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 Amie
Williams shoots to kill with her documentaries
March 14, 2001
If
you think documentary filmmakers are grizzly old men in safari suits,
then it's time you met spunky Amie Williams.
By
Angelene Wong
(Click
on pictures for larger image)
·
Life in the fast lane
· Never know what you're gonna get
· Tips from Amie
Documentary filmmaking - It's Zen meets Indiana Jones.
 Just
ask award-winning American documentary filmmaker Amie Williams.
She's been through near plane crashes, food poisoning in Bangladesh,
been caught in the crossfire of racial riots and come up against
an axe-wielding man.
Yet
at the end of it all, she insists that good documentary filmmakers
take their time to absorb and observe life.
Here
for a workshop organised as part of the 14th Singapore
International Film Festival, Amie certainly doesn't quite
fit the image of a documentary filmmaker.
At
least the stuffy, balding and sedentary man behind the camera lens
I have in mind.
Beneath
her youthful good looks is a passionate filmmaker whose work has
brought her away to faraway lands for as long as 5 years at a stretch
- the length many of her films take to be produced.
As
an English Literature and Theatres Studies undergraduate at Yale
University, Amie was already interested in how art could help change
stereotypes and cross cultural boundaries.
But
one incident in South Africa where she was working with village
groups got her hooked on documentary filmmaking.
Her
First Film
A
friend visited her and had brought along his own 'old VHS camera
of the 80s'.
Climbing
up a mountain with him, she pulled a muscle and was left stranded
there for a while with the camera.
"So,
I just sat there with the camera and made, I guess, sort of, my
first film in a way."
Amie's
encounter took on a Zen-like countenance that has turned into a
life-long passion for her.
"Because
I was just there alone with the camera, I think I started to realise
the power the camera has for a person to really look at themselves.
I guess this is the beginning of documentary which is a way of self-reflection."
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