Jim LeBrecht on How ‘The Art of Documentary’ Podcast Captures the Medium’s Evolution From Exploitation to Inclusion

In The Art of Documentary, host and Oscar-nominee Jim LeBrecht takes listeners — and potential documentarians — on a journey with six filmmakers, who reveal not just what drew them to the medium but how they’re helping to reshape it.

The executive producer and sound engineer, best known for co-directing the Oscar-nominated disability rights doc Crip Camp with Nicole Newnham, kicks off each of the six episodes of the Film Academy original podcast by asking his guests about the incident that lit their fuse as documentarians. In the conversations that ensue, the filmmakers — Danny Cohen (Anonymous Club), Bing Liu (All These Sons), Chase Joynt and Aisling Chin-Yee (No Ordindary Man), Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson), Garrett Bradley (Time) and Roger Ross Williams (Life, Animated) —unpack how their unique perspectives and identities shape their creative narratives and careers.

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The discussions yield insights into how far documentary has come from its often exploitative cinéma vérité roots. Guests also explore the relative advantages of filmmakers’ being similar to or different from their subject, a question of growing importance in a medium that is becoming more thoughtfully inclusive in how it tells stories.

For LeBrecht, who has spina bifida and has used a wheelchair his entire life, the increasing attention to how filmmakers identities can shape their narratives is reflected in the mere fact that he is hosting the Academy produced podcast. “I’ve always thought that my life as someone with a disability allowed me a different perspective from the norm I could have grown up with,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “That difference is a plus, not a negative. I think this podcast bears this theory out.”

Following the release of the podcast’s final episode in June, THR spoke to LeBrecht about his approach to choosing a diverse slate of established and newer creatives, and how the series reflects the medium’s shift from exploitation to agency and inclusion.

You’ve got a really diverse group of filmmakers as your guests. They range in age, race, gender, but also experience level in the medium. How important was bringing that range of perspective to a discussion about the medium?

Choosing a diverse group of filmmakers was really important; some people who are really well established, some people that are not, but all that have important things to share with us and teach. The diversity and intersectionality was really a top of mind for all of us. The Academy had a couple of folks on their list: Danny Cohen and Chase Joynt and Aisling Chin-Yee. For me, it was Bing Liu who did Minding the Gap and All These Sons. I had worked with Bing on both of those films. The other folks like Kristen Johnson, I met her at the True/False Film Festival just before the pandemic. Garrett Bradley, we were at the Oscars together. And Roger Ross Williams has got this body of work as a leader in documentary and had two films around disability.

Really the through line for all of these people is what is the heart behind them and what motivates them. We often think about certain aspects of making films as being rather craft or technical, but I maintain you’re not divorced from your heart or your emotions or where you get your commitment to do your best work.

This is one of the things that I really love about this, personally. I was born with a disability. I have never been able to walk. Often with panels or in articles, if a person with a disability is speaking, it’s because the topic is around disability. That’s not what happened here. I was asked to do this because of my experience in documentary film, and disability was not the center of the theme of the podcast, yet it informs who I am and informs my perspective. This is the same for anyone else who is conducting an interview or having a conversation. You are not separated from who you are and your lived experience. You can take that perspective and have that be an important part of how you ask questions or what questions you ask. It seems kind of obvious, but this is an evolution about how disabled folks in society and in our industry really need to be looked upon. Yes, we may be advocating for access or authentic casting, but we also have our expertise in the areas that we work in and don’t let that be overshadowed by anything else.

When you listen to these conversations, that connection becomes clear, especially in how the film is crafted. For example, Williams discusses his effort to give the audience a semblance of what it might be like to navigate the world aurally and visually as someone with autism. Were you hoping to unpack that kind of filming approach — and the identities of the creative team — can shape of film or help a director shape viewers’ understanding beyond literal subject matter?

I don’t think that was the primary intent, and yet, this is what was revealed. I did want to know who’s your composer and what it was like working with them. Why did you choose that? Why do you work with the same editor each time? Or what do you choose? So I did explore their working relationships because everybody works with people in a different way. When Bing and I were talking, I knew how hard Diane Quon, his producer, worked, so I thought it was an important insight for the audience. I was at Sundance in 2018 when Minding the Gap was there. I’m at a luncheon and Diane is running around trying to close a deal at the last minute. My point is that we get a sense of what a cinematographer does or what an editor does, but I wanted to dig in a little bit to these other positions.

Someone might say, “I’m not really interested in editing, or directing, but I like being part of a team, and I’m really well organized. I didn’t know what a producer did. I might be really good at that.” It’s another positive to why I think this podcast is valuable. But there’s also commonality in film, even though every film is different. Take sound, for instance: I approach a documentary knowing first off that the microphones that are used are usually trying to pick up people’s voices. They’re not there to pick up the ambience of the cityscape that’s behind them. But to completely tell this story, we add in elements to fill in the total picture or environment or experience, and it’s not cheating. When you make a film, you’re editing — you’re editing things out, you’re deciding what story is going to happen where. As long as I’m not putting dinosaurs in downtown Manhattan, which I might want to do someday — you’re being true.

As a sound designer, if I want to say “a dangerous neighborhood,” I don’t want to rely on distance sirens. I want to come up with other ways to say that this is an oppressive location. So you might hear the sound of a garbage truck picking up their load and other loud sounds. It’s a little bit unsettling. In other words, there are ways to really kind of fill in that place. You’re driven by trying not to lean on the same old things all the time. I’m executive producing a couple of different documentaries, and we’re going to be hiring an editor. The subject covers childhood sexual abuse of a woman who’s Black. I really think no one would disagree that when we find this editor, we want it to be someone who’s a woman and/or a person of color. Because they will draw upon their experiences in their life to make certain decisions around the edit. What’s true? What’s not true?

Did you want people to walk away from these conversations with a better sense of how to approach and work with subjects of their docs?

Yes. When we’re fortunate enough to go to festivals with our films, and we’re hanging out afterward over dinner or at a bar, conversations can get into things we talked about [on the podcast]. This is peer to peer. So although I would say that our intent initially was to raise more interest in doing this, what you’re talking about is absolutely true. It’s, “I do the same thing,” and that really reinforces one’s ethics or process. Or “I hadn’t thought about this or that.” There’s been discussions in documentary film for the last number of years about who can tell the story, or whether you’re taking advantage of your subjects. Are you looking out for them? Or are you being mercenary about things?

That’s not the majority of the filmmakers or the films, but what I have learned is that there’s something about the word agency that’s really, really important. You don’t simply come in as an observer and not allow the subject to have a really strong voice. I maintain that if you’re working with a team of people, and you are sensitive to the fact that you are coming in to a world that you don’t know firsthand, you need to have a lot of respect for the people you’re working with, or you’re talking to, and have a great sensitivity about what you don’t know. One of my many mantras is ignorance is dangerous.

In making the Crip Camp documentary with Nicole, and our editors and such, Nicole was not part of the disabled community. But her vantage point and the vantage point of other people who are not from the community on making this film was just as important as mine and the disabled people in it because our audience is predominantly made up of people without disabilities. We developed a collaboration that was really just incredible, in that we both respected each other and trusted each other. All of us learn from each other, but again, it comes back to that word I’m stuck on, which is agency.

The podcast also touches on how the creative choices in the medium are expanding. Things like animation are being considered in ways they weren’t before. What did you want to identify for your audiences along the way about what is creatively possible in the medium?

Traditionally, it was like, you got to be this fly on the wall. This vérité thing. “Don’t ever bring the filmmaker into it. That’s horrible.” Every art form evolves, and there are tools that become more accessible to people. We have to be open to this. There are discussions in places like the different academies, the documentary branch: Is there a percentage of animation where it stops being a documentary? What about recreations? Yet I’ve never been one for ham-fisted rules about things. What is the core of documentary? Well it’s truth. I’ve seen films that are exclusively animation. We know about Flee and a short called The Last Day of Freedom, where you’re talking about this gentleman who turned his brother in for a murder and he was assured he wouldn’t get the death penalty, and he did. His interview was so intense, they thought that animation would soften that just to make it easier to experience what he was saying.

We have to be accepting of the fact that there are many ways to tell a story, and as long as you’re not being disingenuous, you should let people explore their voice and pull us along further. I think a lot of us believe that the creative process is greater when you have limitations because it forces you, but on the other hand, is that limitation appropriate or valid? And why not? Why not consider changing what the proposed guard rails are of any genre that you’re doing. I say go for it. You’re going to bring us something we haven’t had before.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

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