nick broomfield // errol morris

The cinema of Nick Broomfield and Errol Morris can easily be seen as supplements of each other // Both are contemporaries and documentary filmmakers, yes — However, for Broomfield, the subject (and their cooperation) is not the intention of the document: it's of a captured ambiance, an experienced perception, to feel what it's like to be so close to the Sun // Morris, on the other hand, acts as the discoverer of some amazing arching story, giving it a shave and a good hair cut, and documents the most vivid telling of that story by the various personalities involved (nine shots creating a tenth idea). Broomfield, telling; Morris, told.



























The significant contrast lies in their play with the subjective and the objective; Broomfield maintains himself as an active character in the unfolding of his films, sometimes portraying the dead-ends and failures of the work itself (financial backers leaving due to controversy, inability to arrange an interview with the central subjects of the film, etc) // Whereas Errol Morris has literally fused his face into the camera lens, in a protrusion he calls the Interrotron, attempting to create an immersive, comfortable unfolding of being from the personal sources directly: Morris's face simply acts as a surrogate for all the faces, for all the eyes of any spectator — and it shows: the quality of revelation from each subject is so over-flowing and joyous, in a richness surpassing most of the existent art-form, I'm compelled to say Morris has struck an incredible accord with this technique. Yet, Broomfield will meet his subjects for the first time with the camera rolling, catching them awkwardly off-guard, as he enters into the room.

Of their respective filmographies, 'Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" (1993), by Morris, and 'Fetishes' (1996), by Broomfield, struck me as the most affective; vividly and efficiently fleshing out the most recognizable elements of their distinctions: however, remaining grounded in the nature of the fringe pop Western tabloid article, as do all their films, in a fascination with the culture of the Grand Colonizers (America + Britain); unlocking a resonance with some kind of macro-sympathetic condition, the transcendent function, by way the exploration of the subject's / environment's hyper-specialization: this is both. // One is clean, one is dirty; one reads his thoughts in voice-overs, the other can startle the spectator by the unexpected sound of his off-camera voice — The polarity between these two filmmaker's styles, while still maintaining a sense of harmony in their shared objectives, is another example of the Cinema's unique line of versatility; of how slippery notions such as "reality" "truth" and "perspective" appear, especially delivered in the medium who's substance is the fragmentation and fixation of reality itself. With only a 125 year history, much is yet to be discovered, reflected, and acted in the phenomenal world by these projections of the inner-self constructed (and translated into the mind as shades of) reality, through all the unimaginable cultural movements and evolutions.

in order:
Fetishes - (1996)
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. - (1999)
The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife (1991)
The Thin Blue Line - (1988)
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam - (1995)
Vernon, Florida - (1981)
Fetishes - (1996)
The Thin Blue Line - (1988)

since you went away (1944)

nick broomfield's counter-shots

A shot will be responded to by another such that if a figure in a dialogue momentarily disappears as a consequence of a reverse shot, that shot in turn will be countered, and that one countered again and the figures, their presences, and accords with each other re-established as a progression and without a tear.

— Rohdie, 'Montage'

the leader, his driver and the driver's wife (1991)

Nick Broomfield's reverse (counter) shots are intriguing. Normally, in a documentary setting, either the reaction of the documentarian is left out, over-heard, or re-staged in its full opposite. But off the top of my head, I can not remember another's work who consistently includes the image of the documentarian at a farther point along the same axis line / direction as the subject. Not simply panned to by the cinematographer at a climactic moment, but footage of Broomfield casually listening to his subjects speak, taken from the same camera (and more than likely, the same roll of footage - though seconds or minutes before [or after] the actual piece of dialogue has been recorded), and edited into the continuity of the work, as to enhance a certain kind of immersion into the experience. It's by this quiet artificial push, and others like these (take notice at the complexity of his sound design), that Broomfield is allowed to maintain what is essentially being said in the shot / reverse-shot's relationship :: a subjectivized, diary-esque, unfolding of events, in a concentrated period of discovery, using the contemporary material world as a language — understanding there is no objective filmic construction, not even in the genre presumed to be of the real and the objective.

la strada (1954)

Ever seen those dogs that look like they want to speak but all they do is bark? I'm an ignorant man but I've read a book or two. Everything in this world has a purpose. Even this pebble, because if this pebble has no purpose, then everything is pointless. Even the stars. And you, too; with that artichoke head of yours.

CO[S]MIC

The Fool (played by Richard Basehart) comes in at a point as a manifestation, being the internal supplement of the system's outward form — and his time is short: coming in as a beating heart for a small quarter, then disappearing. The Fool is what is lacking. As a Loki, he is a restructuring agent; a hybrid notion, an unstable combustion / intersection of all intent; like a pressurized cornerstone supportive of the whole structure; not an individual, not a character study, but the presence of absence. Nature as is, undelayed.


















His disappearance is one of great terror for Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) : not because she has lost a close friend, but in a violent image the thing which she so obviously sought (though unable to articulate in words, and perhaps never even reached the threshold of her attention), something felt to be immediately not present in her life, that which the whole film dances around in between Zampano (Anthony Quinn) and herself, of which vividly controlled the driving-agency of Il Matto, has extinguished in her spectatorship. The vitality is gone, and the Fool disintegrates back into the ether-matrix.


















The energy falls into a literal coldness, and what seems to be a deep neuroses strikes the balance, affecting and confusing both Zampano and Gelsomina. Any direct reason is unspoken, but the entire formal world reacts. The necessary negative concentration collapsed, the symbolic order disentegrates. From that moment on, in terms of this single consciousness (the totality of the narrative), it is a winding of the clock toward its deconstruction.

What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light. - Borachio, Ado, W.S.

titanic (1943)

On the set of Titanic in 1942, Selpin made several remarks critical of the military. He was denounced by his fellow screenwriter and personal friend Walter Zerlett-Olfenius, and—upon failing to retract his statements during a subsequent meeting with Joseph Goebbels—was arrested on July 31, 1942. Herbert Selpin was found dead in his cell a day later. Titanic was to be completed by an uncredited Werner Klingler.

la chinoise (1967)

In the intensity of the emotional disturbance itself lies the value, the energy which he should have at his disposal in order to remedy the state of reduced adaptation... One tendency seems to be the regulating principle of the other; both are bound together in a compensatory relationship... the bringing together of opposites for the production of a third: [this is] the transcendent function... The shuttling to and fro of arguments and affects represents the transcendent function of opposites. The confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living, third thing — not a logical still-birth in accordance with the principle tertium non datur but a movement out of the suspension between opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation. The transcendent function manifests itself a quality of conjoined opposites... The more direct and natural the answer is, the more valuable it will be, for directness and naturalness guarantee a more or less total reaction.

— Carl Jung, 'The Transcendent Function'

kolberg (1945)

the shining (1980)

The idea of the Cinema as a truthful-looking dramatic unfolding of events makes no sense. I have noticed a fundamental shift in my orientation with the motion photographed image [the engraved intersection of time and space] — yet all I've really gained is a crystallized perception of the laissez-faire attitude placing objects, people, and places in front of the camera for the majority of films in existence. This seems natural, as the oversight may be a consequence of the comparative ease in creating the compositions of the motion picture (and synchronized sound) than of, say, an oil painting, marble sculpture, or Gothic church. But of the arts, the Cinema seems to share the most of its significant traits with all of the latter, than of its apparent prototype, the Theater.


















Its permanence makes the Cinema directly serving an aesthetic separate of story depiction; it seems to respond, rather, as something closer to the re-experienced memory, branded into the mind by quick, phenomenal bursts of high-sensation, feelings of beauty and sublimity inspired by the witnessing and experiencing of rare, novel moments, downloaded into the mind by way of mythological projection: like a dream with administrative control on the subconscious. The dramatic stage, due to its temporality and presence, is more inclined to the art of story telling and the performance of the individual conflict, — the combustion / magnetism / sympathy of real people performing in a shared space with the spectator(s), and placed onto a pedestaled stage, is of a different species than even a motion-photographed wide-shot. The Cinema is a streaming formal object, a toy of light and sound, a riddle box, a strange and confounding intersection of time and space captured. If the Author does not treat it as such, the work is reducible to documented environmental theater, or a futuristic pop-up book. The original film-actor is the entire material world, and its primacy of existence.

The desired completion or Oneness should be a state of the soul, a condition of being, not of knowing. Symbolic expression first preserves society by adding emotion to instinct, and secondly it affords a foothold for reason by its delineation of the particular instinct which it expresses; symbols acquire their power to organize the miscellaneous crowd into a smoothly running community; in an army there is one set of symbols to produce automatic obedience in a limited set of circumstances, and there is another set of symbols to produce a general sense of the importance of the duties performed. This second set prevents random reflection from sapping automatic response to the former set. The self organization of society depends on commonly diffused symbols evoking commonly diffused ideas, and at the same time indicating commonly understood actions; pure instinct is never wrong, symbolically conditioned actions may be, however -- the obvious ideographs of the phenomena of nature made the deepest religious impression on archaic man, turning visible the invisible.

underworld (1927)

die große liebe (1942)

Dynamics between characters are like fading echoes, rippling downward from the society's master signifiers.

cruel intentions (1999)

What do you remember?

The girl-on-girl kiss :: Visceral, Physical Affectivity, is one of the strongest inherent-drives of the Cinematic form [Medium Specificity] — When the image represents a bodily sensation, we, the Spectators, can not help but feel the same on ourselves (by a conjured empathy and association) like phantom pains // Notice the way an audience will rub their wrists during a suicide / razor-blade sequence, or their soft forearm veins during the portrayal of a heroin-injection. Play itself does not focus specifically on either a subject or an object; it is an activity in which the activity itself is focused on.

some trees by jean renoir

french cancan (1955)


















the rules of the game (1939)


















the river (1951)

the architects of fear (1963)

I may now add that civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.

-- Sigmeund Freud, 'Civilization and its Discontents'

little caesar (1931)

mon oncle (1958)

The source is at the center of things -- at the origin of a motion, which is both endless and inexplicable by the action of an external force; we are obliged to assume that there is a motive-power which is both infinite and internal, which we call the soul.

The Cinema of Jacques Tati takes a highly philosophical position on compositional space / time — challenging its ontology; asking, What does it mean to be a fixed-performance? It is to be "rendered stable or permanent." How does this differ from the Theater, which is unstable, and disappears forever the moment it shows itself? Staging, for Tati, although still serving as a vital element in the narrative, is not the source of it — becoming iconographic; characters like cartoon-stickers; everything in a context, actively in composition: There are no close-ups. Each shot is an attempt at capturing an exceptional and singular moment, instigated into the physical space, that's guided by a minimalistically designed plot. As a boy and his uncle fumble through the suburbs of Paris, the crowds spiral, and move like galaxies and planets. Sounds are isolated, types of movements cataloged, games turn by depth of field, in visceral environments, on the edge of harmony. The playful depiction of the vanity of the Industrial-Technological Democratic domestic life-style is used to reflect a rhythm invisible, primary, and poetical; seemingly, of the Universe and micro-cosmos, of the immensity of the atom.

mata hari (1931)

project moon base (1953)

miniature by jacque fresco

the thin blue line (1988)

Play, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me, that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something.

— John Locke, 'Some Thoughts Concerning Education'