Performance is always oriented towards a spectator, towards an imagined audience and I was thinking who is their imagined audience? Joshua Oppenheimer More Quotes by Joshua Oppenheimer More Quotes From Joshua Oppenheimer I've become more forgiving, even though I have no patience at all for denial, justification of wrong, rationalization. I've become virtually a pacifist, so I feel that no atrocity is ever justified. I've become more vigilant about evil. I think I recognize its seeds more quickly. I see its source. Joshua Oppenheimer forgiving evil thinking I think we need to make documentaries about fantasy and storytelling. I think I just started to scratch the surface of a method that allows us to do that. We want to be sucked into the events, suspend our disbelief and imagine that this is a fiction, but actually putting onscreen the gap between who the people are and who they want to be and therefore opening the question about why they want to be this person. Joshua Oppenheimer fantasy people thinking People create the illusion of acting natural, which is what I think most documentarians do in part because of the direct cinema orthodoxies that came into play really in the '60s. That moment of performance is a tremendous opportunity to make visible something hitherto invisible, which is how people want to be seen. How do they see themselves? What are the scripts, fantasies, genres by which they imagine themselves? How is storytelling part of what we are as human beings? We wouldn't kill each other en masse if it weren't for storytelling. We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves. Joshua Oppenheimer opportunity people thinking We can distance ourselves from the reality of what we did through storytelling. Joshua Oppenheimer storytelling distance reality I hope the films will energize the movement in Indonesia against impunity and against a system based on fear and intimidation. Joshua Oppenheimer entertainment Denial, panic, threats, anger - those are very human responses to feeling guilt. Joshua Oppenheimer human feeling anger guilt What I've always been most interested in is exposing the way stories and fantasies reconstitute our everyday reality. What appears to be non-fiction is not only totally mysterious, unfathomable, and strange when you really look at what it is. Joshua Oppenheimer look you reality way I think we are fascinated and scared by evil at the same time. I think it's important not to suppress our fascination but to walk into it with open eyes. Joshua Oppenheimer walk eyes evil time If you film a little boy going to school, the big event in that boy's day and all the classmates' and teachers' day is you being there filming, not the school. Joshua Oppenheimer boy day you school Native Americans' families experience living surrounded, living in increasingly small reservations surrounded by the society that destroyed their civilization, and are still stigmatized. For decades and decades, for hundreds of years except in Indian schools, they weren't allowed to speak their language. That stigma takes a terrible toll. Joshua Oppenheimer experience society language speak The function of journalism is, primarily, to uncover vital new information in the public interest and to put that information in a context so that we can use it to improve the human condition. Joshua Oppenheimer human new journalism information I heard about the Holocaust before hearing the 'Cinderella' story or watching 'Peter Pan.' Joshua Oppenheimer watching about story holocaust I have a British and an American passport. Joshua Oppenheimer passport american british I didn't really get any rigorous background in film history. Joshua Oppenheimer background get film history At Harvard, direct cinema was the core of the film department, and most of the students were trying to make socially conscious works, but I was trying to combine fiction and non-fiction to show how our seemingly factual world is constituted through fantasy and stories. Joshua Oppenheimer fantasy cinema trying world 'The Look of Silence' is able to have a wide public release, although still not in cinemas. It's distributed by two government bodies, the National Human Rights Commission and the Jakarta Arts Council. Joshua Oppenheimer look human-rights government silence Yes, it was difficult - making 'The Act of Killing' in particular was a very lonely process. No one really believed in it until very close to the end. But it was also a sanctuary. I was working in obscurity. Joshua Oppenheimer end difficult lonely process I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people. Joshua Oppenheimer looking pure evil people I'm a big admirer of S21, and I really also like Rithy Panh's work in general. Joshua Oppenheimer general big like work I think it's a great pity in the Anglophone world that we conflate cinema verite and Direct Cinema; they're, in fact, ontological opposites. In Direct Cinema, we create a fictional reality with characters and pretend we're not that. Joshua Oppenheimer great cinema reality world
