Expanded Realities: How Documentary Cinema Augments Perception and Memory
Channel: Shrish Vijaya Sudharsan
Date: 2021-03-23

An unfortunate truth of the human condition is how limited we are in our experiences. No two people will see a sunset and remember it in exactly the same way. Of course, the explanation for that hinges on the fact that subjective experience is quite impermeable (it is, after all, subjective, and not objective) but it is also true that the external world is constantly in a state of change. Therefore, one could even argue that two people being incapable of remembering a sunset the same way is not as important as the fact that two people cannot in fact see the same sunset at all. The human pursuit to capture images of the world has been endless. From cave paintings thousands of years ago to photography in more recent times, mirroring external reality has inspired awe and technological innovation. Despite their differences, if there is one thing that ties all these attempts together, it is their expansion of what we normally consider to be the “horizons” of experience. This video explores how perception and memory of the external world are augmented by documentary cinema, and how, by integrating one’s subjective experience with the creative aspects of a film, the notion of reality itself is expanded.

The first film that can be used to understand expanded realities is Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. A poetic film, it uses timelapse, low-angle shots, slow-motion and juxtaposition (to name a few) to paint a picture of the world that is founded in sense perception but simultaneously much more. Koyaanisqatsi changes the way we normally look at things, to create an interpretative portrayal of the external world. For example, this shot of cars on a highway makes them look like miniatures, like toys that the human race plays with. Their integration with the background and with the rest of the film makes it seem like the whole world is one machine, with constantly changing parts. Or, how about this shot of corporate offices? They glass skyscrapers don’t stand out like a sore, but rather blend in with the rest of the scene, as if they were meant to be there. Along the same lines, and with clever use of juxtaposition, Koyaanisqatsi also shows the inextricable link between humans and their inventions. Sausages and people are compared, and the movement of the latter eerily mimics the mechanised production of the former. Humans are microcosms of the world they build. In this way, Koyaanisqatsi expands our immediate remembrance of the spaces we inhabit, and of the planet we live on. It expands our reality.

Speaking of memory, documentaries do not just serve as surreal registers through which we can look at our time using different lenses. They also function as dioramas of different times altogether. In Night and Fog, Alain Resnais uses authentic images of the Shoah and a tightly structured narrative to tell the haunting story of a generation. Such films act as museums of memory, and enable the preservation of significant moments in history, so that future generations may never forget the atrocities of the past. Night and Fog expands reality by keeping in the public awareness things that ought not to be forgotten. Of course, the same function is performed by literature, but what literature lacks is the visual—and therefore deeply affective—appeal of cinema. Even if someone was not present at an event, that event may still exist in their reality through documentary cinema.

Although we experience the world physically, our interpretation of those experiences, and our ability to transform them into art is what lends a sense of shared being to an otherwise individualistic existence. The one artistic medium that can be said to fulfil this function is documentary cinema; amazingly, it broadens our horizons no matter how small a screen we watch it on. Ultimately, through the documentary, we combine the tangible and intangible, the material and the abstract, traces and memory, to push the boundaries of perception and craft our own expanded realities.