LAURA POITRAS

German philosopher of Korean origin Byung-Chul Han has given over much of his latest work to reflections on how the perception of time is changing in the population of the most developed part of the world. Generalisation of the usage of new technologies has probably helped usher in a widespread fallacy: that any information we might want is available at any time and any location; and that this fabulous plethora of data and comments comprises, with no plausible discussion, the reality of our time.

On the basis of this fallacy, a sizeable slice of our society has accepted the fiction that it has attained an incomparable level of knowledge. But this fiction shuns – considering it unnecessary – the essential role that must be played by time in order to process (assimilate, comprehend, and reflect on) some presumably huge quantities of information. As the philosopher rightly points out, the issue here is to make a distinction between knowledge and information: Han reminds us that knowledge, in an emphatic sense, is a “slow, long process which conveys a totally different sense of time. Mature”. Knowledge and reflection are possibly not antonyms of this information we always have to hand, but it does seem clear that only the usage of this information by people assists with the development of thought, culture, art and science.

In an era dominated by an artificial intelligence which many apparently wish to elevate to the place occupied by non-artificial intelligence, it is obvious that dedicating (our) time is the sole guarantee of developing new perspectives and edifying reflections to construct our own view of the world that surrounds us.

Quoting Han again, in what he calls the art of delaying oneself, if we are discussing contemporary filmmaking we can find US documentary maker Laura Poitras (Boston, 1964), whose exemplary trajectory picks out many examples of what modern audiovisual can obtain if it is applied to the old commitment of films to reality: observing it, reporting its development and furnishing a point of view on it.

Laura Poitras has always used prolonged periods living alongside the groups of people to whom she has dedicated her films. This is one of the maxims of the genre, already pointed out by Flaherty 85 years ago, and echoed with unforgettable eagerness by Robert Drew, the Maysles brothers or Frederick Wiseman in the United States, by Jean Rouch in Europe and Africa, or by Shinsuke Ogawa in Japan. There can be few doubts as to the benefits in terms of the rigour, coherence and credibility of the documentaries eventually produced: more time to conduct research, more time to win the trust of the people who are the film, more time to ensure that the narrative line observed makes sense, more time to entertain doubts concerning it.

The director’s eagerness, transformed into time and reflection, had already been essential in her work on the gentrification of the city of Columbus (Ohio), Flag Wars (2003), which she co-directed alongside local activist Linda Goode Bryant. Their efforts were rewarded with the prize for best documentary feature film at Austin’s acclaimed SXSW Film Festival (USA) and special recognition from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The film, which was nominated for the Independent Spirit awards the following year, was the preamble to her first major work on how the world changed in the wake of 11 September 2001, My Country, My Country (2006). In this case, the world of post-Saddam Iraq, portraying a Sunni doctor – whom she accompanied over several years – which earned the director her first Oscar nomination.

A victim of the destiny of her times, as Poitras was to relate in her best known film, Citizenfour (2013) – Oscar for best documentary feature film in 2013 – shooting My Country, My Country gave her more than an opportunity to spread awareness of the reality faced by many Iraqis following the US occupation: her card was marked by the US intelligence services, and she was repeatedly interrogated and detained at her country’s borders. Republican George W. Bush was president at the time, but the situation did not improve in any way whatsoever straight after the 2010 premiere of The Oath when Democrat Barack H. Obama was in the White House.

While the documentary, which had taken the Sundance Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, was being screened at festivals all over the world, Poitras quickly set to work, feeling she could spend the time required by the project, on shooting a film which would be called Risk (2016), only days after the leakage of secret documents by Chelsea Manning via the WikiLeaks platform.

There can be no doubt that the addition of the filmmaker to the US intelligence services’ secret watch lists gave Poitras an enormous level of access to the man behind the organisation and his closest circle. Julian Assange had already emerged as one of the leading protagonists of an affair which was most definitely no fiction and had not concluded: public whistleblowing on Internet of practices in flagrant breach of democratic principles which nations that set great store by their exemplarity should not tolerate. It was at this point that Poitras grew accustomed to living outside her own country, and the time she spent on this mission, which transcends documentaries and filmmaking, brought her into contact with William Binney, Jacob Appelbaum, Sarah Harrison and, among others, Edward Snowden, and the director was in his secret Hong Kong hotel room when, in June 2013, she revealed the systematic interception, storage and analysis of the private information of citizens of the US and the rest of the world.

Now that discussion is ongoing as to ways of protecting those who dare raise their voices to report practices detrimental to our society (whistleblowers such as Snowden and Manning, but also Hervé Falciani or Antoine Deltour), Poitras’s filmmaking has become a depository and a reflection of the status of Western democracies in the 21st century, providing the public with an extended field of vision of reality. Field of Vision is, in fact, the name of the group of documentary makers she set up in 2016, featuring, in addition to Poitras, directors such as Iva Radivojević, RaMell Ross, Anna Giralt and Maxim Pozdorovkin, among others.

On the surface of it, the filmography of the winner of the Honorific Mikeldi Award at this year’s Festival seemed to be a far cry from her habitual areas of interest when she determinedly undertook her latest feature film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022). Nothing could be further from the truth: the focus on support for the compelling photographer Nan Goldin in her fight for a plural, critical and transformative culture sits naturally in the Poitras discourse. In this more recent example, she does not perhaps apply her perspective to the difficulties we must overcome to stand up for our freedoms as citizens (though this is also an issue), but rather opens up to the function of the art, to the way in which it is administered, to the commitment to transparency, and to the exemplifying function which must be performed by culture. What is true is that again the time employed alongside Goldin and her ardent cell of activists is the essential component to draw up and construct a narration worthy of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion.