When international documentary maker, Michael Rabiger, reflected on the films he had made for the BBC, he realised there were common themes related to his own life experiences. And this was his main message to students and lecturers during his visit to Rhodes University this week – how to use life-changing experiences to lead you in a certain direction.
When international documentary maker, Michael Rabiger, reflected on the films he had made for the BBC, he realised there were common themes related to his own life experiences. And this was his main message to students and lecturers during his visit to Rhodes University this week – how to use life-changing experiences to lead you in a certain direction.
“Everyone is marked by certain experiences and you’ll keep discovering what those marks are. But they indicate quite clearly what work a person should do,” he said.
Rabiger, a British-born American citizen, arrived in South Africa on Sunday, and is at Rhodes University to give a series of workshops to TV students and documentary makers. On Wednesday night, in an open lecture entitled ‘Authorship, creativity and identity in the crafting of documentary stories’, Rabiger stressed the importance of discovering one’s inherent artistic identity.
Rabiger is renowned for his book, Directing the Documentary, now in its fifth edition and translated into 10 languages. It’s referred to as the Bible among documentary film makers, and Rhodes TV and mobile communications lecturer, Alette Schoon, was inspired by it as a young film-maker.
“I found it really empowering,” she said.
Rabiger described how he had left school when he was 16 and joined a big film studio as an apprentice – even though that mostly involved carrying cups of coffee.
“The apprentice part was simply that you were allowed to be there and if you could learn from watching, you learnt,” he said with a timid chuckle. Through a series of lucky breaks, he started editing and then he became a director. Rabiger made 21 films for the BBC, before he moved to the United States, where he started teaching, studying and writing.
He also opened the Documentary Centre at Columbia University.
He said, “We had to invent a way of educating people and it turned out to be exactly the way that I would like to have learnt myself. Practise came first, theory came later: Exactly the opposite from the traditional way of educating people.”
His job is to help his students tap their experiences, and allow them to use their temperaments to mediate what paths they follow and the types of documentary they create.
Rabiger is very aware of the complex situation in which South African film-makers find themselves. His message to them is, “Keep the faith. You are as valuable as anybody in the country. You have a potential to change hearts and minds. You can’t do it with techniques; you can only do it with self-knowledge and painful confrontation of yourself.”
