One of the magic tricks of documentaries is the ability to
film somebody changing over a period of time. When it’s a span of several
years, audiences can get a unique psychological portrait. However, these
long-haul projects come with particular challenges and obstacles for the
filmmakers who see them through.
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These documentaries might take a few years to more than a
decade to shoot and complete, and the reasons vary. Sometimes, the goal is to
track a crucial segment of a person’s life in full. Or the filmmaker’s approach
might instead be open-ended, taking cues from the person’s emotional
experiences as to how much ground to cover, and when to say “the end.” No
matter the circumstances, every production requires the filmmaker’s careful
management of the relationship with the subject.
Three recent movies that follow their subjects over the
course of more than a year are showing at the Tribeca Festival, which runs
Wednesday to June 18 in New York City: “Apolonia, Apolonia,” “Between the
Rains,” and “Q.”
‘Apolina, Apolina’
Lea Glob’s “Apolonia, Apolonia” films a young Paris painter,
Apolonia Sokol, over the longest span of time — 13 years.
Sokol grew up in the building that housed a theater run by
her parents, which became a boisterous haven for actors and other artists. Over
the course of the film, she forges a career in the tough, often-sexist arenas
of the art world and the academy.
Glob first made a short movie about Sokol while studying at
the National Film School of Denmark in 2009, after other potential subjects
turned her down.
At the time, the director didn’t know she would go on to
make a feature about Sokol, but in the course of making that film, she
recognized something special about the young painter.
“She really wants to give something in front of a camera.
And I wasn’t able to let her go after that,” Glob said in a phone interview
from Denmark, where she lives.
The decision to film over the course of 13 years was not
made from the outset. Glob and Sokol agreed on an essentially open-ended
arrangement that turned into the decade-plus production, with Sokol not viewing
footage while Glob was shooting, but offering input during editing. As Sokol
pursued her career, Glob began to think a possible conclusion would come when
Sokol had reached some milestone of success, but the (amicable) ending had more
to do with Sokol wanting time to herself.
Glob benefited from the free artistic environment of the
community around the theater belonging to Sokol’s parents. The young artist
would call Glob when something interesting was happening — like when it looked
like she would be evicted from the theater.
The method could be hit-or-miss.
“I’d drop everything and go, and I’d find her there just
cooking pasta and reading,” Glob said.
Glob recalibrated to track Sokol’s development as an artist,
instead of chasing events. Watching Sokol navigate art school, have her first
gallery show and travel to Los Angeles under the auspices of art dealer Stefan
Simchowitz — this was now a movie.
“I built a relationship with her camera and then with her,”
said Sokol, who now teaches, in addition to painting.
“It’s not family, it’s not friendship. It’s something else.
Something stronger, I think,” she added.
‘Between the Rains’
For “Between the Rains,” filmmakers Andrew H. Brown and
Moses Thuranira track Kole James, a young member of the Turkana community in
Ngaremara village, Kenya, over four years during a pivotal period in his life.
Working as a shepherd, James prepares for rites of passage
and copes with drought-related clashes with neighboring communities.
Making the movie involved at least a year of securing
permission and trust before shooting.
“It’s not a community you can just go and film. There is a
lot of protocol you have to follow. You have to get blessings from the elders,”
said Thuranira, who is from a town about a 40-minute drive away, and used his
house as a kind of home base for the production. (There’s also a family link in
the production team: a producer, Samuel Ekomol, is James’ cousin and is a
teacher in Ngaremara village.)
The team maintained a bond with the community that involved
pitching in at cookouts and bringing groceries — sometimes goats, sometimes
bags of rice.
But just as important was the bond of trust they built with
James, who, during the course of the film, pushes back against some of his
community’s more arduous traditions, including a harrowing tooth removal rite.
Through a translator, James said in a call that he stuck
with the documentary because of the opportunity to connect with the outside
world and share the challenges faced by his community. He especially liked one
dramatic sequence when he traps and kills a hyena — a moment that gives the
filmmakers a suitable climax to the coming-of-age arc.
‘Q’The director of “Q,” Jude Chehab, chose a subject even
closer to home: her mother, Hiba Khodr. Chehab portrays Khodr’s evolving
relationship with a secretive religious sect that was a part of both of their
lives. After watching her mother spend decades focusing intensively on the
group and its leader (who is known as the Anisa), Chehab planned to interview
her mother and explore her feelings relating to the group and their family.
Khodr agreed, knowing that her daughter would question her freely about things
she hadn’t talked much about.
Chehab filmed her first interview with her mother in
February 2018, and when the pandemic hit, she found herself cooped up with her
parents in Lebanon.
“I think that’s how we achieved that level of intimacy, because
they couldn’t escape the camera,” Chehab said with a chuckle in a video call.
Filming continued for about 4 1/2 years, but in a targeted
fashion (not a whole day at a time). The movie stretches even further back, to
the 1990s, through home movies made by Chehab’s reserved father (whom she also
questions in the film).
Throughout, Chehab showed footage to her mother, against
advice she had received that it might make Khodr self-conscious about the
camera. She said that this early exposure to the movie helped ease her mother
into the process more smoothly.
“She knows me, she knows when I’m sad, and when she’s
putting pressure,” Khodr wrote in an email. “I can tell her more things than a
stranger and there’s no transaction, because we are mother-daughter.”
Camerawork was another decision from day to day. Knowing her
mother’s routines, Chehab could film her naturally on the fly, but she could
also adjust for unexpected moments, like when Khodr went to a poetry reading or
got a dramatic visit.
The domestic intimacy required special considerations. When
Khodr was not wearing her hijab, Chehab framed the shot to avoid showing her
hair. She also incorporated feedback from a friend to show her mother outside
the home at her job as a professor.
Khodr said that, at first, she participated in support of
her daughter. But then the film changed her, as we see her express in the
finished documentary.
“It was a way for me to uncover some layers in myself that
were hidden,” she said in her email. “It really helped me become real.”
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