I spent last weekend watching documentaries. This may not sound at first hearing like the most exciting weekend a person could have, but every year at this time I spend all of my money and time to go see more documentary films than a person should see in four days at True/False, a documentary film festival in its tenth year that is a highlight of the year for me and my little town. Directors and producers and writers and fans descend on the city and turn it into temporary mecca for (mostly) nonfiction narrative cinema (and for hoodies, which for some reason go with documentaries like Botox goes with Hollywood), and normal residents like me get to forget our day jobs and immerse ourselves in a vibrant and inventive art form.

Emerging bleary-eyed and wrung out (maybe that explains the hoodies) on the other end of my sixteen-film weekend, I’ve been thinking about documentaries, especially in light of what I do, which is study and teach fiction. This isn’t so paradoxical—nonfictional and fictional narrative share more than most people think, and have a lot to teach us about each other.

The most important thing they share, of course, is that they’re narrative. While I am more in the theory of the novel camp than the narrative theory camp because the latter looks for the keys to all narrative while the former keeps its eye on genre, it is important to recognize the specific shared goals and forms of nonfictional and fictional films and prose. In plainer words, it is correct to say that one genre is true and the other is false, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t both used to tell stories (and that both are not both true and false). Through these genres, writers and filmmakers tell stories with certain effects in mind, using a toolbox of techniques to achieve those effects.

One film I saw, Dirty Wars, follows reporter Jeremy Scahill’s investigation of covert military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The structure of the film is dictated by Scahill’s activity—the filmmakers follow the trail of the reporter’s story, watching over his shoulder as he tracks the activities of the Joint Special Operations Command through small villages and along the banks of the Potomac. As they do so, they mix genres, using the tricks of straightforward investigative journalism alongside those of the diary, the personal essay, and the travelogue, taking advantage of the power of identification to tell a haunting story and make a strong argument.

The Act of Killing, my favorite of the weekend, looks back at Indonesian death squads active after the 1965 military coup. It is a strange and powerful film (the presence on the Executive Producers roster of Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, two masters of strange and powerful films, is unsurprising in this regard) in which former members of one such squad proudly recreate scenes of torture and murder from the past. These scenes become part of the film, are presented as they are made, and are accompanied by interviews of the players.  The filmmakers follow the squad members as they confront (and fail to confront) their memories, and show the reactions of the rest of the nation—the victims and those who still celebrate the nominally anti-communist purge. It is an incredibly inventive and even (to use an overused word) surreal film, one that rides the line between nonfiction and fiction in the service of an unfortunately true story. It is an excellent example of the ways in which narratives can bend themselves to accommodate experiences so traumatic that straightforward storytelling forms seem unable to capture.

On a lighter note (these documentary festivals can be murder), I saw a film, Village at the End of the World, that visits a tiny fishing village in Greenland as it faces change. It is not formally radical, nor does anyone but some fish and a polar bear die in it. However, in the way it takes viewers to a remote, foreign, frozen place— accessible only by helicopter and storytelling— it is a model for what narrative can do. Telling the story of the village as it deals with historical change and the individual stories of a few of its residents, including that of a teenage boy as he figures out and steps into his future, the documentarians invoke old generic standbys such as the wilderness story and the bildungsroman to make viewers experience a way of life that is very different from their own.

I am unsure just how all this will translate into the classroom. I want to help students studying fiction to better see how fiction works by looking at its techniques at work in nonfiction (and to see nonfiction’s techniques at work in it). And I want them to think about the shared goals of fiction and nonfiction—to move an audience, to make people think, to show them something about the world. That may mean bringing some examples into class, or assigning these films as they reach wider distribution (if they do). I welcome suggestions. It just seems that the examples of what narrative can do are so powerful and plentiful in documentary film that it would be a shame if I can’t use them somehow.

I’ve used portions of films so that students understand what’s happening in the play.  For example, watching the ending of A Doll’s House has more emotional impact on students than only reading it, which increases their appreciation for the play.  So, there’s utility there.  But sometimes this method feels almost like a cop-out to me.  I worry that I’m showing students a lengthy (30 minute) clip just to avoid having to actually lead discussion.

So I’ve been working on using film in other ways – beyond simply making sure that students understand the plot.

Plays are, of course, highly collaborative in nature.  That collaboration continues well after the playwright is dead, since the plays continue to be performed and re-imagined by various and varied directors.  This is especially true in Shakespearean plays; each director imagines a different version of Shakespeare, each actor brings something different to the role, and the filming can draw our attention to different aspects of a scene or soliloquy.  I’ve found it useful to compare these collaborations, and thus far I’ve attempted this sort of comparative work with Hamlet (in intro to lit) and King Lear (in my senior-level Shakespeare course).

For Hamlet, I use three versions of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy.  I begin with Derek Jacobi in the role. This is the BBC version, so it’s very much like a filmed stage play, and the costumes are more-or-less Elizabethan-looking.  Jacobi stares directly into the camera for much of the speech, something that breaks the fourth wall (and often unnerves the students).  While I’m changing DVDs, I have the students write down their impressions of the soliloquy – what is the performer wearing, where does he look, what does he seem to focus on in the speech.  Then we take a look at Branaugh’s 1996 version of the same speech, which is in part a nice homage to the film Taxi Driver, with Hamlet speaking to himself in the mirror and pointing his dagger at his own reflection.  While switching to the third clip, I again have the students write down their impressions, as well as commentary on what’s different between the two.  We finish with Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet, which gives us Ethan Hawke in the lead role, wandering through a Blockbuster store filled entirely with an action section.  (It’s a little heavy-handed, but it makes the point.)  I have students write their final set of impressions.  Then we talk about it.

I also did this with the final scene of King Lear, when Lear enters carrying Cordelia and howling. We watched the wrenching Lawrence Olivier turn at Lear, when Lear comes out with such power, and his howling reaches a high pitch.  We watched the same scene with Ian McKellen in the role, and his bass howl strikes the students as a different pain.  We also watch Orson Welles’ wonderful howling, which is simply Lear repeating the word “howl” – not a howl at all.  We focused especially on the idea of howling as the breakdown of language, and we watched for the way that Lear expresses his grief for his dead daughter, and his final descent into death.  Again, I think the emotional impact is important for the students, because the simple “howl” on the page isn’t quite enough to convey the staggering loss and the profound nihilism of the play’s end. It also gives us the opportunity to parse the language and to talk about the multiplicity of interpretation of a given text.

For me, figuring out how to best utilize film is a work in progress.  I’m not entirely convinced that I’m doing it as effectively as I can – partly because I’m relying on my students to be savvy about the differences they see onscreen.  But I think it’s worthwhile to work on film this way – if only to make sure that I’m not just using it as filler for class time.

How do you use film when you teach plays?

The Teaching Poetry blog asked Ram a few questions about his work with poetry and film.

Teaching Poetry: Tell us about your documentary on Ginsberg.

Ram Devineni: Ginsberg’s Karma is a thirty-minute documentary about the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It follows his mythical journey to India in the early 1960s that transformed his perspective on life and his work. Poet Bob Holman, director of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, traces the two years Ginsberg spent in India by visiting the places where he stayed and talking with the people he met and influenced, as well as intimate interviews with Beat poets and friends. Bob and I make appearances in it, too.

TP: So Ginsberg’s Karma is a documentary about a poet. Yet you included more ephemeral pieces that animate actual poems for the panel at the PEN World Voices Literary Festival in New York last week. What are some ways that film captures the essence of poetry?

RD: I have always felt that a “poetry film” has to be (first) a great film. I am not sure if the artistic medium of cinema can do a better job of catching the essence of poetry than a dance piece or a play can, but film allows more options.

TP: Can film ever make a poem “better”? How, in your opinion?

RD: I have often seen excellent films based on mediocre poems, that’s why I place strong emphasis on the filmmaker. All films are based on interpretations. A filmmaker interprets a script and makes it into a moving picture, which is what the filmmaker does with a poem. The poem is the base.

Here is an example. It’s one filmmaker’s interpretation of William Blake’s “The Tyger.”

I am sure Blake never imagined his poem would be interpreted like that. But the film captures the essence of the poem and, as a film , it is outstanding.

TP: What are some of the most successful films inspired by or based on poems? What makes them work?

RD: It’s hard finding feature length films based solely on a poem, but a poem becomes the catalyst for the film. I always loved Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire. But, there are many excellent short films based on poems. Because of their length, short films and poems work perfectly together. The poem becomes the finished script for the filmmaker to use.

TP: What’s your dream poem to represent on film?

RD: Something by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda or Spanish poet Frederico Garcia-Lorca–they are my favorites. But since they are so well known, you have to be more careful in interpreting their work to film. I liked a series that the Sundance Channel did on Billy Collins, where they asked numerous filmmakers to turn his poems into short films. Here is one example; Collin’s poem “Forgetfulness,” interpreted by director Julian Grey.

Here are two more films that make for good discussion:

Metformin looks at the biology of love through collage and animation. Based on a poem by Helen Clare and directed by Kate Jessop. 2 minutes

Two short films by D. J. Kadagian who reworks classic poems using found video footage. Screening of “Good Morning America” by Carl Sandburg and “Standard Oil Co.” by Pablo Neruda. Special appearance by the D. J. Kadagian. 15 minutes.

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Joelle Hann is a senior editor at Bedford/St.Martin’s who worked on the third edition of Helen Vendler’s Poems, Poets, Poetry, and originally created the Teaching Poetry blog in 2009.