In August 2015, POV asked Point and Shoot filmmaker Marshall Curry what's happened since the cameras stopped rolling.
Can you provide an update on what Matt VanDyke is doing now? Is he still with Lauren? Has he been back to Libya since the release of the film?
Matt has been spending a lot of time back in the Middle East again, now working on a project to train Christians in Iraq to fight ISIS. He and Lauren broke up. As far as I know he has not been back to Libya since the film was released.
In the year since Point and Shoot's release, do you find that the parts of the film that most intrigued you when you took on this project are at the center of the discussion around the film, or have you been surprised by the kinds of conversation the film has helped start?
I was initially hooked by a few things. First, it was just a dramatic story — exciting, odd, and epic. Second, I was interested in Matt's quest for manhood and how we define "manhood" these days. And third, I was interested in the way that cameras seem to shape everything — even war — in today's selfie-culture. Most critics and audiences have engaged with these topics in the way I intended. But I've been surprised that sometimes people get distracted by whether they find Matt "likable" or not. To me that wasn't really the point of the film — to turn him into a hero or a villain. I wanted to simply introduce the audience to a complex, provocative person with an incredible story, and to let them wrestle with the questions that meeting raised. Most people seem to appreciate that open-ended, unresolved approach, but some prefer their main characters to be "good guys" or "bad guys."
What additional conversations do you hope the public television broadcast of Point and Shoot will spark?
I am thrilled that the broadcast will share Point and Shoot with an even larger audience. I hope the film will get people to talk about how we define "manhood" and where we should place ourselves on the spectrum between a fearful life trapped in a cubicle and ill-considered recklessness. I hope it will generate conversations about violence and war, and about the complex mixtures of selflessness and narcissism that drive us. I hope it raises questions about the power of friendship and the dangers of wading into foreign wars. And about the way that creating and maintaining public personas on Facebook and Twitter affect the way we live our lives and fight wars today.
What are you working on next?
I am working on a fiction script right now as well as a book about making documentary film. I have a couple of documentary projects banging around in my head, but I haven't committed to one yet.