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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film

Documentary filmFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in onefashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred tomovies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productionsthat can be either direct-to-video or made for a television series. Documentary, as it applies here,works to identify a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception"that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries.[1]

Contents[hide]

* 1 Defining documentary* 2 History

o 2.1 Pre-1900o 2.2 1900-1920o 2.3 1920s

+ 2.3.1 Romanticism+ 2.3.2 The city symphony+ 2.3.3 Kino-Pravda+ 2.3.4 Newsreel tradition

o 2.4 1920s-1940so 2.5 1950s-1970s

+ 2.5.1 Cinéma-vérité+ 2.5.2 Political weapons

o 2.6 Modern documentaries* 3 Other documentary forms

o 3.1 Compilation films* 4 See also

o 4.1 Documentary film festivalso 4.2 Documentary Film Awards

* 5 Notes and references* 6 Sources and bibliography

o 6.1 ethnographic film* 7 External links

Defining documentary

The word documentary was first applied to films of this nature in a review of Robert Flaherty's film

Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926 and written by "TheMoviegoer", a pen name for documentarian John Grierson.

In the 1930s, Grierson further argues in his essay First Principles of Documentary that Moanahad "documentary value." Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" sceneare better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and thatmaterials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard,Grierson's views align with Vertov's contempt for dramatic fiction as "bourgeois excess", thoughwith considerably more subtlety. Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of



actuality" has gained some acceptance, though it presents philosophical questions aboutdocumentaries containing stagings and reenactments.

In his essays, Dziga Vertov argued for presenting "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously)and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).

Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as "a factual film which is dramatic."[2] Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing anopinion, and a specific message, along with the facts it presents.[3]

Documentary Practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It refers to whatpeople do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies in order to address thecreative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries.

History

[edit] Pre-1900

The filmmaker John Grierson used the term documentary in 1926 to refer to any nonfiction filmmedium, including travelogues and instructional films.[citation needed] The earliest "moving

pictures" were, by definition, documentaries. They were single-shot moments captured on film: atrain entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. Early film (pre-1900) wasdominated by the novelty of showing an event. These short films were called "actuality" films.(The term "documentary" was not coined until 1926.) Very little storytelling took place before theturn of the century, due mostly to technological limitations, namely, that movie cameras couldhold only very small amounts of film. Thus, many of the first films, such as those made byAuguste and Louis Lumière, are a minute or less in length,

[edit] 1900-1920

Travelogue films were very popular in the early part of the 20th century. Some were known as"scenics". Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time.[4] An important earlyfilm to move beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), which

embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of thelife of Native Americans.

Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolor and Prizmacolor used travelogues topromote the new color process. (In contrast, Technicolor concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for fictional feature films.)

Also during this period Frank Hurley's documentary film, South (1919), about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, was released. It documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by ErnestShackleton in 1914.

[edit] 1920s

[edit] RomanticismNanook of the North poster.

With Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North in 1922, documentary film embraced romanticism;Flaherty went on to film a number of heavily staged romantic films, usually showing how hissubjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then. For instance, inNanook of the North Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun,but had them use a harpoon instead. Some of Flaherty's staging, such as building a roofless igloofor interior shots, was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time.



Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of Flaherty's Nanook and Moana with tworomanticized documentaries, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), both directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.

[edit] The city symphony

The continental, or realist, tradition focused on humans within human-made environments, andincluded the so-called "city symphony" films such as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of aCity (of which Grierson noted in an article[5] that Berlin represented what a documentary shouldnot be), Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien Que les Heures, and Dziga Vertov's Man with the MovieCamera. These films tend to feature people as products of their environment, and lean towardsthe avant-garde.

[edit] Kino-Pravda

Dziga Vertov was central to the Soviet Kino-Pravda (literally, "cinema truth") newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the camera — with its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion — could render reality more accuratelythan the human eye, and made a film philosophy out of it.

Newsreel tradition

The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; newsreels were also sometimes stagedbut were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage fromthe early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.

[edit] 1920s-1940s

The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading anaudience of a point. One of the most notorious propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's filmTriumph of the Will (1935). Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri Storck directed Borinage

(1931) about the Belgian coal mining region. Luis Buñuel directed a "surrealist" documentary LasHurdes (1933).

Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) and Willard VanDyke's The City (1939) are notable New Deal productions, each presenting complexcombinations of social and ecological awareness, government propaganda, and leftist viewpoints.Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942-1944) series was a newsreel series in the United States,commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war.Constance Bennett and her husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature lengthdocumentaries, Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali, and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) filmed in Indochina.

In Canada the Film Board, set up by John Grierson, was created for the same propaganda

reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimatecounter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany (orchestrated by JosephGoebbels).

In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They becameknown as the Documentary Film Movement. Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, BasilWright, and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda, information,and education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary. Examples of their workinclude Drifters (John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Fires Were Started and A Diaryfor Timothy (Humphrey Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W. H. Auden, composers



such as Benjamin Britten, and writers such as J. B. Priestley. Among the most well known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face.

[edit] 1950s-1970s

[edit] Cinéma-vérité

Cinéma vérité (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some technical advancesin order to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound.

Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader perspective, asa reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave, the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to filmevents on location as they unfolded.

Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differencesbetween cinéma vérité (Jean Rouch) and the North American "Direct Cinema" (or moreaccurately "Cinéma direct", pioneered among others by French Canadian Michel Brault, PierrePerrault, Americans Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David

Maysles).

The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement. Koppleand Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-involvement (or at least no overt involvement), andPerrault, Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when theydeem it necessary.

The films Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by RobertDrew), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker),Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor), Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch) and GoldenGloves (Gilles Groulx)[6][7] are all frequently deemed cinéma vérité films.

The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often

handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and theshooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80 toone. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movement — suchas Werner Nold, Charlotte Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovde — are oftenoverlooked, but their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits.

Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs[8], Showman, Salesman, TheChildren Were Watching, Primary, Behind a Presidential Crisis, and Grey Gardens.

[edit] Political weapons

In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon againstneocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing

Quebec society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, from 1968), directed byOctavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanas, influenced a whole generation of filmmakers.

[edit] Modern documentariesOne of 150 DV cameras used by Iraqis to film themselves and create the 2004 film Voices of Iraq.

Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful intheatrical release with films such as Super Size Me, March of the Penguins,and An InconvenientTruth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentariestypically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a



limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.

The nature of documentary films has changed in the past 20 years from the cinema veritétradition. Landmark films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me placed far more interpretive control with thedirector. Indeed, the commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrativeshift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly becalled documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-ganda."[9] However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since thework of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form.

The recent success of the documentary genre, and the advent of DVDs, has madedocumentaries financially viable even without a cinema release. Yet funding for documentary filmproduction remains elusive, and within the past decade the largest exhibition opportunities haveemerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes andinfluences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.[10]

Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "realitytelevision" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The making-of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced.

Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classicdocumentary.

Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aideddocumentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take fulladvantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DVcameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.

[edit] Other documentary forms

[edit] Compilation films

Compilation films were pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty.

More recent examples include Point of Order (1964), directed by Emile de Antonio about theMcCarthy hearings and The Atomic Cafe which is made entirely out of found footage that variousagencies of the U.S. government made about the safety of nuclear radiation (e.g., telling troops atone point that it's safe to be irradiated as long as they keep their eyes and mouths shut).Similarly, The Last Cigarette combines the testimony of various tobacco company executivesbefore the U.S. Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking.

[edit] See also

* Visual anthropology* Ethnographic film* Docufiction* Ethnofiction

* Docudrama* Mockumentary

* Mondo film* Nature documentary* Political Cinema* Reality film* Women's Cinema* Documentary Practice* Animated documentary



* Lists of directors and producers of documentaries

* List of motion picture-related topics* List of documentaries

[edit] Documentary film festivalsMain article: Documentary film festivals

[edit] Documentary Film Awards

* Academy Award for Documentary Feature* Joris Ivens Award: most prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

(IDFA) award (named after Joris Ivens)* Doc Mogul award: most prestigious Hot Docs award* Grand Prize Visions du Réel: most prestigious Visions du réel award* Golden Dove award: most prestigious International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and

Animated Film award* Channel 4 Sheffield Pitch* Spanish Prix Jean Vigo awarded to the best director at the Punto de Vista Documentary

International Film Festival of Navarra

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ Nichols, Bill. 'Foreword', in Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds.) DocumentingThe Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Detroit: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 1997

2. ^ Pare Lorentz Film Library - FDR and Film3. ^ Larry Ward (Fall 2008), Introduction, Lecture Notes for the BA in Radio-TV-Film (RTVF),

375: Documentary Film & Television, California State University, Fullerton (College of communications), p. 4, slide 12,http://www.commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lward/375/PDF375/375INTRO.pdf

4. ^ Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, 2005.5. ^ Grierson, John. 'First Principles of Documentary', in Kevin Macdonald & Mark Cousins

(eds.) Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. London: Faber and Faber, 19966. ^ Golden Gloves - ONF - Collection7. ̂ http://www.nfb.ca/trouverunfilm/player.php?

v=h&lg=fr&vitesse=200&url=http://cmm.onf.ca/extraits/e541_ec.ram8. ^ Les raquetteurs - NFB - Collection9. ^ Wood, Daniel B. (2 June 2006). "In 'docu-ganda' films, balance is not the objective".

Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0602/p01s02-ussc.html. Retrieved on2006-06-06.

10. ^ [1] Indiewire, "FESTIVALS: Post-Sundance 2001; Docs Still Face Financing andDistribution Challenges". February 8, 2001.

[edit] Sources and bibliography

* Aitken, Ian (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York: Routledge, 2005. ISBN1579584454.* Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd rev. ed. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195078985. Still a useful introduction.* Bernard, Sheila Curran. Documentary Storytelling, 2nd ed.: Making Stronger and More

Dramatic Nonfiction Films. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2007.* Bernard, Sheila Curran and Kenn Rabin. Archival Storytelling: A Filmmakers Guide to

Finding, Using, and Licensing Third-Party Visuals and Music. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2008.* Burton, Julianne (ed.). The Social Documentary in Latin America. Pittsburgh, Penn.:

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. ISBN 0822936216.



* Dawson, Jonathan. "Dziga Vertov".* Ellis, Jack C., and Betsy A. McLane. "A New History of Documentary Film". New York:

Continuum International, 2005. ISBN 0826417507, ISBN 0826417515.* Goldsmith, David A. The Documentary Makers: Interviews with 15 of the Best in the

Business. Hove, East Sussex: RotoVision, 2003. ISBN 2880467306.* Leach, Jim, and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds.). Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian

Documentaries. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2003. ISBN 0802047327, ISBN0802082998.

* Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001.ISBN 0253339545, ISBN 0253214696.

* Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington, Ind.:Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 0253340608, ISBN 0253206812.

* Nornes, Markus. Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 0816649073, ISBN 0816649081.

* Nornes, Markus. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN 0816640459, ISBN 0816640467.

* Rotha, Paul, Documentary diary; An Informal History of the British Documentary Film, 1928-1939. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. ISBN 0809039338.

* Saunders, Dave. Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties.London: Wallflower Press, 2007. ISBN 1905674163, ISBN 1905674155.

* Walker, Janet, and Diane Waldeman (eds.). Feminism and Documentary. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN 0816630062, ISBN 0816630070.

* Documentary – reading list

[edit] ethnographic film

* Fatimah Tobing Rony. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780822318408.

* Ginsburg, Faye, Abu-Lughod, Lila and Brian Larkin eds. Media Worlds: Anthropology on NewTerrain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780520232310.

* Grimshaw, Anna. The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780521773102.

Recommended Text (books out of print)

* MacDougall, David. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.ISBN: 9780691012346.

* Brigard, Emilie de, "The History of ethnographic film", in: Paul Hockings (Ed.), Principles of Visual Anthropology, Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 13-43.

* Devereaux, Leslie, "Cultures, Disciplines, Cinemas", in: Leslie Devereaux & Roger Hillman(Eds.), Fields of Vision. Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology and Photography, Berkeley:University of California Press, 1995, pp. 329-339.

* Heider, Karl G., Ethnographic Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.* Heusch, Luc de, Cinéma et Sciences Sociales, Paris: Unesco, 1962.

``Jameson, Frederic, As Marcas do Visível, Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1995

* Jordan, Pierre-L., Premier Contact-Premier Regard, Marseille: Musées de Marseille. Imagesen Manoeuvres Editions, 1992.

* Leroi-Gourhan, André, 1948 - "Cinéma et Sciences Humaines. Le Film Ethnologique Existe-t-il?", in: Revue de Géographie Humaine et d'Ethnologie, n. 3, Paris, pp. 42-50.

* Mac Dougall, David, "Whose Story Is It?", - in: Peter I. Crawford &, Jan K. Simonsen (Eds.),Ethnographic Film Aesthetics and Narrative Traditions. Aarhus, Intervention Press, 1992, pp. 25-42.

* Sadoul, George, Histoire Générale du Cinéma. Vol. 1, L'Invention du Cinéma 1832-1897,Paris: Denöel, 1977, pp. 73-110.



* Sorlin, Pierre, Sociologie du Cinéma, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1977, pp. 7-74.* Warren, Charles, "Introduction, with a Brief History of Nonfiction Film", in: Charles Warren

(Ed.), Beyond Document. Essays on Nonfiction Film, Hanover and London: Wesleyan UniversityPress, 1996, pp. 1-22.

* Xavier, Ismail, "Cinema: Revelação e Engano", in: Adauto Novaes (Ed.) O Olhar, São Paulo:Companhia das Letras, 1993, pp. 367-384.

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