The documentary dilemma

From left: In Prague, Kouross Esmaeli, Muthana Mohmed, and Nina Davenport explore the ties between power and film. (Nina Davenport)

Exit strategies can be as complicated for documentary filmmakers as they are for politicians and generals. Does a filmmaker have to be cold-hearted to walk away from a person who has gotten used to drinking at the fountain of attention?

It's a topic that floats around the edges of a lot of documentary films, particularly when the subject has deep vulnerabilities and his or her life seems to takes on new colors when the camera is around (Edith Bouvier Beale in "Grey Gardens" comes to mind). If filmmakers cross a line from documenting what would have been happening without their presence into documenting what begins happening with them as participants, can they ever leave a hungry subject and still have a clear conscience?

Harvard film grad Nina Davenport ("Always a Bridesmaid," "Parallel Lines") walks into the heart of these questions with her newest work and will be on hand to talk about it at a sneak preview of her "Operation Filmmaker" tonight at 7 at the Harvard Film Archive.

The movie is about filmmakers and power. Its focus is an Iraqi film student named Muthana Mohmed who was interviewed on MTV after US bombs hit his school. Actor Liev Schreiber saw the report and ended up inviting Mohmed to be an intern on "Everything Is Illuminated," a movie he was making in Prague (it was Schreiber's first time as director).

Davenport was friends with the director of the MTV piece and went to Prague on assignment from him to follow Mohmed. What she ended up capturing are the complicated frustrations that unfolded between the young man from Baghdad and his well-intentioned benefactors, including herself.

The movie "starts off as a kind of farce of do-gooder liberal guilt," wrote Wesley Morris last September in a report from the Toronto Film Festival, where "Operation Filmmaker" got its world premiere. "Almost immediately, however, it's apparent that Mohmed isn't simply grateful to have been rescued from Baghdad (although he is grateful enough to sincerely praise George W. Bush) and assigned menial production-assistant duties (making copies and preparing snacks for the talent are beneath him). He wants to do some filmmaking. But he bungles his one big task and may have expected his war-torn back story to win him plum assignments on the set and possibly more money from the film's producers."

Mohmed also expects compensation from Davenport for being her subject. "What ensues is a tense, mutually borderline-abusive relationship picture," Morris continues.

In a director's statement, Davenport writes that she initially thought the topic was a straightforward one: a young Iraqi's experience as an intern on a Hollywood movie.

"I boarded that plane as myopically as America invaded Iraq, never imagining how complicated things would get or how personally involved in Muthana's life I would become," she writes. "I found myself filming a power struggle between me, an American woman holding the reins as director of the film, and my subject, an Iraqi man, in what felt at times like a microcosm of the endless conflict in Iraq."

To contact the film archive, call 617-495-4700 or visit hcl.harvard.edu/hfa.

SCI-FI AND MOUNTAIN FILM FESTS: The 24-hour Boston Science Fiction Film Festival marathon starts today at noon and runs straight through to tomorrow at noon. It takes place at the Somerville Theatre and will include, organizers say, about a dozen feature films, some cartoons, and vintage movie trailers.

The fest is in its 33rd year and is sponsored by FrugalYankee.com ("enjoying life, spending less") and the Museum of Bad Art ("art too bad to be ignored"). Details are online at bostonsci-fi.com, or call the theater at 617-625-5700.

About two miles north in Arlington, the Regent Theatre is hosting the eastern New England stop of the Banff Mountain Film Festival world tour, a three-day program produced by the Banff Centre in Banff, Canada. From tomorrow through Wednesday at 7 each night, the big screen will take viewers to even bigger vistas: an icy mountain climb in "Climber," England's Peak District in "Committed: To Grit," the peaks of Himalaya in "Crossing the Himalaya." There are also movies about snow-kiting, exploring abandoned mines in Sweden, and the risks professional photographers take to get their jaw-dropping shots. Details are at 781-646-4849 and regenttheatre.com.

OSCAR PARTY: The Brattle Theatre is hosting its eighth annual Oscar night party next Sunday at the theater. From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. there's a fund-raising reception with an open bar and a silent auction. The 8 p.m. party, which features a broadcast of the 80th annual awards, is for Brattle members only and includes a cash bar and desserts. As in life, sequins are not required but always welcome. Details at 617-876-6837 and brattlefilm.org.

AND FROM THE OSCAR ARCHIVES: Margaret Lazarus, who won an Oscar in 1994 for her short subject documentary "Defending Our Lives," will be at the Museum of Fine Arts today at 3:45 p.m. to show three Academy Award-winning short documentary films: "Chernobyl Heart," about the devastating aftereffects of the Chernobyl nuclear power accident, "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin," about radio journalist Corwin, and "Interview with Mai Lai Veterans."

Lazarus, who runs Cambridge Documentary Films, is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy. She says the screenings are part of a national tour and that "if the program is a success we plan to bring more short documentaries to Boston from the Academy Archives." The first two films are 39 minutes each and the last is 22 minutes (617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film).

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.