Nobody told American photographer Steven Sebring that 11 years was an unusually long time to make a movie. But that’s how long he took to make Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a documentary about the legendary artist, poet, and performer, whom he met in 1995 on a photo shoot for Spin Magazine. “I didn’t intend it to be like a Sundance film or anything,” said Sebring, “I was just documenting her – it was like we were writing the ultimate record and she was the star.”

A number of films at this year’s Festival tackle the subject of artists, and each one tells their stories in surprisingly different and often unconventional ways. There is the lush visual poem incorporating over a decade’s worth of performances, personal musings, family visits, poems, and photographs that is Dream of Life. And then there’s the virtual acid trip of archival footage and recreations that is Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. In Derek, experimental filmmaker Isaac Julien creates a dreamlike homage to fellow artist and friend Derek Jarman – who was one of the pioneering voices in queer cinema. (Jarman’s groundbreaking adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II will screen as a “From the Collection” presentation during the Festival.) And in CSNY: Déjà Vu, Bernard Shakey takes viewers on tour with the band, from the bus to the stage, and shows us the fans’ reactions to their anti-war message. Added to the mix is Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, an investigation of the rape trials of the famed director, and Pietra Brettkelly’s unmitigated verité doc The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, which follows artist Vanessa Beecroft on her quest to adopt a pair of African orphans, and the controversy surrounding her use of the twins in her art.

But while the approaches are varied, all these films utilize the potential of documentary to bring us closer to an artist’s life, work, and vision. “I think one of the things the filmmakers are trying to do in these particular films is to adopt an understanding of the artistic personality they’re portraying, and incorporating that into the film,” said John Nein, programmer for the Festival.

For Gonzo filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Sundance 2005), one of his key objectives was to expand on the established myths about Hunter S. Thompson, not just rehash or repackage them. “His myth had been well covered,” said Gibney. “Everybody knows about the Gonzo character and that he had consumed massive quantities of drugs and alcohol. But a lot of people had forgotten what a great writer he was and that doesn’t get much mentioned anymore.”

To that end, Gibney incorporated a narration into the film made up of Thompson’s own words from his letters, articles, and books. He also enlisted actor Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to read the narration. Depp became synonymous with the infamous writer when the two forged a strong friendship while Depp was researching for the role, so for Gibney, he was the obvious choice to bring Thompson’s words to life.

And to take viewers one step further into Thompson’s mind, Gibney brought some of those words to life using CGI. “There are a couple times in the film when we take flights of fancy,” said Gibney. “For example, we’re in the middle of an archive thing… and suddenly you see somebody’s face morphs into a lizard and they stick a forked tongue out at the audience. That’s not what usually happens in a Washington archive.”

“And that’s the way it worked in Hunter’s writing too,” he added. “Because in his best writing I think there was always a tension between his straight reporting and his hallucinations.”

But Gibney’s flights of fancy raise one of the oldest controversies of non-fiction ¬– one Thompson himself became a legend for exploring to the outer limits: To what extent should documentarians be allowed to take creative liberties to tell a story?

“I think some people want to protect documentary – its credibility,” said Nein. “And I understand why those people would try to protect that notion; it’s something that’s very important. But at the same time, you have to then ask, what’s really the problem with people’s personality coming out on film and taking a tour with a person? There’s a way in which – with some of the docs this year – that people’s own personal relationship to the subject matter is creating opportunities for a different type of storytelling.”

But what about stretching the boundaries of non-fiction when the subject is still alive and suffering the consequences of their past actions? Are there opportunities for filmmakers to take creative liberties then?

Marina Zenovich is careful to point out that Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired is not a portrait of the artist – it is an investigation and revisiting of Polanski’s trial for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl and his subsequent flight from the U.S. to France. But to overcome certain challenges, Zenovich had to explore creative solutions for which Polanski’s art came in handy. “Let me start by saying I don’t have an interview with Roman Polanski and the judge in the case is dead. It’s like – what do I do here? How do I create this? Do we do animation? … Do I put myself in the movie trying to understand this story? Because I’ve been in my own movies in the past – but no, this movie’s too serious.”

The film incorporates clips from some of Polanski’s own movies, which serve to add a needed dimension to the man. “It’s funny – my producer wanted to use clips from his movies,” she said. “I didn’t really understand using the films until we got to a point where we needed to comment on Polanski himself. They’re used as some sort of subliminal device – something happening under the surface that’s a whole other layer that we’re not addressing head-on but addressing by including his work.”

Isaac Julien also makes use of film clips to explore the subject of his documentary, his friend filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died in 1994. In addition to clips from his films, this deeply personal story also incorporates fragments of home movies and even enlists one of Jarman’s friends, actress Tilda Swinton, to read a sort of love letter, or eulogy, to him in a series of experimental vignettes throughout the film.

New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly’s process of telling an artist’s story – in this case performance artist Vanessa Beecroft – didn’t involve uncovering a past truth but watching new truths unfold. The two women met in South Sudan in 2006 while Brettkelly was working on a documentary on landmines, but were unaware of each other’s work beforehand. Brettkelly found that along the way, the artist’s own sensibilities influenced the way she made the film. “Like Vanessa, I like minimalism and simplicity and we were very mindful when we shot and edited her work of how Vanessa might want it represented. … When editing her footage into our film – she likes a plainness to backgrounds during interviews – we took that into account,” the filmmaker explained. “I was fascinated by her approach to her art and it would be wrong of me not to say I haven't been inspired and influenced by Vanessa … I felt there was an essence of her that was casual and familiar and she definitely reacts instinctively to the motivations of her art. And so I felt interviewing and filming her reactively, [keeping the] interviews casual, was the correct way to tell her story.”

The “correct way” of telling each of these stories relies on fluid and intuitive process, rather than a set of stringent rules that informs the filmmaker’s decisions when telling an artist’s tale. Alex Gibney agreed: “There shouldn’t be any rules except to let the audience know early on what kind of rules you’re playing with,” he said. “I think it’s a great thing that documentaries have stretched and become more individualized... It’s like a good nonfiction book. You feel the voice of the author even as you are taking a tour through factual territory.”