Makavejev’s Neo-Documentarism

Abstract

The depiction of political movements or politicized groups through cinema too often emphasizes their material demands and current social reality, neglecting the subconscious, internal desires of the group. To outline the effectiveness of “neo-documentary” films in portraying collective struggle, this essay will examine Dušan Makavejev’sWR: Mysteries of the Organism(1971) which focuses on Wilhelm Reich and the loose movement for sexual liberation inspired by his ideas. This movement had collective subconscious desires and motivations which manifest themselves externally through lifestyle choices, artistic or political actions. The members of the movement also had internal realities, repression, and trauma for example, that they wished to avoid or fight against. For a holistic cinematic representation, both the internal and external realities must be represented, and ultimately synthesized. Matsumoto Toshio’s “neo-documentary” theory solves this problem. “Neo-documentary” is a spiritual successor to surrealism, but with an expanded notion of the internal-external synthesis that the surrealists outlined. Using surrealist techniques to depict internal realities, and documentary form to depict external realities, Matsumoto described a new kind of cinema which would encompass both worlds, destabilizing the boundary between the two.