Lecture 8: Non-fiction / Documentary Film

vNon-fiction/Documentary Film

Documentary as Genre

• Absence of Fictionalizing Elements

• "Film which through certain conventions creates the illusion that the events depicted were not controlled by the filmmakers."

• 4 functions of non-fiction film

• Neither peculiar to documentary nor exclude that which is not documentary.

1. To record, reveal, or preserve;

2. To persuade or promote

3. To analyze or interrogate

4. To express

Realism in documentary?

• Recreation films of historic events

• Fiction as part of documentary process

• Beginning of film industry included recreations

– 1907 film about “Teddy” Roosevelt on an African hunting trip by William Selig

– Selig hires African Americans out of Chicago to portray “native” Africans and films an actor stalking through a jungle who then shoots a “aged” lion on camera

– Result is that Roosevelt viewed as hero and “the great white hunter.”

5 Types of Documentary

v Primitive non-fiction

v Travel/Adventure Doc.

v Camera as Observer

v Didactic/Teaching Doc. ("propaganda")

v Television doc. / Internet – Webcasting

Primitive Documentary

• Lumière Brothers films

– See lecture on Early Cinema.

• Mainly Newsreels

• News events around the world

• Emphasized events and locations

Dziga Vertov

• Dziga Vertov – Russian socialist and filmmaker

– Part of “Futurism” Movement in Europe

– Technology as a means to capture daily experience – Soviet reality

– Began films as part of publication, Film-Truth (Kino-Pravda) from 1922 to 1925

– Emphasized 2 themes: camera as extension of “eye”and “truth”

– “I am cinema-eye”+ “Show bits of truth on the screen”

– 1929 -- The Man with the Movie Camera

• Sub-genres created

– Avant-garde

– Actuality documentary

Avant Garde / Actualities

• 1925 – Ballet Mécanique by French artist Fernand Léger and American artist Dudley Murphy

– Film emphasized mechanization of society and is composed mainly of moving gears, levers, pendulums and other mechanical items

Travel/Ethnographic

• "Exotic" location/people/cultures

• Filmmaker imposes his/her culture on exotic cultures

• Ex. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) Inuit culture, 1922

• B&W, shot silent, no handheld camera, daytime shooting only, intertitles used to explain/comment on subjects

• Revillon, French distributor accepted the film (American companies were hesitant)

– Well received in theatres making documentary form and Flaherty popular in mainstream market

– In actuality scenes of hunting were staged and Flaherty exposed Inuit people in film to unnecessary and life threatening dangers

Camera as Observer

• Free Cinema (1960s, England)

– No narration

– Handheld camera

– No apparent staging

– Still mostly B&W

• Direct Cinema (1960s-70s, US)

– Ex. D. A. Pennebaker – made political work Primary (1960, about the Democratic Presidential Primary in Wisconsin) and Crisis (1963, about the desegregation of the University of Alabama),

– Don't Look Back, 1967 – 1^st behind the scenes documentary on music stars -- Bob Dylan’s British Tour

– People living their lives and not just telling about them

• Cinéma Vérité (1960s, France)

Cinéma Vérité

• “Film Truth”

– Style of film making developed by French film directors in the 1960’s

– Production techniques did not depend on star quality actors, sets, props, casts of thousands, special effects and big budgets which was the trend in Hollywood films

– Used non-actors, small hand- held cameras, and actual homes and surroundings as their location for a film.

– Unrehearsed situations.

– Filming done unobtrusively so the subjects of the film would forget the presence of the camera and “just be themselves.”

– Goal to show life as it really is using the film as his artistic medium.

Didactic/Teaching Documentary

• 1930s, England

– John Grierson, coined term, "documentary" when describing Robert

– Flaherty's second film, Moana (1926)

– Teach about social issues

• John Grierson, -- headed Film Unit of the Empire Marketing Board established to create documentaries which promoted the production and transport of Food throughout the British Empire

• Usually Expository style (voice-over) but Grierson used interviews of people telling their lives

Propaganda Documentary

• 1935 – Triumph of the Will – Leni Riefenstahl

• Won Venice and Paris Film festivals

• Film commissioned by UFA and Nazi government -- Hitler requests Riefenstahl as director

– Enlisted military and civil service to help with the planning of film and “filmed” events

– No narrator just exerts of speeches by Hitler and other Nazi leaders

– Film and content highly orchestrated with camera shots planned along with rallies, parades, speeches for Hitler’s visit to Nuremberg

– Nuremberg built special bridges, towers, ramps to film content under the direction of director

– Opening sequence shows Hitler as “deity descending to earth to save the German people”

– Overall theme of German (under Nazi rule) Nationalism

U.S. Propaganda Documentary/ Films

• New Deal documentaries

– F.D. Roosevelt's recovery program creates relief agency -- Resettlement Administration (RA)

– RA creates Motion Picture Unit to educate and “sell” public on need for “New Deal” programs

• Goal is to promote policies for impoverished farmers, laborers and families during Depression

• Pare Lorentz – professional writer and film critic becomes main director of RA films

• Hollywood opposition to government supported film industry

– Denied Lorentz access to film archives

– Denied access to distribution outlets and theaters

• 3000 theaters eventually show film

– 1936 The Plow That Broke the Plains – film about soil conservation during the “Dust Bowl” conditions in Midwest

– 1938 The River – film about the effects of flooding along the Mississippi

Pare Lorentz and the RA

• Films highly stylized and orchestrated

– Used editing to create visual metaphor (poetic)

– Music for mood

• Composer Virgil Thomson – wrote the musical scores for the films

– 1938 – The River

• Wins best-documentary for Venice film festival

• Film shows the affects of flooding along the Mississippi and its tributaries

– Influences Hollywood interest in “realism” during this period resulting in films such as The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

U.S. Documentaries

• Office of War Information

• Commissioned films prior to and during WWII

• "Why We Fight" Series / Prelude to War (Frank Capra, 1941)

• Narration used (omniscient narrator)

• Graphics---animation (Disney)

• Used previously shot footage found in archives

• Shot very little new footage

• Like projects such as Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi doc. Triumph of the Will

• Films focused on “political education” of American civilians enlisted in the military

– Frank Capra – director of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with James Stewart, is enlisted to direct series

– Asks to watch Riefenstahl’s Triumph to learn about documentary form

Modes of Documentary

• Reassembled / Archival

• Expository

– Voiceovers

– Interviews

– Diaristic – popular form at present

• Personal essay

• Reflexive – made aware of documentary form

– Participatory documentary

• Filmmaker / director and “subjects” create film together

Assembled / Archival

• Esfir Shub – subtitler and editor of foreign film in Russia

• 1927 – The Fall of Romanov Dynasty

– Uses home movies of Tsar Nicholas II and family to make feature length film

– Meant to be “counterrevolutionary” but film shows parades of religious dignitaries and officers dancing at a battleship party with the Tsar’s family – effectively reinforced the Russian revolution

– Resulted in film archives and film preservation

New Modes of Documentary

• Technological changes lead to various forms of non-fiction film

– Silent films more conducive to reassembled or archival films

– Non-tripodal camera – creates freedom for directors to go to varied locations

– Style changed making the films more observational

• Observational practices

– Reflexive style of filmmaking

– Diaristic documentary styles

– Participatory practice in filmmaking

• Engages more actively with the world of the filmed subject

• Less purely ethnographic film

Television doc. / Internet -- Webcasting

Qualities include

– Color video

– Handheld camera

– Digital graphics

– Not limited to daytime shooting

– Broadcasts on

• TV

– MTV’s The Real World

• Internet

– OlympuSAT digital platform broadcasting network will host the Documentary Channel which will show unedited non-fiction film

New Developments using Documentary Form

v Self-Reflexive / Fictional Documentary

• This is Spinal Tap (1984)

• Example of “fake-documentary”

• Reflexive mode of flimmaking

• Parody of rock-documentaries, i.e. Don’t Look Back (1967) or Gimmie Shelter (1971)

• Succeeds by imitating codes and conventions of documentary style

• Kids (1995)– Explicit film about young urban mainly white teen-age culture

• Written by 21-year-old Harmony Korine

• Directed by 52-year-old Larry Clark