Against the Grain   THE DOCUMENTARY SENSIBILITY OF SUE BROOKS’ FICTION FILMMAKING

It might seem odd to reflect that, when I first embarked on making documentaries, I learned more about that art from a writer and director of fiction than from anyone in the documentary business. Inverting the more typical relationship between narrative and documentary conventions, Sue Brooks’ fiction filmmaking seems, to me, to be largely informed by a documentary sensibility. This marks her work as special in the Australian screen industries (and as uniquely Australian, too, I will argue), with her most recent feature, Looking for Grace (2015), embodying a fascinating case study.

The late Dai Vaughan, a master of documentary editing, said that the difference between film and reality is that ‘film is about something, whereas reality is not’. This describes the nub of the dilemma inherent in storytelling. Essentially, we tell stories – filmic or otherwise – in an attempt to make sense of the world, while the world itself is not bound by any such imperative or logic. Another way of approaching this paradox is via the truism that ‘truth is stranger than fiction’, which is actually the reason I stick to making documentaries. For fiction writing is bound by the imagination of authors, and what they can convince us of, whereas reality has no such bounds. If something happens in the world, however unlikely or serendipitous, it cannot be denied.