Martinez in class, Winter term 2007
VIDEO:	Prof. Martinez discusses truth in film
VIDEO:	Advice to aspiring filmmakers

With a pair of scissors, some tape, and a once perfectly good comic book, young Gabriela would prepare her final edit reels. The youngest of five siblings in a highland Cuzco home, this 5-year-old budding director would work away in post-production, carefully cutting each frame from the book, and then meticulously splicing it to the end of a strip of disjointed paper squares. An indulgent grandfather, her first producer, had helped design a projector from a table lamp. As these curious “filmstrips” slid across the front of the bulb, to the amusement of her neighbors, the image of a filmmaker was being formed.

"I guess there were some issues with continuity," she concedes.

Ever since her childhood in Peru, University of Oregon Assistant Professor Gabriela Martinez has had a passion for movies. After college she worked in film crews before founding her own documentary film production company, Taruka Films, in 1987. In the past two decades Martinez has compiled many educational film credits to her name. (Click here for a PDF list of her films) Since receiving her doctorate in Communication and Society from Oregon in 2005, though, she has merged her production efforts with her other passion: teaching. Currently she lectures on the history of documentaries, as well as on minority women in the media, television and film production, and international communication.

“I love to teach,” she says, from her office in Allen Hall overlooking the bicycle racks and the Erb Memorial Union building.

“I think it’s a treat when you can teach what you have passion for. I do this because this is my passion.”

Martinez is passionate about film. However, her love of movies has always included a strong ethic of social responsibility; because of this she has devoted her efforts to mostly non-theatrical, educational documentary filmmaking. She attributes this impetus in part to the influence of her mother, who, at age 83, still works for the social well-being of the Quechua people of Peru. Through her mother’s influence, Martinez says, she was able to gain a profound understanding of other cultures. Through her she has developed the ability to appreciate the similarities and differences that exist across all cultures, as well as the unique problems and opportunities that face each of them. It is this appreciation that drives her as a film director to this day.

TECHNOLOGY AND FILM TRUTH

On a cold, damp Wednesday evening in January, in a classroom in the basement of Pacific Hall, roughly 40 graduate and undergraduate students watch the classic Dziga Vertov documentary The Man With a Movie Camera.  Some react to the special effects cinematography that was ahead of its time; others type notes feverishly on laptop computers in the darkened room.  All sit quietly, though, captivated by the innovative silent movie about Vertov's native Russia in 1929.

By surveying such formative films of the genre, Martinez hopes to demonstrate the advances in technology and the forces of history that have driven the evolution of documentary filmmaking.  She also examines the ethical dilemmas that have arisen when such filmmakers are freed from the physical constraints of their equipment to make a bigger impact on their audience.

Today, advances in CGI (computer-generated imagery) and digital recording have enabled an increasing turn in documentary toward the use of fiction film techniques, including digital alteration of images, superimposed images and animation.  These techniques once considered taboo by documentary purists are appearing in movies such as Chicago 10, Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11. The last two movies in particular have also created a divisive debate over whether documentary film should be impartial.  Is documentary film journalism?  Are these films allowed to be political?  Can documentary films ever fully capture “truth?”

Images of Oaxaca Teachers' Strike. filmed by Martinez on location in Mexico. From Media Matters, Gabriela Martinez (2006)

Martinez disagrees with the notion that documentary films should be held to the same standards as news journalism.   There is a relationship, she says, between the two, and documentary films can cover the same news events as dominate the headlines, but documentary is much more personal and in-depth than the front page of the paper, or the local news lead. Documentary filmmakers, moreover, are freer than their journalistic counterparts to delve into any topic of their choosing.

“If you are an independent filmmaker,” she says, “you have the freedom to produce what you want.  If you are a journalism that works for a corporation, you always go through your editors, through your executive board, you always have to abide by the rules and conditions and formats”

Because documentary films are not journalism, she says, filmmakers are not held to the standards of journalistic fairness and balance that news organizations are.  They are free to advocate political positions, or advance certain agendas, to the consternation of opponents of those positions and agendas.  Ultimately, however, filmmakers will be judged by their films’ subjects, and by their audiences, according to Martinez.  They will be judged based on how hard they worked to get the story right, how true their final product is to the reality of the ground.

“It’s very difficult to say ‘This is the absolute truth’ about some topic that I’m covering, because I know that [another] documentarian could look at the same phenomenon and represent it a different way, and that would be her or his truth. 

"You can capture levels of truth, and you have to live at ease with yourself, that you are representing the best you can what is truthful to the people you are representing, and to yourself."

ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND THE FUTURE OF DOCUMENTARY

Image from Media Matters, Gabriela Martinez (2006)

The advent of electronic media has presented a “democratizing” influence on documentary filmmaking, as it has on the profession of news gathering for print and broadcast.  Innovations in consumer technology such as the camera cellphone now allow people to record events as they occur, without production schedules, or expensive and cumbersome equipment.  Personal blogs, as well as Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace, allow average users to share their images, video and commentary to others throughout the world, free from the oversight of executive producers.

In this way, those who once passively consumed the news are increasingly creating it themselves.  Stories generated in this way, such as the racist tirade of comedian Michael Richards during a nightclub performance, or the use of a Taser on a student by UCLA campus security officials, demonstrate the broad reach of this new media, and have led media commentators such as David T.Z. Mindich to speculate on how professional news organizations can stay relevant in the 21st century. 

Similarly, this development has led others such as York University (Canada) media professor David Hogarth to discuss the relevance of institutional documentary production.  Martinez, however, feels that professional documentary filmmakers still have a major role in steering the public discourse.  For one, the Web is still too expansive, she says, for many such grassroots stories to reach a significant audience. Also, the explosion of internet content, she believes, causes an overflow of information, in which the truth becomes harder to discern. Most importantly, however, the most important product filmmakers have to offer is quality.

“You can make movies with your cellphone,” she says, “you can buy cameras for $300 and make a movie. 

But it’s like with writing,” she continues, “I mean we all can write and read, but not all of us are great novelists.”

“The fact that you have a cellphone with a camera doesn’t mean you are a photographer or a news person.  I don’t think that anybody can be a journalist, just because you post something.”

LOOKING TO THE PAST

Currently, Martinez is in production on a film with the working title “Media Matters,” about the social unrest arising from a teachers’ strike in Oaxaca, Mexico, late last year.  She continues to teach, as she works for grants to fund the film.

Ultimately, according to Martinez, committed documentary filmmakers will return to the foundation of their art, as they always have, and let the history of the genre guide their purpose.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” she says. “Historically a lot of stuff has been already done, and now we are just mixing and remixing and rearticulating what we have from the past.”

“We really need to look at the past, to understand what we are doing today.”