Tongues Untied
Martin Riggs' Tongues Untied is an excellent example of the artfulness that can employed in the construction of documentary. Riggs uses form, composition, pace and emotional dynamics to create a rich viewing and hearing experience that challenged my comfort zone without being overly assaultive in its force. I thought his combination of found footage, performance, evocative imagery and talking-head style interviews allowed for the themes of the video to be expressed on emotional, intellectual, and sensual levels. Riggs did an excellent job in fulfilling the responsibility to capture a culture, scene and lifestyle that many can only understand superficially or one-sidedly. I was really impressed with his, and the actors/contributors ability to use humor and poke fun at themselves in order to relate to viewers on that crucial level. The use of humor also provided a refreshing ease for the viewer which, many times is left out in order to maintain a sense of seriousness and importance when discussing the emotionally charged topics of sexuality, gender, and ethnicity.
Fast Trip, Long Drop
Gregg Bordowitz's video has an interesting combination of personal and autobiographical reflection combined with a historical approach to looking at the cultural and individual experience of AIDS. His device of playing many different characters was clever and very inspirational in the spirit of independent video. Much of the camerawork and editing decisions (intercut black&white archival footage) gave the video a bit of an amateur feel, but this felt appropriate as it added to the feeling that Bordowitz could be just about anyone and that his experience represents a small ripple in what is an enormous wave of suffered, proud, oppressive, and often silenced experience.
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Tongues Untied
I agree with what Jeff said this film. I think that the pacing became especially important to the overall effectiveness of the film because it kept me engaged in the issues I was watching by changing from extremely heavy topics to lighter so that the viewer could digest the heavy without feeling like it was too much to handle. Even the funnier parts (I especially liked the School of Snapology) held up Rigg's message that silence "kills." Having watched this movie quite a while ago, it has stuck in my mind more than most movies because of the rhythm and the genuine characters, which I suppose shows that it was effective.
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