Hannah Jayanti describes her film Truth or Consequences as a “speculative documentary.” That’s to say, a film set in the near future in a world subtly different to the one we know. In the America Jayanti shows, some citizens are beginning to leave earth as commercial space travel takes off.
There really is a town in New Mexico called Truth or Consequences and it really is home to America’s first purpose-built commercial space port. Jayanti therefore is not stretching the bounds of reality too far.
“This is a speculative concept based on current events,” the filmmaker explains. She was borrowing from one of the conceits of science fiction, namely that if she took “something that is nascent today, like commercial space travel, and act like it has already happened,” it would allow her fresh insights into her own world.
“Sometimes, in the present, we are so close to it, it is really hard to be able to look at what is happening,” she reflects. “One of the things I find so beautiful about science fiction is that it often pretends to be a story about the future, or a story based on a fantastic premise. Actually, especially with speculative science fiction, it is deeply, deeply rooted in looking at now – and in trying to look at now in new ways.”
The director talks of her desire to “work in a new way that could go against some of the documentary tropes.” If she had set Truth or Consequences in the present, she was worried that it would have turned into just another well-meaning, very familiar documentary about a struggling small town and an outside influence which might, or might not, have saved it.
Jayanti already had links to New Mexico. She went to undergraduate college there and also spent time “living off grid” in an “earth ship” (a sustainable off-grid house). She paid the bills by working on a construction crew. “I love New Mexico,” the director enthuses. “I very badly wanted to go back.”
Her approach to documentary was the near antithesis of that of most other filmmakers. “I work in a way which is specifically not around going to a place and trying to find an interesting story,” Jayanti explains. “I spent all of my time in the town just filming and letting the people and the place lead me.”
Jayanti spent many months in T or C (as the town is abbreviated) filming on her own, “discovering what they (the townspeople) wanted to share. The film is a result of that process of filmmaking.”
Nothing in the film is scripted. Everything is observational, as in a more traditional documentary. The futuristic framework was added in the editing. The director has assembled some colourful subjects and has tried to allow them all to speak in their own voices, not simply to fit into some pre-existing vision that she already had. In the film, George is the resident historian. He collects objects that others throw away. “He finds value in that which has been discarded,” Jayanti explains of all the bric-a-brac that he has around him. Rather than depict him as an eccentric, she shows him as “maybe the only one who is looking, the only one who sees there is a huge history of plastic in our world. It is everywhere. It tells a story. We have to look at it.”
The film has a typically beguiling and mysterious soundtrack by Bill Frisell, the revered composer and guitar player. “The score and the film were built together, in response to each other,” Jayanti reflects on her illustrious collaborator.
Truth or Consequences took five years to make. Jayanti prefers not to rush. “When you are bringing out stories of people’s lives, it takes a long time really to listen to the place and to the people and to be able create something that feels genuine and compassionate.”
Now, the director is looking for ways to distribute the film “in a way that is as unusual and artful as the film itself.”
