Laughing Out Loud by Andrew Horton

Author:Andrew Horton [Horton, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-01-22T12:30:00+00:00

Performance Documentary

We have mentioned that Roger and Me blurs the boundaries between strict documentary and fiction film by creating the "me" character and using him as a "performance" mechanism to bring out the subject matter-General Motors and its negative effect on Flint, Michigan-in a way that is much more dramatic and comic than a Voice of God narration with an unidentified narrator would be.

Such use of comic characters inside a documentary is clearly an example of performance documentary. I suggest that this "comic" approach is a very fruitful one indeed. One other example immediately comes to mind. In 1994, while the Bosnian war was being waged, a well-respected Yugoslav feature filmmaker, Z. Zilnik, torn by these events but having almost no money, shot Tito for the Second Time among the Serbs on video. What did he do? He dressed an actor up like Tito, complete with sunglasses and uniform and a thick military jacket worn in a kind of Napoleonic pose, and had the actor walk around the central part of Belgrade, talking to "the people" as if he had come back from the dead for a visit.

The anarchistic impulse is clear. And in carrying out this crazy "performance," Zilnik succeeded far more than any CNN or TV news documentary could ever hope to do in catching the feeling of the Serbian people at that very confusing and desperate period. Marshall Tito was a particularly heroic figure in the history of Yugoslavia, for unlike the leaders of many of the Soviet puppet states established in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II, Tito and his Communist partisans did actually defeat the Nazis and thus bring in a popular Communist government in 1945. And, despite all odds, he managed to hold together all the disparate sections of what became Yugoslavia until his death in 1980, with amazing accomplishments in literacy and medical care and a general rise in the standard of living, while (after 1948) standing up to Stalin and the Soviets to establish an independent socialist vision.

The crazy idea of this performance anarchistic documentary, therefore, is that Tito has returned to Yugoslavia after being dead for fourteen years, knowing nothing of what has happened since his death. No preparation or warning is given to the public; from their point of view, someone who looks very much like their departed leader has returned, and the video camera crew following him simply reinforces this "documentary game."

At this point humor, improvisation, pathos and history meet. The actor skillfully asks questions of those he meets and tries to answer questions they have for him, in what becomes a carnival or instant community of "Tito's Return." Half the people say, "We need you back again. You were the best." And the other half shout, "You bastard, it's because of you that we got into this mess." Many moments are touching, as some are moved to tears, but humorous scenes rule, as Tito ex amines old partisan uniforms and hats for sale at the flea market and talks to hip teens about their culture.

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