Breaking the Booth

Documentary is public work. It is not finished when it is screened at a festival. It is finished when the people it concerns have sat in a room with it and decided what to do next.

The public has a right to its own history. Not the institutional version of it. The version that lives in the records, rooms, and bodies of the communities the history belongs to. The community screening is not a courtesy added at the end of production. It is the primary exhibition. Every other venue is secondary.

I work inside courts, archives, and universities because that is where a country rehearses its self-image. What looks like policy is usually a decision about who matters. The films try to slow those moments down until they become visible.

—JD