Non-Fiction Poems: Freeing Docs

Writer, director, DoP and editor in turn, Victor Kossakovsky’s credit listings betray the particular brand of artistic absolutism with which he creates. Stages of the filmmaking process stitch together to ensure that what is shown bears the imprint of a singular entity, even when images move from warm waters to ice or from pigs to hens. Driven by a liberating perception of documentary as the nucleus of all cinema (think of the train pulling into the station or the workers leaving a factory), Kossakovsky discusses his approach to researching, financing and filming Aquarela (2019) and Gunda (Encounters 2020) and the highly subjective quality that inhabits his non-fiction poems.