Director: Tell cultural stories

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Documentaries have evolved from cinematic castor oil into a potent storytelling platform, according to the 2017 Port Townsend Film Festival’s (PTFF) special guest.

“When I started, documentaries were admired in the same way people feel about a school trip to a museum: that it’s good for them but they aren’t necessarily looking forward to it,” said director Morgan Neville of his 20-year career of making documentaries. “Today, a lot of exciting filmmaking is happening in documentaries that is pushing boundaries a lot more than on the narrative side,” he said.

Neville won a 2014 Best Documentary Academy Award for “20 Feet from Stardom,” a profile of female backup vocalists in the rock era. He followed that with “The Music of Strangers,” which follows the journey of a multicultural, multi-instrumental troupe led by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

MUSIC FILM, GORE VIDAL 

Aside from the two films, both to be featured at PTFF, Neville’s recent output includes “Under the Influence,” a documentary about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, produced for Netflix; “Troubadours,” a singer-songwriter profile; and “The Best of Enemies,” about the political debates between authors William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal – the only one of his past five films without a musical theme.

“The great thing about making a film about music is that it can be any kind of film that you want it to be,” Neville said. “It can be about cultural politics, like ‘Music of Strangers,’ or it can be about how we value craftsmen and artists, like in ‘20 Feet from Stardom.’ Music film is an umbrella title that doesn’t do justice to how many places you can take yourself.”

With Richards, Neville avoided “the same stories Keith has told forever” to focus on his personality and show what it would be like to spend time with the rock veteran talking about art and life. 

“I’m interested in people who are incredibly passionate about what they do. When you engage with the musicians like Yo-Yo Ma and Keith Richards, you find they are brilliant people, where there is an element of childlike curiosity and innocence. When someone is really brilliant, they feel they don’t know it all.”

Neville works on several projects simultaneously as ideas come to fruition at different rates. He was working on “The Music of Strangers” and “Under the Influence” at the same time, and both were released in 2015.

“‘The Music of Strangers’ was a very complicated film with a lot of moving parts, which used characters filmed over many years and many continents,” he said. “So, it felt like writing a novel; it required that level of effort.”

“Under the Influence,” which took a few months to complete, was more like a sketch, he said, while “20 Feet from Stardom” was “a massive exercise in reportage.”

“There were a lot of singers I spent a lot of time with who aren’t in the film,” he said. “It was the same with ‘Music of Strangers.’ It’s not that they didn’t have good stories. If you are making a tapestry piece, like ‘20 Feet’ or ‘Music of Strangers,’ the characters have to interrelate with each other in terms of what their journeys are.

“You have to be pretty ruthless about cutting; there may be stuff that you love that doesn’t fit. Once you start, you are not making the film you set out to make, but the best film you can make with the material you have.”

As always, Neville has a few projects in the works, but only two he can talk about:

“The first is about Orson Welles and his movie ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ … he spent six years at the end of his life making a movie about a director at the end of his life.” Neville includes raw footage from the film in his documentary, which is titled “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.”

The second project is a documentary about Mister Rogers.

“These two films are vastly different from each other, reflecting different parts of culture,” Neville said. “Culture is what I am most passionate about.”