13th
Kathryn Jenson White: “American Teen” at deadCENTER
As a docfreak, I’m always eager to find a new documentary to love and talk about. “American Teen” fills that bill. I saw it last night at deadCENTER, screened at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The film pushes the boundaries of documentary making in ways that will, upon its commercial release, get talked about with energy and enthusiasm, I’m willing to bet. What’s fact and what’s fiction? See James Frey, David Sedaris, et al who have brought one print version of documentary into the public lie. Several years ago, I created a class called Fact Into Feature: Literary Journalism and Documentary Film. I never taught it for a variety of reasons, but I wanted to explore what happens in the print/film versions of presentations of nonfiction when the conventions of fiction get involved.
“American Teen” got a long ovation at the screening last night, and justly so. It’s not your grandma’s documentary, however. Where does it fit into the documentary genre, I ask with pleasure and excitement? Are there Errol Morris recreations within it but without the change in film style to signal them? Do the clever and very, very good animated sequences for each character signal, too, that the lines between fact and fiction/documentary and narrative feature are blurring, blurring, blurred?
See the film, and we’ll talk.
I’m co-teaching a documentary film class at OU in fall that has gotten Presidential Dream Course status. That means David Boren gave us funding to bring in filmmakers. We’ve asked Bradley Beasley, whose “Okie Noodling II” is also screening at deadCENTER, and other filmmakers and documentary scholars to screen and talk during the course. I would love to add “American Teen” writer/director Nanette Burstein to the list of those visiting Norman. Her “The Kid Stays in the Picture” was one of my 2002 favorite films. That documentary about Robert Evans was also innovative and genre bending.
