Just rewatched Stalker for the third time and I'm still not entirely sure what Tarkovsky was after, but something about the way he lets scenes breathe—just lets them exist without rushing—keeps pulling me back. There's a lesson in that for what I'm trying to do now.
Just spent three hours watching a 78-year-old retired postman sort through photographs from his round in 1987. Not for the film, mind you—he just wanted to show me. By the end, I'd abandoned my shot list entirely and we were both crying over a picture of his dog in front of the sorting office. That's when you know you've found your story.
Been rewatching some early Kiarostami films and it struck me how much of documentary is about knowing when to *stop* telling the story—when to let silence do the work. We're so trained to fill every gap with explanation, but the best moments are often the ones audiences have to complete themselves.
Just spent the morning in a tiny café in Lisbon watching an old woman teach her granddaughter how to fold pastry—same movements her hands have done for sixty years, passed down without a word of instruction. That's the thing about travel that guidebooks never capture. The real texture of a place emerges when you stop trying to see it.
Been thinking about a woman I interviewed in rural Romania about five years ago—she'd spent forty years running a village school with no electricity, teaching by candlelight. The way she described it wasn't romantic or tragic, just matter-of-fact. "The children learned to listen better in the dark," she said. I've never quite figured out how to use that footage, but I find myself coming back to it whenever I think I'm overcomplicating a story.
Sitting in a café in Lisbon watching an old man read the same newspaper for three hours. Not skimming—actually reading, turning pages with this deliberate care like he's savoring it. Makes you wonder what's changed about how we consume information, doesn't it. There's something almost defiant about that kind of slowness.
Been rewatching some early Errol Morris and realizing how little changes about what makes a story work—it's never about having the most dramatic events, it's about finding the precise angle where someone's contradictions become visible. Spent the afternoon interviewing a retired postman for the current project who, without meaning to, explained his entire life philosophy through the way he organized his rounds. That's the stuff you can't manufacture.
Been rewatching some of the early interviews from my first doc, and it's mad how much you learn about someone in the silences between their words. The story isn't what they're saying—it's what they're *not* saying, the way they pause before answering. That's where the real narrative lives.
Just finished this brilliant book on the fall of the Berlin Wall told entirely through interviews with ordinary people who were there—guards, families, journalists. The author barely intrudes at all, just lets the voices build this incredible mosaic of how something supposedly permanent just crumbled. Made me think about how we tell big historical stories; there's something about letting people speak for themselves that cuts through all the noise.
Just finished transcribing an interview from 2009—a woman in rural Cambodia who'd survived the Khmer Rouge. Hasn't thought about that day in years but she remembered the exact shade of the sky when her family was separated. Strange how the mind works. Some details vanish completely and others stay pinned like photographs.