Read more on "Terror's Advocate"

0 Comments POSTED: August 17, 2007 10:23 | By: Thom Powers
schroeder.jpgIn the coming days on Doc Blog, I'm going to highlight some of the web sites that are already popping up in support of docs in Real to Reel. The first is for Terror's Advocate, the new work by Barbet Schroeder (pictured) who has a long track record with both docs and feature films.

Terror's Advocate explores the world of the controversial lawyer Jacques Verges. It has already received  accolades (New York Times critic A.O. Scott called it "jaw-dropping") from its appearance at Cannes.

The film has an excellent web site exploring the characters in the film and a long interview with Schroeder, excerpted here:

Why have you returned to the documentary thirty years after ?General Idi Amin Dada??
I never abandoned the documentary. After ?Amin Dada?, I made a real documentary, ?KoKo, a Talking Gorilla?, a philosphical movie ?starring? a gorilla who had a real presence at all times. Next came another ?monster?, Charles Bukowski, who had loved the Amin Dada film. With him, I tried to make something like a series of fifty aphorisms, little monologues: ?The Charles Bukowski Tapes?. Another real documentary. But in any case I approach all my fiction films as documentaries. I am a great believer in the oft-repeated phrase: ?Every great film is a documentary?.

Can you give us an example?
In the case of ?Reversal of Fortune?, we had a documentary obligation to follow the interviews that were on file, in other words, what Von Bülow and others had declared to the police. We were obliged to respect, not the letter but the ?spirit? of what was described in the depositions. These scenes weren?t invented; they are reality, somewhat reinterpreted. But even when you?re making a documentary, you interpret, you fabricate a reality. So conversely, I always approach documentaries as if they were fictions.

Continued here...

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