smartphones in documentary filmmaking: An interview with elke sasse

14 Dec

Elke Sasse is a filmmaker whose titles include “The Corona Chronicles”, “The War On My Phone”, and “#MyEscape” - all three documentaries focus on footage shot by real people, taken on their mobile phones.

Hi Elke, thanks for agreeing to this interview!

Why is it important to be able to use mobile phones in your filmmaking?

Using mobile phone material for me is a way to document realities I wouldn’t be able to document otherwise and to use videos filmed in a very personal perspective. As a filmmaker I will always try to get close to the realities of the people I portray but there are limits. It is not the same if people film their perspective themselves.

Do you think that the growing technological advances of mobile filming have made a difference to whose stories are told by documentary films, and how those stories are told? If so - are there spaces for these stories to reach an audiences?

Cameras of mobile phones are getting better every day. The quality is good enough to be screened on tv, in the internet and even on big screens in cinemas. There are millions of new “filmmakers”, you could say it’s some kind of democratisation. Social media documents every single moment worldwide, even wars. On the other hand there is no more filter, no more professional questions and a big danger for fake news or using video for whatever interests.

So, yes, it is a chance, but as a filmmaker you have to work carefully with this technology and material.

And of course mobile phones are no professional film cameras.

And people using it are usually no camera or film professionals.

But the technology offers the chance to document realities that were not possible to document before, in a very intimate and personal perspective.

If you want these videos to become a film, there is of course some more work…

Could you talk me through how you go about producing a film which features mobile phone footage from subjects who you might not be near to? What does the process look like? How long does it take? What are the challenges?

The process is different depending on the subject:

For “#MyEscape” we worked with videos already finished: Refugees had documented their escape routes from Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea to Europe with their mobile phones. We met the people who were in the film, choose together with them the material and did in depth interviews.

Also the videos for “The War on my Phone” were finished without our intervention.

For “Corona Diaries” it was another situation: At the peak of the pandemic, when no traveling was possible, we used mobile phones to document the everyday lives of people in 10 different places around the world. This time we worked with the protagonists who then became “filmmakers”: We were in permanent contact with them for weeks, made calls to ask questions and to get an idea about their situation. Then we asked them to document their situation. We searched together with them for images that could tell their situation, their feelings and thoughts. Sometimes we used the help of other people around.

What advice would you give to filmmakers who are interested in making documentaries using mobile phones, rather than more traditional means?

I would only use mobile phones if there is a reason. If you can’t use professional equipment – because it is a place where professionals can’t go, because you want a very personal perspective, if you have a reason to choose this kind of aesthetics, and so on.

I think it is important to keep the responsibility: Don’t ask people to document dangerous situations you don’t want to document yourself for example. And also keep in mind that using mobile phone material is working with a very personal perspective.