Insights from sharing

I'm quite overwhelmed by the response to posting the doco up on Vimeo. I'm receiving lots of very positive feedback from people I've only met once or twice or in most cases, never met. Many of these are people who used to live in the Brotherhood community. The comments are coming in email, on the Vimeo posting and through Facebook and all seem to have connected with the 'honesty' of the section in the doco about the Brotherhood. One comment even draws a comparison between my production and the ABC's Compass production, which wasn't received favourably by some ex-Brotherhood communards.

This feedback got me thinking about 'honesty' in documentary. A documentary can only be as honest as the perspective or framework that it is produced from/within. So, what I mean by that is the ABC is bound within a framework of the institution of broadcast media. They have so many layers of bureaucracy, they need to think about their audience etc etc. So that framework creates a whole different perspective through which their doco was produced compared to mine, which was produced within a research project. I didn't have the constraints or concerns that the ABC might have about the end product, so my perspective was able to, perhaps be more free and open ... which I guess looks like honesty?