What is the role of the “mise en scène” in the documentary?
A new documentary style seems to appear. It is characterized by the reconstruction of real-life situations in a directed setting. This is a trend that can be found in The Filmmaker’s House and that seems to be more and more common today.
We took the time to talk with the director Marc Isaacs, from London, about this particularly intriguing and interesting documentary.
Synopsis
When Marc Isaacs gets a call from his producer inviting him to make a film in which “sex, crime and celebrity will be the major themes, as this is a profitable niche”, he decides, as a contradiction, to turn his house into a film location where the people around him will become the real stars of everyday life. In this Spanish hostel-like film, flirting between fiction and documentary, his cleaning lady, his Pakistani neighbour, the workers in his garden and a homeless man meet. Through this human and cosmopolitan melting pot, the director invites us to revisit our conceptions of hospitality and to question the social and personal limits that open up or, on the contrary, limit our relationship to otherness.This master class with Marc Isaacs is presented and moderated by Olivier Magis, filmmaker. It is available below.