Director Alex Gibney and The Throwaway War
May 16, 2009
With guests and panelists arriving in Chicago throughout the day, anticipation mounted as the Symposium’s first weekend event drew near. After braving flat tires and rainy weather, a crowd of students, professors, journalists, activists, filmmakers, and community members filled Northwestern’s Annie May Swift auditorium. Alex Gibney, director of the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (screened earlier this week on Northwestern’s campus), gave the keynote speech for Inspire Films’ second annual Symposium on Social Issue Media.
Gibney spoke about his experience creating and directing Taxi to the Dark Side, as well as his beliefs about and work in social issue media. Social issue documentaries, Gibney explained, require a respect for both the documentary and story forms, presenting a peculiar opportunity to use entertainment value in order to have the freedom to send political messages. It’s not enough simply to be committed to any one issue that is important; rather, something about such a film must engage people in order to become something enduring and important. This engagement, Gibney asserted, is what differentiates the power of film from the power of the written word. In other words, films have a unique emotional power to show something and convey why crimes are committed, becoming provocateurs for social change by giving you, the audience, the ability to help stop them from happening. Following his speech, Gibney addressed questions from the audience on his experiences in documentary filmmaking, his methods in interviewing subjects, and how he understands his role as director in the documentary-making process.
The Throwaway War director Benjamin Singer takes questions from the audience
The Inspire Films premiere of The Throwaway War, directed by Benjamin Singer and produced by Sky Dylan-Robbins, followed Gibney’s opening speech. A 45-minute documentary about the nation’s drug epidemic, the film follows the daily lives of formerly incarcerated drug offenders as they attempt to turn their lives around. It asked complex questions – How can we reduce the harm drug abuse causes in our society? – demanded that we give attention to legislation focusing on punitive measures over rehabilitation for drug offenders, and provided thoughtful answers and a promising look to future reforms in the systematic approach to the drug epidemic – reforms that depend in a large part on its audience’s response to the questions and challenges the film posed.
Subjects from The Throwaway War attended the premiere and took questions after the screening
As Alex Gibney said just previously, part of the power of a social issue documentary is in the process of how it “becomes a bigger story from understanding the particulateness of one human story.” The Throwaway War aptly illustrates his point, as it traces the lives of a few key characters struggling to overcome their pasts and work towards a brighter future on both an individual and a collective level. Judging from the numerous and enthusiastic questions to both the crew of the film and its subjects, some of whom were present at the premiere, The Throwaway War has already started proving Gibney’s statement that documentary films with a social agenda can have a tremendous impact, and an enduring one as well. We look forward to seeing how Inspire Films’ second annual grant recipient, The Throwaway War, continues to be used as a tool for social change.
