Rafea: Solar Mama

September 27, 2013 - 2:59pm
The first film in the Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival, documentary 'Rafea: Solar Mama,' finds something close to the truth despite human tendency to act for a camera.

There’s a tendency for people to start performing as soon as they’re aware there’s a camera on them.

That can be a problematic situation for a documentary filmmaker, especially one trying to stay out of his/her film’s story, and it makes documentaries that try to capture unmediated reality feel awkward, if not suspect.