I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.
Interpretation
Reality often doesn't fit our narratives, no matter how much we wish it would.
Ruth Ozeki reflects on her experience in documentary filmmaking, highlighting the tension between the storyteller's intentions and the unpredictable nature of real life. Despite the desire to shape reality to fit one's narrative, she acknowledges that true authenticity cannot be controlled or manipulated, serving as a reminder that art and life can diverge significantly.
In practice
In a discussion about the challenges of documentary filmmaking, this quote can highlight the unpredictability of real life.
People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.
Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image - or images, I should say - because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.
What's fascinating to me is the way that multiple stories go into creating any world - a fictional world, but certainly the world that we live in as well. Of course, I cannot control that world. I can just control the fictional world.
Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.
The American society around me looked at me and saw Japanese. Then, when I was 19, I went to Japan for the first time. And suddenly - what a shock - I realized I wasn't Japanese; they saw me as American. It was an enormous relief. Now I just appreciate being exactly in the middle.
I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.
The naming of cats is a difficult matter. It isn't just one of your holiday games. You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter. When I tell you a cat must have three different names.
The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.
But if you're talking about fine art work, then I think you have to ask yourself some pretty deep questions about why it is you want to take pictures and what it is you want to say.
I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define, or remember, only desire
A 90-minute time frame is not long enough to tell a good female story, and that's why long-format television has become so great for female storytelling and for female performers and directors and writers.
The greatest art in the world is the art of storytelling.
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