Name: Navajo Talking Picture
Genre: Documentary, Short
Duration: 40 min
Rating: 5.7
Cast: Arlene Bowman

A Horrible Attempt at Documentary Filmmaking

I had the misfortune of seeing Navajo Talking Picture in a documentary film class, and was apalled at how poorly made this film was.  It starts out as a Navajo filmmaker's attempt to document the life of her grandmother, a traditional Navajo, who speaks no English and has maintained her culture, avoiding the ways of white people.  But it turns into a wretched mess when the grandmother refuses to cooperate and is unwilling to be on camera. The film then becomes a documentary about Arlene Bowman (the filmmaker and protagonist) attempting to make a documentary about her grandmother. All the dialogue is obviously post-dubbed, out of sync and spoken in emotionless monotone, and the English voice-over translations are all done by the same person with no distinction between different characters.  This clumsy audio work leaves the film with a highly phony feel, as if the "actors" are so aware of the camera that they are unable to act naturally, and are therefore subconciously performing for the camera. Bowman faces a number of problems throughout the film, and goes about solving them in long, boring scenes that seem to have been written in in order to move the story forward.  In the final climactic scene, the grandmother agrees to be photographed, and "our hero" gets to make her film.

It all feels scripted, but the only reason that I feel that it must be real is that nobody in their right mind would go through all the trouble to stage such a boring, pointless, awful excuse for a story.

If you ever run across this film in a video store, spare others the boredom of sitting through it by placing the tape behind a row of videos where it will never be found.

The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

The short form refers to creative works characterized by their brevity and concise storytelling. Unlike full-length feature films, short films have a running time of less than 45 minutes, while TV shorts have a running time of less than 22 minutes.

Benedict Cumberbatch in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)

An assimilated Navajo filmmaker attempts to rediscover her own cultural heritage by filming the traditional lifestyle of her grandmother.

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Navajo Talking Picture

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