Film by Daniel Orbach
Donald Vader: Ruler of the Free World? is a satirical look at the horrors which may occur if Donald Trump were to actually become the president of the United States. Through the hilarious comparison to Darth Vader, another terrifying dictator, the piece highlights the best of Trump’s most outrageous statements and twisted points of view.
Click below for a Q&A with the filmmaker.
WHAT WAS YOUR TOPIC FOR THIS FILM?
The main political aim of the film was to satirize the campaign of Donald Trump for the United States presidency by inserting him into the Star Wars universe through Darth Vader, as a way of demonstrating a liberal view of Trump’s policies and general demeanour. I focused on using various scenes throughout the films as a vehicle to pair audio from Trump’s quotes in rallies and speeches to create a new context for Trump and in doing so, positioning him as villain much like his physical counterpart. As such this gives rise to the notion that Trump’s self-representation is so outlandish that perhaps placing him into a science-fiction universe as a villain is perhaps not as implausible as imagined.
Like many following the United States election campaigns over the last year, the rise of Donald Trump from a laughing stock who had no chance to a legitimate contender for the leadership of the largest country in the western world has been fast and scary. His bigotry, misogyny and aggressive behaviour have been a reminder of dictators formerly in power, who have gone on to commit heinous crimes and lead their countries down dark paths.
Through my film I wanted to parody the ridiculousness of him as a leader and his ideas. Viewing the constraints, I realized that it would be difficult to create the film through my own footage, and decided that it would be made up entirely of found footage, without any interviews and by deliberately breaking the documentary convention of chronology.
ANY DIFFICULTIES FACED DURING PRODUCTION IN YOUR APPLICATION OF ‘EXPERIMENTATION’ / POETICS ?
The most difficult part of making the film in regards to the political aims, was not letting the film escape the realm of documentary and bordering into parody, and rather to be keeping the film factually based and a critique of Trump. I had to be very careful with what footage I used, as well as making sure I wasn’t tampering with the audio clips too much to be altering the specifics of what was being spoken about to fit the context of the original film.
Further, I struggled with the original idea of making the film’s poetic experimentations clear. Whilst the original concept of the film was always centring on Trump, the original idea, inspired by Michael Moore, of having Trump’s quotes and footage juxtaposed with footage and quotes of real villains like Adolf Hitler seemed too limiting in the sense that there wasn’t much to experiment with. As such the concept of comparing Trump to fictitious villains came about and was much more experimental in concept and execution.
Experimentations in the film come are evident in the form of the documentary; the idea that the way the content was to be was not aligned with the traditional documentary form at all. Rather than focus on Trump through a linear scale, the documentary aspect of the film lied in the purpose of documentary: to provide context with a direct point of view. It was for this reason that such I made the decision not to position the scenes in a way that created a chronological narrative.
My reasoning for this was that I felt to do that was bordering too far over the documentary aspect of the film, and entered the territory of a parody much more than a critique of the man. As such I placed the scenes in a way that was dramatic in the context of the Star Wars universe and yet remained true to the quotes Trump gave.
HOW DID THIS PROJECT CHANGE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL AND POETIC DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING?
Making this film challenged me the most to think about what it is exactly that documentary attempts to achieve, and questioning what a documentary is in the first place. I now understand that documentary isn’t as much as the form in which it is presented, which I think is a popular misconception regarding what defines documentary. Political documentary is rather the establishment of a collective of ideas, for which serve to critique or provide an alternative lens for which people may view them in.
As for film poetics, I’ve realized that along which political documentary, there aren’t specific conventions that one must adhere to. A film does not need to challenge the structure of a documentary for it to be poetic; it can be just as poetic if the imagery partnered with the audio provides a new context and meaning to exist for audiences. In this sense I have learned through experimenting that documentary, and the poetics of the film are a free canvas for one to express themselves with.