By Adam Goetz
After filming for almost three years in India, director/producer Jonathan Bland has returned to his hometown to showcase his newest film. Outcaste takes an anthropological approach to document the life of a Mauni Baba (silent monk). Bland discovered him while doing some research for another documentary that he is currently editing.
"I wanted to capture a lifestyle that is so completely different than what we know in our Westernized society," Bland explains.
While in India, Bland photographed the man by himself over the course of a year.
"It was really hard filming in India, there were crowds of people around all of the time trying to see what I was doing," he says with frustration in his voice. "The people of India didn’t understand that I was filming them. They would pose for the camera as if it was a picture camera and wait for the click."
Filming for two to three days at a time in the packed streets, he frequently ran into problems.
"At first I would stop filming anytime someone would ruin the shot, but I found that you just have to let the camera keep filming. There were so many times that interesting things started to happen just as I was about to hit the stop button."
The film itself lacks the traditional voiceover narration that most documentaries have. "The word documentary is strange because the movies very rarely depict actual truth. As soon as you start to edit it you are manipulating what you present to the audience," he says of the genre. "People bring their own experience to the theatre with them. I think that people don’t need to be spoon fed information all the time. I let them make their own conclusions from the actual sights and sounds that are on the screen."
Bland’s honest filming style and the fact that he was unable to communicate with his subject both make this film powerful and true to life.
Outcaste plays Oct. 6 at 5:00 p.m. at CSIF(Currie Barracks).