Dear Zachary

Today I sat in a session of a man by the name of Kurt Kuenne. He is a filmmaker and composer of fiction films but has recently released two documentaries.

When he started the session he gave us a brief background on what this particular documentary - Dear Zachary - was about. He then said that he wasn't sure why he was invited to speak at a journalism convention because he considers himself a fictioinal composer - nothing near a journalist. But as he started showing clips of his documentary film...I wanted to raise my hand and say this is exactly why you are being shown at a journalism convention. You did the research. You did the interviews - all over the world. You covered all aspects of the story. You captured the emotion.

CLICK HERE to view his web site.

It's quite complicating, but this is what the documentary entailed:

• Ever since Mr. Kuenne was a young child he had made films of him and his friends - in fictional scenes, at various places, etc.
• When his friend Andrew was murdered he decided he wanted to make a tribute to his friend because he had all this film footage, as Andrew had been in all of his films.
• Things started unraveling and the murderer ended up being Andrew's ex girlfriend...who fled to Canada after the murder.
• A couple of months later it became known that she was pregnant with Andrew's baby.
• Mr. Kuenne switched his tribute around a bit...to make this memoir specifically directed towards the baby who was named Zachary.
• Mr. Kuenne traveled around the world meeting up with all of Andrew's friends and family. He did extensive interviews with all of them.
• In the end he would end up in Canada where Zachary was living with his mother (the murderer, who was able to walk around free on bail in Canada.)
• A month after he left, there was a homicide/suicide - involving the murderer and the innocent 13 month old baby.
• The project turned from a tribute to a public awareness documentary.

The emotion that was captured in this documentary really pulled me in - and the access/information that was given kept me there.

My biggest question was this. Journalism is all about ethics. Avoid conflict of interest. BUT when you are directly involved with your subject and you want to tell the story so that it leaves a lasting affect on the general public - it's nearly impossible to remove yourself from the story. So what do you do? Thoughts?