In pursuit of the truth

Truth is stranger than fiction, and often more poetic too. But strange doesn't sell all that well and neither does poetry. Consequently, the silver screens are jammed with images bought, sold and processed in Hollywood, leaving the documentary film struggling for dollars as it fights to escape classification as a genre for nerds.

But the rap that documentaries aren't fun pales in comparison to the other industry force keeping money out of the genre's collective pockets: Reality shoots without a script, making a documentary film a gamble that has little hope of justifying its financial risk.

"To work responsibly in the documentary form means that you are taking an enormous chance," wrote renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese in a recent piece for DoubleTake Magazine. "You are essentially putting your faith in reality.

"What we call reality is also elusive: it is always in motion and refuses to stand still for the camera. Perhaps this is why we often use the verb 'capture' when we're discussing reality," he wrote, noting the profound influence documentary techniques have had on his feature films. "In many ways, the tension between documentary and fiction lies at the heart of cinema. It's as though the two forms have a pact to keep each other honest."

Honesty led the makers of 1994's "Hoop Dreams" to put their faith solely in reality, and they scored the documentary film genre's biggest "hit" of the decade. But they also sunk six years of their lives into the project-the average feature film takes about two years from conception to concession-and they had no idea when they started how the lives of their stars would pan out. For all of their efforts, the Motion Picture Academy rewarded them with a snub on Oscar night. "Hoop Dreams" wasn't even nominated for Best Documentary.

Then there's "When We Were Kings," the 1996 Oscar-winning documentary about Mohammed Ali and his "Rumble in the Jungle" title bout with George Foreman: the paradigmatic case of documentary film's omnipresent commercial dangers. Brilliant as it was, the film took more than two decades to reach the screen.

"Hoop Dreams" and "When We Were Kings" provided faithful versions of life and even made some money, but each were minor blips on the mainstream radar screen. Their success, much like their very existence, was a minor miracle. Not surprisingly, they failed to do for the documentary what Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" did for independent film.

Stack alongside all of the other handicaps the fact that documentary film is usually a celebrity-free genre and it becomes unrealistic to imagine that the documentary will ever be the next big thing.

Co-chaired by Scorsese, a former documentary filmmaker himself, and Robert Coles, editor of DoubleTake, the festival's board is a laundry list of some of the arts' heftiest names: award-winning directors Jonathan Demme, Robert Redford and John Sayles; film stars Martin Sheen and Joanne Woodward; writers Horton Foote and James B. Duke Professor of English Reynolds Price; and Ken Burns, the celebrated director of "The Civil War" and "Baseball," who will make an appearance during the festival.

"All of the people on this board agree on one thing," Buirski said, "that the best way to tell a story is with as much reality as possible."

Indeed, many of the filmmakers Buirski has gathered made their careers in Hollywood but planted their roots in documentary film.

Scorsese is widely considered one of the world's greatest living feature film directors, but one of his finest works is a 1978 documentary about The Band titled "The Last Waltz." Jonathan Demme, who won an Oscar for his direction of "The Silence of the Lambs," filmed Spaulding Gray's spoken-word performance "Swimming to Cambodia" and is currently lending a hand on a documentary about Nelson Mandela. And Robert Redford, Best Director-winner for "Ordinary People," narrated a documentary titled "Incident at Oglala" about the FBI's role in the 1975 murder of a Native American on a reservation in Oklahoma.

That kind of clout supporting documentary filmmakers could go a long way toward improving the lot of directors who often choose to flee an industry they see as a dead end.

"Too many times," Buirski said, "documentary filmmakers end up leaving the genre because they don't get the support they need. So that's another point we're making: We don't want to lose our best filmmakers."

Other than Burns-who has found a home for his work on television cable networks and not on the big screen-the number of bankable names in documentary film genre can be counted on one hand. Errol Morris, whose 1988 documentary "The Thin Blue Line" actually led to the release of a man on death row, is probably the most respected name in the business right now. Outside the business, few have heard of him. Still, Buirski said, "he's created enough of a name that he's got enough money to do exactly what he wants with a film."

Nearly every other aspiring documentarian, however, must scrape pennies together from minor-league investors, federal arts institutions and corporate sponsors-a tall order considering that most filmmakers have only the shell of an idea to pitch and years before they can promise a finished product.

But Buirski's bet is that dearth of exposure, not dearth of quality, is documentary film's most formidable obstacle. DoubleTake's festival, she hopes, can provide a much-needed shot in the arm for an art form without much of an organized foundation.

"I think that documentaries always have the capacity for capturing the imagination of the public," she said. "Part of the idea of this festival is that if you show more documentaries, we think the public will come."