JOAN CHURCHILL WITH THE AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING!

Friday October 18th, 2013

Making documentary films requires a sense of humbleness in using different means to tell a given story - not to distort it, not to misrepresent it, and to make it powerful enough. It also requires a sense of responsibility, both in relation to the future audiences that will assess and judge the real people, events and other aspects solely by what they see in the film, and to the people in front of the camera, who share their, often intimate, stories. In short, it requires believing in a sort of ethos, a certain way of thinking and doing which defines great documentary filmmakers and distinguishes them from those who just try to use the medium to capitalize on some kind of truth-forging. Joan Churchill, American director and cinematographer, the author of Juvenile Liaison, Soldier Girls and Aileen: Life & Death of a Serial Killer, among many others, has all the required traits of a great documentary filmmaker, and for over forty years has been one of the pillars of their community.

It gives us a great honor to announce that Joan Churchill will receive the Award for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking during the 21st edition of the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography CAMERIMAGE. What is more, she will be the first woman in the Festival's history to receive this honor.

Joan Churchill, photo by Alan Barker
Whether she acts as a documentary director or a cinematographer, Joan Churchill's main interest is people and their unique, often perplexing and poignant stories. As a documentary filmmaker she always wants to become a part of their lives; to meet them, understand them, to be remembered for who she is, instead of being forgotten for standing anonymously behind the camera and vanishing into thin air after the job gets done. She has said in many interviews that a documentary filmmaker has to be genuinely interested in people and the human condition because without being able to establish a true connection with them, their stories will not be powerful enough. Having that attitude throughout the years, Churchill has never presented her subjects as evil characters in her films - she sees people as who they are, complex, flawed human beings that at least try to make good choices. In Tattoed Tears, which she co-directed with her long-term collaborator Nick Broomfield, she depicted the idea of prison in such a way that she emphasized the dehumanization that reaches both prisoners and guards. In One Generation More she focused on an Estonian family looking for their Jewish roots, at the same time taking a closer look at the communist Eastern Bloc. And in the TLC-ordered Residents series she went with a camera to the UCLA hospital and for a whole year followed the people who live and work there.

Still from "Soldier Girls"

Still from "Jimi Plays at Berkeley"
From the very beginning of her career, when, during her studies, she discovered a soft spot for movies, and then started gaining experience with the Maysles brothers (Gimme Shelter) and Haskell Wexler and Barbara Kopple (No Nukes), she took the way of cinema vérité - uncovering the truth about things under the different layers of reality. She did not have an easy start, as the end of 1960s did not see many women cinematographers working in the industry. That is why she tried her luck as an editor. It is impressive, then, to consider that her breakthrough film was a feature, Peter Watkins'Punishment Park, on which she worked as a cinematographer. Shot in vérité style, it stirred many controversies, mostly because the viewers did not realize that the conflict between the soldiers and the hippies it depicts was staged. Churchill then got the opportunity to shoot the An American Family series for PBS, and later on moved to Great Britain where she began her directing career. Since then, she has worked on over 50 documentary and fiction projects, showing both the artistic versatility and emotional maturity that allowed her to present the chosen topics in an intriguing manner. Throughout the years and subsequent technological changes, her style evolved to what she calls "experiential", meaning being even more present as a participant, mainly due to the size and quality of new cameras with flip-out screens. Her reputation grew and finally she became the first pure documentary filmmaker accepted as a member of the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers.

Still from "Punishment Park"

Still from "Aileen: Life & Death of a Serial Killer"
Joan Churchill treats filmmaking as a constant journey to the places which she would not be able to see otherwise - prisons, rehab centres, boot camps for women. She had the opportunity to discover the other side of police work, experienced different aspects of hospital life, travelled to Iraq, considered the alternative sides of Great Britain and the United States, fought for causes she believed in, and shed different kinds of light on different kinds of famous people. She never wanted a career in fiction, documentary filmmaking has always been her true calling. In each new film she finds something that fascinates and motivates her, she also tries to project her passion onto young people. Most of all, she believes in the great future of documentary filmmaking. It is a great honor for us that we will be able to present Joan Churchill with the Award for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking, and to give Camerimage participants the opportunity to meet with such a wonderful artist both after the screenings of some of her films and during the workshop Experiential Cinema.

SELECTED DIRECTING CREDITS: