Directed by Anna Broinowski. Only time will tell. Out of our 2 selected options, the first location (at Building 10) was occupied while the second location (outdoor) was heavily sound-polluted. An unusual and rather brash technique of Broinowski’s is showing her interview material to the other parties. The clip in Anna Broinowski’s 2007 film ‘Forbidden Lies’, shared by Paul, is an interesting example of making use of sound intelligently in films. I have found that the first-handed experiences in media production through the small exercises (Lenny, Abstract, Mini-doc) have been crucially ‘enlightening’ for me.
The next part of the scene is mainly about Bob Dylan’s hometown back in the day. The choice of using Norma’s record for the factually false information in the book, instead of using Rana’s in the instances where Rana is investigating the locations, was in my opinion, a mockery intent at Norma’s phony fictitious creation, as it is quickly followed by the journalist exposing her untruthfulness. Situating the melodramatic vignettes within the realm of parody (even if the move is missed by some viewers), the authors argue convincingly that parody itself is the film’s Swiss army knife.
Location scouting was the first pre-production step that we made at the very beginning of the mini-documentary project. When I started editing the mini-documentary, I decided to only cut my version of the interview (rather than all 4), as I felt it’d be more personal for each one of us individually. Spinning murder, politics, greed and literary scandal into a web that ensnares us all, FORBIDDEN LIE$ is a real-life thriller about a brilliant con/artist, the people she’s duped, and why, despite everything, we still want to believe her. All the music and sound effects are jarringly shut off when the journalist viciously interrupts the scene, unmasking the deceitful nature of the whole scene. Readers who may not be familiar with the film are quickly immersed in its text, subtext, and paratext.
In a particularly strong moment in the book, Bruce and Cammaer contend that the film, through parody, performs a double act of engagement and distance: the viewer is confronted with the “rules” of lesbian pulp fiction (arguably extendable to portrayals of lesbians in popular media more generally) as they are simultaneously upheld and cheekily undermined. Such is the topic of Anna Broinowski’s documentary, Forbidden Lies, which digs deep to try to get into the psyche of author Norma Khouri. It has helped me gaining confidence in operating a media project through all the stages of production, which I haven’t had before. In the lecture, Forbidden Lies documentary made me realise the power of the narrative element being set up to show the real past experiences.