Barking Film Series!

Filming the Divide - Q & A with Tony Johnson

First up in our ongoing series on the directors and films loved by (A dog barks) is Tony Johnson, who talks about his film “A Garganta do Diabo” shot at the Iquaca Falls in Brazil. By observing the tourist site in operation around the Falls, his film gently criticizes and commiserates with the tourists over the state of modern site-seeing. By integrating staged and documentary footage, “A Garganta do Diabio” calls into question the notion that reality can be faithfully and objectively represented through film and photography.

A Garganta do Diabo
Dir. Tony Johnson 2007

!!Q & A - ING IT!!

Laura: Could you talk about the extent to which the action in “A Garganta do Diabo” was staged? How does this change the documentary feel of the film?

Tony: The bus load of tourists milling around Iguaçu falls, the waterfalls and the kitsch shopping experience was all unstaged and shot on location. That’s not to say I was just a passive recorder of what I found there. I scripted the film beforehand and then basically clambered around the Falls with a shot list, trying to find those shots that I believed served the story. So, the location shoot became for me a game of manipulating reality to fit the script. I got pretty much everything I needed in two days before my camera equipment broke down due to the intense heat and moisture.

The parts with Marco as our tour guide are completely staged and scripted. We shot this part on a friend’s driveway in the suburbs of Sao Paulo. The story he tells is a combination of different versions of the Iguaçu creation legend that I adapted to fit the intention of the film. Even though the viewer may or may not be aware of his performance being staged, I wanted to leave in clues like the shot of Marco dancing between takes.

What I find interesting is in a work of fiction an audience accepts everything is staged and suspends their disbelief. In documentary an audience is willing to take everything at face value and believe it is somehow objective and represents the truth of a situation, but film by its nature is a manipulative medium and highly subjective depending on who is directing the camera, cutting in the editing room or designing the sound.

I wanted to subtly remind an audience of the artificiality of documentary by doing things such as arriving at Iguaçu falls via the stereoscopic viewmaster, ramping up the colours and replacing in post-production all the original sound apart from Marco’s scripted monologue.

Laura: Why did you choose this tourist attraction, of all the other tourist attractions in the world?

Tony: Iguaçu falls wasn’t necessarily chosen. The situation at Iguaçu falls is not unique and I aimed to present Iguaçu as an example of the ravenous tourist activity that takes place all over the planet. When travelling abroad I always look for a story to tell. I was visiting my partner’s family in Brazil and saw the falls as a opportunity to explore the dichotomy of the place. As a natural wonder it is a spectacularly beautiful place, but the way it has been packaged, marketed and consumed by the tourist industry is incredibly ugly and has had a sad impact on the environment there. Iguaçu falls is clearly a victim of its own beauty.

Laura: Is there any alternative way to explore a tourist destination?

Tony: I’m not sure their are many alternatives anymore. These places have already been bought up, commercialised and lost what once made them unique. Opportunities for true adventure and discovery are rare. I suppose the only hope is to throw away the guide books, strap on your walking boots and get lost.