Jan 10 2:50 PM

Director A.J. Schnack talks about his latest documentary, ‘Caucus’

Director A.J. Schnack, left, and producer Nathan Truesdell at the 2014 Cinema Eye Honors.

Deneka Peniston

I don't know when or why I fell into documentary in the way that I did. It's almost as if I had been kidnapped by it in a way. I'd gone to journalism school (at the University of Missouri) and had always thought somewhere in the back of my head about making documentaries, but I doubt I was thinking about it becoming such a big part of my life.

All the films I've made have had some connection to my past, and they've been influenced by the great documentary filmmakers who have come before. In the case of "Caucus," the personal experience was driving up to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1988 with a bunch of other writers and photographers from Mizzou to try to capture this thing called the Iowa caucuses. As something of a politics junkie and a media junkie, that first sight of the first-in-the-nation contests was something to behold. Running into candidates as they moved, with packs of reporters surrounding them, through the Des Moines skywalk made an indelible impression. I've been interested in the outsize role that Iowa plays in our political process ever since.

To be in the front row each day as history was unfolding ... was exciting, fun, exhausting and challenging in ways we couldn’t have anticipated.

A.J. Schnack hosting the 2014 Cinema Eye Honors.

Deneka Peniston

The influence is, perhaps, obvious: It's no coincidence that we named the film "Caucus," a more than slight homage to the classic political verite "Primary," made by the great Robert Drew, along with Albert Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, Terence Macartney-Filgate and Ricky Leacock. That film and "The War Room" (which Pennebaker made with Chris Hegedus) were hugely important to my understanding of what political verite could be.

Returning to Iowa in 2011 to cover the Republicans running for president, this time with my frequent collaborator Nathan Truesdell, was an experience I won't soon forget. To be in the front row each day as history was unfolding — sometimes in ways that wouldn't be known until many months later — was exciting, fun, exhausting and challenging in ways we couldn't have anticipated. To see Rick Santorum, a former senator who no one thought could emerge triumphant, crisscross the state, practicing old-fashioned retail politics, somehow stage a miracle, underdog finish — it proved that U.S. politics is one of the most unpredictable a documentary filmmaker can turn his or her lens on.

Just days after finishing our shoot in Iowa in early 2012, Nathan and I went to New York City to stage the Cinema Eye Honors, an event that we and others put on each year to celebrate the best of nonfiction filmmaking. As I write this, I'm in New York, having just concluded the 2014 edition of the event and having had the great pleasure of sitting at the Museum of the Moving Image the other night and talking to Maysles and Pennebaker. To stand in that beautiful museum in Queens with the masters of cinema verite (not to mention Barbara Kopple, Michael Moore, Steve James, Alex Gibney and so many others) is one of the reasons I love making documentary films.

Mostly, though, it's the opportunity to turn our cameras on something unexpected, to be able to capture something — like Santorum eating nachos with his staffers and musing over the minuscule size of his entourage or witnessing the moment when The Des Moines Register political unit gets its biggest shock of the political year — that you wouldn't see in any other format. For me, that happened in spades in Iowa in 2011 and early 2012, and I'm excited to bring the film and its unique look at what it takes to run for president of the United States in Iowa to Al Jazeera America.

A.J. Schnack is the founder and a co-chair of the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking, which held its seventh edition at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City in January 2014. From 2005 to 2011, he wrote the popular nonfiction film blog All These Wonderful Things. He has served on juries for Sheffield Doc/Fest, CPH:DOX, DokuFest Kosovo, AFI Silverdocs and the Independent Spirit Awards and in Los Angeles, Miami, Sarasota, Denver and Ashland.

His previous films include "We Always Lie to Strangers," the ensemble documentary "Convention" (2009), "Kurt Cobain About a Son (2006) and "Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns" (2002).