So What Are Documentaries All About?

Not many of you will have heard of the ânûû-rû âboro festival– it means shadow of a man or image of a man in Païcî, the language of the Kanak people – or of Paul Néaoutyine, Président de la Province Nord, New Caledonia, who delivered this speech at the festival’s opening, but here is an excerpt from an inspiring account of what documentaries are all about :

"The choice to stage this ânûû-rû âboro documentary film festival owes nothing to chance. It stems from a political commitment clearly expressed by the Northern Province to give Peoples a chance to make their voice heard through the medium of film. To have a voice is to assert your existence, your self-respect and your right to influence events. Such is the inalienable right of a People, to be free in its own country, to run its own country itself and to establish equal relationships with other countries, including the former colonial power.

"The films that you have made and the films that you are going to watch are invitations to think again and to question the world in which we live, a complex world far from received or simplifying ideas, a world in motion moulded by forces of domination and forces of resistance.

"The documentary film genre that our Province supports sides with the forces of resistance.  The philosophy of the ânûû-rû âboro Festival is to screen documentaries that respect the people filmed, that do not mutilate their message in the editing suite and that do not stifle their voices under a tide of commentary telling us what to think, as if we were not adult spectators capable of thinking for ourselves.

"These films do not comply with the formatting conventions imposed by most television channels worldwide.

"These films are an opportunity to free ourselves from the straitjacket and they open up a space of freedom for you.

"Those who trumpet the merits of the free market would have us believe that globalisation is the only path to prosperity.

"That we have no choice and that the economy, services and culture should bend to market rules and that we should kneel before the new all-powerful God of merchandise.

"Images have become a marketable product and a formidable weapon. We are submerged in images from morning until night, more and more of them, moving quicker and quicker.

"To go fast, you have to be brief, to be brief, you have to be simple. But can our world and its peoples' realities be packaged into simplistic television approaches formatted for maximum audience ratings?

"Documentaries are clearly a lifeline in the general stifling of critical thought by the totalitarian market. Where sensationalist society organises a simplified mock portrayal of reality, the documentary approach is an attempt to grasp and question a complex world."