point-of-view and does the audience need to know what that point-of-view might be?
I think, certainly, when I was running "POV," we would look for films that did have a perspective — a point-of-view from either the filmmaker or from a main subject. I think there's a great tradition in documentary film of filmmakers coming to the stories with a particular perspective.
But are there certain journalistic attributes that all documentaries should share, regardless of their intent?
Yes, I think we have an obligation to be accurate and as truthful as we can be. I think we also have an obligation to be transparent, and that transparency also comes through in the forms of who's supporting the films. I think those are obligations that clearly fall on every filmmaker.
But we live in an era where Fox news has its standard on the one side and MSNBC has its other standard on the other side. In that realm, are documentary filmmakers in between?
I think filmmakers are certainly performing a journalistic enterprise in a lot of work that they're doing. When we look at documentary films, we're generally looking at a piece that's an hour or 90 minutes long, and within that scope of time you have much greater opportunity to embrace the gray areas, the challenges, the inconsistencies than is typically demonstrated on outlets like Fox News or MSNBC. A filmmaker approaching a complicated topic will approach it with a complicated narrative.
Part of that complication is the intent of the filmmaker. Critics of “The Hunting Ground” cited a couple of e-mails sent by one of the film’s producers to the attorney for a purported sexual assault victim. It said, in part: "We don’t operate the same way as journalists — this is a film project very much in the corner of advocacy for victims, so there would be no insensitive questions or the need to get the perpetrator’s side.” Is that a common — and fair — way for documentary filmmakers to operate?
In this particular case they are being honest about their perspective and about their position. They have made a piece that clearly a lot of people are talking about or are very passionate about. I don't think they have misrepresented their own perspective in this.