The challenges of a single source audio archive.
The Makavejev Case – Or, Trail in a Movie Theater
Goran Radovanović, 2019, Serbia
genre: historical recollective
The rationale (and I have to imagine the genesis) of The Makavejev Case is the existence of an audio tape and transcript of a public trial in 1971 Yugoslavia for Dušan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism. The closed screening and subsequent debate took place in a Novi Sad theater and seemed to comprise intellectuals and politically connected workers. The sound technician surreptitiously recorded the proceedings, and director Radovanović.
The resulting documentary shows, in ways good and bad, the challenges of using an audio archive rather than cinematic/video footage. There are such established documentary forms for dealing with moving image archival footage, and documentaries have practice in using snippets of audio archive (close ups of tape recorders or phone receivers, for instance). But to structure a film mostly around an extended audio-only archive poses some difficulties. How does one keep visual interest? What does one use for visuals?
I can see a few strategies:
– Refuse visuals altogether (the experimental doc approach)
– Find images that work contrapuntally to the sound (the essay film approach)
– (Re)create the missing visuals (the animated doc or docfiction approach)
– Find unobtrustive but related B-roll that stands in for the missing footage (the popular documentary approach)
There are moments when The Makavejev Case suggests the docfiction approach (there are actors and at point silhouettes stand in for the people we hear). The inspired idea for the documentary was to recreate the 1971 Novi Sad screening, but somehow the docfiction premise I expected never materialized. The only spectator for the re-creation is the sound recorder, who is shot (presumably) watching the film against the backdrop of a sparsely lit multiplex cinema. And the actors mostly do not enact the people but just mug for the camera in front of the camera. Ultimately, it creates stylized B roll for the sound recording.
The Makavejev Case does a lot well. It handles its exposition deftly, setting up the importance of WR and the details around event economically. I thought it was effective too, in intercutting just enough footage of WR to give a flavor of the film and what was at stake (I found the pink-faded Eastmancolor print distracting, but that’s also the point: about how the historical moment has receded). Structurally, it was effective to intercut the trial with other material, such as Makavejev’s other film productions.
But even here, I felt there were lost opportunities. The filmmaker tracked down many of the people present at the 1971 screening, but we never hear what they think now, or what they remember of the event. Instead, they pose in front of the tape recorder; they are only B-roll. Maybe their perspective now is not more interesting than what they said in 1971. But I suspect a filmmaking choice was decided and interviews did not fit into it.