Nick Hector

Nick Hector has edited or produced more than 150 documentary films and programs across the globe. His creative work explores the possibilities of constructed narrative in observational direct cinema and actuality-drama. Nick is best known for his long-term collaborations with noted filmmakers Sturla Gunnarsson, Yvan Patry, and cinéma-vérité pioneer Allan King. One of these collaborations, Dying at Grace, was described by the Toronto International Film Festival as ‘among the best films ever made in this country’. Nick’s work has been included in the Criterion Collection and screened at most major international festivals including the Berlinale, MoMA, Mumbai, Sundance, and TIFF, where it won the audience award for best documentary. In his thirty-year practice, he has won 12 national awards including HotDocs, Directors Guild of Canada, Canadian Cinema Editors, and Canadian Academy Awards. Most recently, Nick completed the award-winning documentary Sharkwater Extinction after the death of the filmmaker, Rob Stewart.

Between the Hero Myth and The Cutting Room Floor

The traditional historical war film has a strict notion of the experience of combat, a heroic narrative of horror, sacrifice, and glory. Why do poignant stories dealing with themes of regret, cowardice, sympathy, absurdity, and humour commonly end up on ‘the cutting room floor’? In this paper, I will examine the act of suppression of combat testimony in war documentaries and the repression of uncomfortable thoughts and emotions that do not align with traditional constructions though the case study of the documentary film series, War Story. As an editor / co-director of these two dozen films, I became fascinated with the idea of narrative exclusion.  Over a four-year period, more than 100 military veterans from conflicts ranging from the Second World War through to Afghanistan were interviewed about their personal experience of war. For many of the participants, it was the first time they had discussed their experiences post-factum. Too often, it formed an end of life testimony for these aging warriors. The intersection of these frank, emotional, and deeply personal confessionals with the commercial imperative of the entertainment-industrial complex raises interesting questions about form, story, and history. Ultimately, audience and filmmaker alike participate in the formation of an accepted historical narrative and thus our narratives of conflict often exclude affecting and illuminating aspects of the costs of war. This paper will analyze and explain production realities and expectations that govern what is and is not included, and how that distorts our understanding of mass conflict, and dictates our conceptions of what happened and what it means.