SAMUEL RAFUSE

Two students have each produced unique documentaries as part of an interdisciplinary studies class at on campus. Although vastly different, their works both centre around different topics involving the University of Saskatchewan.

The class is called Creating for the 21st Century, taught by Sandhya Padmanabh and Larry Bauman, instructors in the department of drama. For Kari Duerksen, one of the documentary makers, it has been an interesting experience.

“I remember presenting the documentary to our professors and thinking ‘There’s no way they’re going to let me do this,’” Duerksen, a fourth-year psychology major, said in an email to the Sheaf. Her final project is titled Not About Us, a documentary on sexual assault.

Not About Us is a gripping, intimate look into the stories of four students at the U of S who survived sexual violence and have now come forward with their stories, some for the first time.

“I had never done anything like this before. I had no idea how to use a camera, edit, anything like that,” Duerksen said.

She explained how the class taught her everything from the ground up about producing a documentary, before giving her and three classmates the freedom to create a project they were passionate about.

The inspiration for Duerksen’s topic came from articles about Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia University student who carried a mattress around campus for a year to protest the school’s decision to not punish the man who had sexually assaulted her.

“I read the comments on these articles and I would see so much hostility directed towards Emma … I was horrified,” Duerksen said.

Not About Us uses a striking stylistic choice to capture the distance sexual violence creates and the intimacy that is needed to talk about it. Subjects are framed in a typical interview fashion, sitting to one side of the frame, but instead of talking to an offscreen interviewer, they address the camera directly. The effect is one of isolation for the subjects but simultaneously forces viewers to engage with the speaker.

“To me, sexual assault seems like a very clear-cut issue on which people shouldn’t be divided, and yet there still seems to be this debate going on about it,” Duerksen said.

This divide is exemplified in the documentary as the subjects speak out about how scared they were to come forward about something that wasn’t their fault, but that they felt they had somehow brought upon themselves.

“My hope is that people who have experienced assault who feel alone or are questioning whether it was their fault will feel a little bit of relief in seeing that others have these same struggles and that they can be overcome,” Duerksen said.

Kaley Evans, Duerksen’s classmate and a fourth year English major, produced his own film in this class. Being There is a documentary about Wayne Turner, a janitor on campus.

“I actually wasn’t planning on directing until I met [Turner] and immediately knew he was the perfect subject in the perfect setting,” Evans said, in an email to the Sheaf.

Evans’ documentary follows Turner through his daily activities cleaning the campus, but the focal point is Turner’s search to find meaning in his job. Being There is a character study about a man who lives his life out of the spotlight.

The film is a fascinating dialogue between Turner and the audience, with Turner ruminating on how we always think we have more time to take advantage of opportunities, until one day we wake up and realize those times are gone and all we can do is move forward.

What seems like a mundane topic becomes, in Evans’ hands and with Turner as a subject, an intellectual engagement with our own humanity. Evans is able to uncover the gems Turner has to offer without resorting to critical commentary, and he’s happy with the result.

“I’ve never spent so much time working on something and I’m incredibly proud of the end result. It has certainly reaffirmed my commitment to harnessing my disparate skills and abilities and working on creative things,” Evans said.

Duerksen agrees, and praises the class for allowing this work.

“[The class] is not for the faint of heart, and it will likely be the hardest you work on anything in your undergraduate career, but it’s the most rewarding as well,” Duerksen said. “Every day was a mix of fear and excitement and doubt and stress and joy and a whole lot of learning and adapting. It was the best.”

See these films and others from the class on Apr. 6 at the Broadway Theatre.

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Photo: Supplied / Kari Duerksen