Cinema vérité documentaries: Letting go

All I want to be is a full-time documentary filmmaker. And so I am. By day, I make films for Colorado State University. In my free time, I work on projects that I hope will cast a bright light into the world. Les is More is a project six years in the making and has finally settled into the editing stage. Les, the subject of my film, has become one of my best friends.

I practice something called cinema vérité, or truth cinema. It is a way of being and looking at the world with a camera. Without interrupting or trying to make anything different or better, I observe and participate in the moment. I have been filming with Les Sundae for six years.

I've seen the most perfect films never made.

I saw them with my bare eyes and heard them with my own ears. No camera, but just a deep connection with the world in front of me.

〝I'm nothing to be fixed anymore." Les Sunde

Nothing to be fixed anymore was the first scene I edited. I broke the window Les is replacing in the image above. Packing up from a day's shoot, I overloaded my arms with gear, and the tripod, slung over my shoulder, shattered the window in his art house. On my next visit, Les was prepping to replace the window. I hesitated to film him doing such a mundane thing, especially after seeing his building genius. He built a robot family. A machine that collects laughter. A floor of ball bearings and pressure gauges. A piano that rises from the floor. And my favorite, a merry-go-round on the roof of the arthouse. But seeing him through the broken glass made me think about all the hurt he had endured in his lifetime. Les seems to hold a certain sadness just below the surface and this felt like a healing moment.

He was so precise and careful choosing the right piece of glass, preparing the space for it, and exacting the cut. Like everything else in his world, it was a custom job, a single pane of perfection, and I got to watch.