American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 28

Subjective Nonfiction
By Douglas Bankston

Filmmaker Robert Greene has
repeatedly turned his camera on people
close to him - on his high-school-aged
sister for the acclaimed Kati With an I and
on his smalltime pro-wrestler cousin for
Fake It So Real. For his latest project, the
feature documentary Actress, Greene
found his subject literally next door. His
neighbor is Brandy Burre, who played
Theresa D'Agostino on the hit HBO series
The Wire. Since her work on that series,
Burre has been playing wife and mother in
the suburbs, but recently the desire to act
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October 2014

resurfaced. As Greene chronicled her comeback attempts, he bore witness to Burre's
mounting identity crisis and crumbling relationship with her husband, Tim. AC caught
up with Greene to discuss Actress and his
overall approach to documentary filmmaking, which goes well beyond the observation and presentation of facts. (Cinematographer Sean Price Williams, who helped
Greene with one day of shooting, also
answered a few questions via email.)
American Cinematographer:
What drew you to Brandy Burre as the
subject for a documentary?
Robert Greene: I knew she had
acted, but it wasn't until I watched and fell
American Cinematographer

in love with The Wire that I thought about
working with her, because we only knew
each other through our kids, who are the
same age. The initial thrust of the movie
was about her getting back into acting, but
I was probably detecting other things that
were going on.
The way I usually approach documentaries is to think of them as exploratory
missions while at the same time remaining
conscious of structure and storytelling. The
story [in Actress] is the life of an actor who
left TV to be a mom, and what it means to
be an aging actor [as] wife and mother and
not being creatively satisfied. The formal
interest is what happens when you put a
camera on an actor for a documentary,
because she's going to be acting even if
she's being completely sincere. I'm interested in the boundary between acting and
being yourself in a documentary, because I
think it's an amorphous, moveable line
between the two. We went into this knowing we may be fabricating or creating
things. There were times I had her give
speeches and add monologue elements to
her daily life. But the reality of the situation
took over, like in any good documentary.
Some documentary films 'shape'
the realities they cover, and you've
coined a label for this.
Greene: I use the term 'cinematic
nonfiction.' That term is a little cardboard-y,
but what I'm basically saying is there is
nonfiction, which is observing and captur-

Actress images courtesy of the filmmakers.

Top: Brandy Burre
stars in the
feature
documentary
Actress, the latest
work of
"cinematic
nonfiction" from
filmmaker Robert
Greene. Bottom:
Cinematographer
Sean Price
Williams (left)
shoots a
re-enactment
with Burre.

American Cinematographer - October 2014

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