Does being authorised make a documentary more… | Little White Lies

Does being autho­rised make a doc­u­men­tary more authentic?

18 Sep 2018

Words by Ed Gibbs

Six images showing a person wearing a yellow 'hip girl' shirt and red shorts, posing in various positions against a blue metal wall.
Six images showing a person wearing a yellow 'hip girl' shirt and red shorts, posing in various positions against a blue metal wall.
Direc­tor Steve Loveridge was grant­ed unprece­dent­ed access to singer-activist M.I.A, but does it mean­ing­ful­ly enhance his film?

Hav­ing your doc­u­men­tary pre­mière at a major film fes­ti­val like Sun­dance or Cannes then waltz off with an Oscar was once the stuff of dreams. Yet things have changed marked­ly in recent years. The likes of Search­ing for Sug­ar Man and Amy have not only helped ele­vate their direc­tors onto the world stage, they’ve also round­ly won over crit­ics, res­onat­ed with audi­ences at the box office and helped push the music doc into a genre all its own. Net­flix, Ama­zon and Google have all leapt on board. Today, they’re almost as ubiq­ui­tous as Mar­vel and DC movies.

It wasn’t always this way. After DA Pen­nebak­er trans­formed the music doc­u­men­tary into a pop­u­lar art form with Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back, many film­mak­ers fol­lowed in his wake, keen to cap­i­talise on the genre’s sud­den poten­tial. Some, such as Albert and David Maysles and Mar­tin Scors­ese, suc­ceed­ed. Oth­ers, includ­ing Jean-Luc God­dard, did not. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, with Nick Broomfield’s unau­tho­rised look at the rela­tion­ship of Kurt Cobain and Court­ney Love, that the music doc sud­den­ly felt unmiss­able and rel­e­vant again. So it is once more.

Steve Loveridge, a graph­ic design­er turned film­mak­er, was grant­ed unprece­dent­ed access to his sub­ject for Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. Hav­ing been close friends since their time togeth­er at art school, Loveridge con­vinced M.I.A. (real name Math­an­gi Maya” Arul­pra­gasam) to allow him to delve into her expan­sive per­son­al archive of home videos and record­ings, as well as film her can­did­ly. The result is a won­der­ful­ly inti­mate and reveal­ing look at an out­spo­ken artist, con­flict­ed by her pub­lic per­sona and pri­vate life. Cru­cial­ly, Loveridge refused to let Maya into the edit or view the film before its pre­mière at Sun­dance ear­li­er this year.

It was awk­ward,” Loveridge admits to LWLies. I was like, I’m going to make this in New York, where you haven’t got a visa to go… I’m going to take all these tapes with me. You’re not going to get in the edit suite, you’re not going to have any say in this. I’m just going to come back with a fin­ished film.’” The singer needn’t have wor­ried. Despite being caught off-guard at a Q&A screen­ing in Sun­dance (where the film won an award), Maya has since grown to like it, par­tic­u­lar­ly after her fam­i­ly and the Tamal com­mu­ni­ty gave it their seal of approval. Loveridge admits the film shows a pri­vate side to the singer few have seen before, and that she wasn’t entire­ly com­fort­able with the mys­tique being removed with­out her knowledge.

While it is an authen­tic por­trait, Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. isn’t unique in its open-book approach. Asif Kapadia’s Amy, which also drew heav­i­ly on pre­vi­ous­ly unseen home video mate­r­i­al, famous­ly had the singer’s family’s bless­ing, which was only rescind­ed after the fact when Winehouse’s father, Mitch, decid­ed he didn’t like how he was por­trayed. But Loveridge’s film offers some­thing Amy could not: a frank account of an emo­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing life that’s still unfold­ing. Maya is still an active cre­ative force. Which from Loveridge s point of view made it all the more tricky when pur­su­ing a nar­ra­tive the singer might not agree with.

Doc­u­men­taries from film­mak­ers who are close to their sub­jects have become increas­ing­ly com­mon, although the results aren’t always as reveal­ing as one would hope. With his 2016 film Gimme Dan­ger, Stooges super­fan Jim Jar­musch made heavy work of an oth­er­wise thrilling sub­ject. Like­wise, Tab­bert Fiiller’s pro­file of John Lydon, The Pub­lic Image is Rot­ten, appeared hes­i­tant in ask­ing too much of its sub­ject, despite Lydon’s appar­ent open­ness to dis­cussing almost any­thing. Sim­i­lar­ly, Sophie Fiennes’ attempt at cap­tur­ing the essence of Grace Jones in Blood­light and Bami felt lead­en and laboured, despite Ms Jones lit­er­al­ly bear­ing all.

More intrigu­ing­ly, the recent autho­rised Whit­ney from direc­tor Kevin Mac­don­ald, which strug­gles to reach beyond its cen­tral premise of domes­tic abuse, faced being scooped by anoth­er Hous­ton doc, Nick Broomfield’s Can I Be Me. While nei­ther man­ages to ful­ly cap­ture the won­der of the singer’s innate tal­ent, Broomfield’s film does at least focus as much on her musi­cal abil­i­ty as her pri­vate life, while also exam­in­ing why the black com­mu­ni­ty rebuffed her for being too white’. Macdonald’s gloomy film fails to get much out of moth­er Cis­sy or ex-hus­band Bob­by Brown.

Of course, not all artists war­rant mul­ti­ple tes­ti­mo­ni­als – we’re unlike­ly to see any­thing com­pete with Life in 12 Bars, the recent doc­u­men­tary about Eric Clap­ton, which was heav­i­ly sub­sidised by the gui­tarist him­self (along with the BBC). Direct­ed by Clapton’s friend Lili Fini Zanuck, the film attempts to present his life as being large­ly free of con­tro­ver­sy, skirt­ing over an infa­mous, racist episode at a 1976 Birm­ing­ham con­cert. The inci­dent still clouds the bluesman’s career in Britain, and he begrudg­ing­ly address­es it, now claim­ing his long-stand­ing sup­port for far-right MP Enoch Pow­ell (and his chant­i­ng of Nation­al Front slo­gans) to be mere­ly the result of his alcoholism.

Hav­ing your subject’s approval can be as mixed a bless­ing as any record label endorse­ment. Luck­i­ly for Loveridge, he man­aged to keep his sub­ject at arm’s length to achieve that rare feat: an autho­rised doc of a con­tem­po­rary artist that deliv­ers for audi­ences and feels defin­i­tive at the same time. He wouldn’t reveal who he wants to pro­file next, but there are a few artists, he says, that war­rant the M.I.A. treat­ment” on screen.

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