The World is Full of Magic, Documentaries Should Be Too

David Delaney Mayer
Nov 3 · 3 min read
David Delaney Mayer on site for production of his upcoming feature film The Castle on Red Mountain (2020) Photo by Matt Brondoli

Great art gives us space to reflect on our own experiences throughout daily life. It reminds us that in our most intimate, complex, and nuanced traits, we are not alone. Great art is capable of digging inside of our deepest selves and revealing parts that we never knew existed. It allows us to continue to grow and to live in a way that both connects us to our universal humanity and allows us to maintain our most bizarre, beautiful, horrible, absurd, admirable, and downright strange qualities that give us each our individuality. Great art both connects us to others and gives us the security to be alone.

In my opinion, the documentary world, as we know it today, has largely missed this core truth about artistic expression, and instead documentaries tend to produce social and political ideas as opposed to creating space for an audience to reflect, to wonder, and to find joy in aesthetic beauty. Scroll through Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, and you will find documentaries that reflect our political and social anxieties: a hard-hitting documentary about Russian athletes doping, a scandalous investigation into Facebook’s formulas, a tragic documentary about the bombing of Syria. These films have their purpose, and no doubt they are reflections of what an audience desires to see. However, they miss core truths about art’s potential. At their best, these films give us moderate levels of understanding of an issue (much less than a well written book or article would, though), but at their worst they are well-funded forms of counterfeit journalism hiding a political or social agenda beneath pretty images that come at us like candy to a child. These films serve a small value in our society, and they should not be the only films that claim the hearts and minds of audiences who sit down to watch a documentary.

After all, documentary filmmaking is an incredibly powerful tool: documentarians use the real world and cameras as sculptor uses marble with chisels. At its best, a documentary can carve away at the surface of what we see and begin to unpack moments of truth hiding beneath the surface that no fiction filmmaker can claim. If we believed the truths of most hard-hitting documentaries, we could imagine ourselves in very fraught, very dangerous, and very political times. And perhaps this is true. But there are other truths to remember: that people live just as they always have lived. We live alongside one another in communities striving to create a better world for ourselves, our loved ones, and those we see around us. Our documentaries should reflect this.

The world is absurd. It is filled with strange, surprising and ultimately bizarre happenings and people. This is life. This is what makes us smile, cry, hurt, love and fight. We are surrounded by surprises in the most small and large ways imaginable. A death of a loved one follows a marriage of friends, and we are left shaken to the core. The stock market plunges. A disease strikes down an athlete in her prime. Tragedy strikes us at every turn followed by moments of great joy alongside loved ones. A hike in the woods, a wedding in Denver, a night at the dinner table with family: our lives are rich with experiences of many kinds. So, too, should our documentaries be filled with the wonders of our daily lives.

I am a very spiritual person, and I believe that art comes from a higher power. I believe that art comes from a world filled with poetry and wonder that sits just out of reach of our senses. As artists we only need to reach out with our hearts and draw from this world to create. My films aim to create elevated and intimate experiences that give audiences space to reflect on their own experiences by finding themselves inside the heads and lives of others. My movies are as much about my audience as they are about the subject of the movies.

In this way, I have tried to live my life and create my work according to Y.B. Yeats’ words, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

The world is full of magic; documentaries should be too.

Written by

David Delaney Mayer is an Irish-German, American-born film director/producer. https://linktr.ee/daviddelaneymayerfilms

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