Not Just for the Archive. On the Literary Event and Documentary Film

Abstract

The article attempts to examine the meeting-point of documentary film and literary culture, understood here in the context of the “event” and its two concrete manifestations, i.e., the poetry slam and the public meeting with an author. In considering this problem, it is difficult to accept the conclusion that the documentary film camera, in following the competition at a slam or the meeting with the author, must limit its participation exclusively to a simple archival function. An analysis of chosen examples (it should also be immediately clarified that the list of film titles embodying the diagnosis here formulated is not extensive) shows that the “encounter” in question contains much broader potential: a documentary can, if nothing else, effectively capture the unique dramaturgy of the event, its semantics as inscribed not only in the word, but also in the image, and conceals within itself great interpretative possibilities. In other words, if we treat film documentarianism as an “addition” to the literary event, we can do so only with an awareness of these implications, which are not always obvious but are certainly significatively relevant.