Jennifer Baichwal

Jennifer Baichwal's curiosity feeds ours. We come out of her films without answers but rather with even better questions. Jennifer Baichwal started the inquiry about artists, art and the audience's responses to the two former in 1998 with Let it Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, spending time with the enigmatic writer and composer, not shying away from the differences between his words and the ones of people that surrounded him.

The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams's Appalachia followed in 2002, raising this time clear questions about the representation of Appalachian "hillbillies" and their bare living situations through highly aesthetic photography. She lets all opinions join the conversation without judgment, all we can be sure of in her approach is that the questioning itself is the point, the thoughts surrounding art, an elusive objectivity and an eventual responsibility.

Further into photography, Manufactured Landscapes (2006) presented the famous work of Edward Burtynsky and prolonged it through film. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then what can the latter do when visual splendor is created by industrial disasters?

Baichwal opened the Hot Docs Film Festival last year with Act of God, choosing to tackle lightning strikes, what some see as a natural occurrence while others experience faith through personal reactions. A majestic camera gave this documentary, in a similar way that had been done with Manufactured Landscapes, space for the audience to admire what is in front of them as well as think of the multiple interpretations that can be attached to split-seconds event that can affect entire lives.

It seems easier to track film influences for fiction filmmakers - how about you for documentaries?

It's a huge range of things, I've studied philosophy, religious studies, and in terms of filmmakers, probably one of the most formative films I saw was Donald Brittain's Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976). And early Herzog films, and Chantal Akerman, as well as fiction/dramatic filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai. What excites me about documentary is when there is an organic relationship between form and content, and the boundaries are pushed in some way in the combination of those two. That's what I really respond to.

What did you do prior to The Life of Paul Bowles?

I was an academic and I did a Masters at McGill in philosophy and theology and I was poised to continue on to teaching and staying in that academic world and I remember being confronted by the possibility of a limited realm of inquiry, academically. It just felt there had to be a more lateral, affecting way of exploring those questions - questions that I'm still interested in like identity and meaning, instead of writing a massive academic tome about that stuff.

The first film I made was Looking You In the Back of the Head, and it was 13 women trying to describe themselves, for which I had no training as a filmmaker. I just learned by doing it. That film was like a school for me.

Three of your films profile artists (Paul Bowles, Shelby Lee Adams and Edward Burtynsky) - what was your relationship to them in the first place?

I find that art as an arena of inquiry into the human condition is a rich and complex arena. If you can paraphrase art then it's failing. I'm interested in that arena because it can speak to us on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level, all at the same time - that's how it has moved me. That's what made me want to do films about these people, to try to extend what they do into the medium of film.

There is a running theme concerning controversy in art, in the ideas of potential exploitation in representation, that extends in a way to Act of God. Is it a question we can ever really answer?

Representation is a huge question, in documentary film, in photography and in other mediums. If you're not thinking about that all the time then I think you're making a mistake. You have to be aware of that issue all the time. In the case of The True Meaning of Pictures, that film became an argument within that debate, with no conclusion, because I don't think it really is possible to reach definitive conclusions. I just think you have to think about those things all the time.

In the case of Manufactured Landscapes in some ways the meanings of it exposed going into it - the contradictions of his work, the fact that it can hang on the wall of corporate offices and on the wall of the environmentalists'.

We raised the question of "Who's frame" in a more subtle way. As a viewer you are always thinking "am I looking at something that's really happening, am I looking at something that is being framed by the photographer, am I looking at the filmmaker's framing of what the photographer is capturing?" You're meant to be aware of all those layers, without that dominating the subject. In the case of The True Meaning of Pictures, it was deliberate not to come to a conclusion and some people had trouble with that.

I'm sure at Q&As back then you were asked a lot "Well what do you think?"

Yes, and I'd say: " Well what do you think?" It's all being laid out here, and I'm still not sure what I think - and I've been thinking about this for about 10 years now! Meditating on the questions is the way for me to reach some kind of higher, different consciousness. In the case of Manufactured Landscapes, it was very much "what happens when you witness these places you are responsible for but never would normally see.

In Act of God, if you talk about questions of meaning and randomness, some of the vaguest things you can imagine as a subject, but somehow this particular event of a lightning strike catalyzed these questions for people. It became impossible not to ask the questions "why me" or "why not me" and at the same time it was a deliberate attempt to make a film about what is normally treated in the scientific arena.

How did you choose such a subject matter and how did it develop into such a multidimensional exploration of personal experience and possible greater meaning?

There was this question floating for a while, an incredibly broad question, but I think it's something that everybody asks numerous times in their lives. That "why me/why not me" question. But it really all started with two things: this monologue by James O'Reilly who was struck, wrote about it and sort of became a nihilist after it happened because he thought 'there is no meaning to this, I'm not going to look for meaning where there is none'.

On the other end there's Paul Auster. When I told Michael Ondaatje we were going to make this film and that it would open with O'Reilly, he said 'you must talk to Paul Auster because he had this formative experience as a teenager'. And you can look at all his work which is obsessed with questions of meaning and randomness, without ever coming to a conclusion, which I love.

Your partner Nick de Pencier and you have collaborated on your four feature films. How has this creative relationship developed?

On one level it's really hard to work with your partner because you never stop working. But that's also the source of what's really good about collaborating in that there's this constant stream of dialogue, in all contexts. Example we're driving in the car and the kids are asleep in the back and we can talk about what we're doing. What's interesting is that as the years have progressed, we don't need to talk that much; we have a language that has become really pared down in order to convey what we're thinking about. It's great to have all that history behind us. But you know, we also fight a lot too! So there are good and bad things, but I could not imagine not working together.

What's your next subject?

We're about to embark on shooting an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Massey Lecture Payback. We're doing that with the NFB. They're producing, Nick is shooting and I'm directing. So we're not producing this one ourselves which is a new thing for us, but also a relief on one level - you don't have to deal with all of the paperwork. I've never adapted a book before, and for such an icon like Atwood, it's intimidating. I've just finished the treatment and we're on our way.

What's the last good film you saw and would recommend?

Well I was just on the World Documentary jury at Sundance and there were two - the ones we gave the prizes to. The first is Enemies of the People, which is a film about the killing fields in Cambodia. It's a really powerful and disturbing film but the form is so subtle. The other one was The Red Chapel. It's a Danish film about a student exchange with North Korea. It is subversive on so many levels and yet questioning its own subversion at the same time.