Laura Poitras

I don't know much about media, or how to properly evaluate a film just yet...

All I know is... It moved me.

 I was one of around twenty audience members eager to see a festival winning documentary and even more thrilled to meet its creator.

You can tell she was nervous. Her eyes wandered from viewer to viewer as she politely smiled a warm smile. The experience started off with hesitation from both sides; the creator and audience. Once the clips rolled the interaction amongst us felt second nature.

       A girl and two adults, all of Arabic decent calmly conversed when all of a sudden, BOOM! A sound of monstrous proportion explodes. The adolescent girl runs toward the sound, the outside light. It's another grenade, one of many that day and days to follow. The scene cuts back to an Arabic woman sitting steadily on the couch. The woman tried to swat a fly as if it was the only nuisance bothering her at that moment in time. As I sat there watching this clip I couldn't help but wonder how do the subjects grow immune to the sound, the worry? How is there adaptation? Especially for Ms. Poitras, who is not native to the environment at all. This raised a question of emotional attachment and ethics. How could Ms. Poitras maintain filming at such a startling time?  And, had she ever get emotionally attached to the subjects she filmed?  When I asked these questions she explained that as a film maker you want to get your message across and of course she was disturbed by the grenades. But, eventually on a shallow level she grew immune to the sound too. She told us the most emotional part was when the nephew of the protagonist was kidnapped for ransom. She gave whatever little money she could provide. This lead to a conversation about her approaches to creating a film such as this. She stated she liked to work alone and that being alone enabled her to get as much access as she did for this specific project.  She said she was amazed at the opportunities that presented itself to her. If she was in America or under the military’s care at their unit she would have never witness such event as an arms deal. In taking precaution towards her families’s concern she wrote a letter that was given to a military official in case anything was to happen to her. I started to realize the seriousness of her ambition, to put her own life in jeopardy, and to expose the truth about the two men bound to Al Qaeda. This clip showed me life outside my own little world. And, brought up the subconscious concerns I had for a close friend of mine. She is Palestinian and her family lives very close to the border of Israel. I was worried about her worries, which focused on her family and their danger during the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

     A Clip that touched me even more was from the short, O'Say can you see? The scene she showed portrayed peoples' reaction to the gapping whole where the world trade center use to be. Goose bumps covered my skin and my eyes filled up with water as I watched. I remembered it all too well. I was in middle school waiting for class to start and all of a sudden I hear frantic noise across the hall. Some other students and I ran to that classroom to see what was going on. It was smoke, clouds of smoke. We were on the other side of the water. We were too far to see details but close enough to smell the ash for weeks. I remember that month; my backyard was a collection of Mr. Trump’s papers and other various works of the businesses that flourished there. The faces that Ms. Poitras captured made me reflect on a time when we had no choice but to be united as a Nation.  It made me wish we didn't have to suffer that much to achieve unity.

   The discussion was close to over; I concluded that the nervous smile she had in the beginning projected great words of wisdom. The last question I asked was if there was any advice she could give to a student like me who is just starting out in documentary films.  I can’t recite the exact saying word for word, but the message still rang clear. It summed up to; just try, just keep on going even if you feel like you're not quite ready as a videographer. You can hire someone who will do that, just keep on going to find out your own ways of working. You'll figure it out.

I think I’m going to take her advice. Thank you Ms. Poitras.