practical film theory

8/3/2019 Practical Film Theory

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THERE IS NOTHING MORE PRACTICAL THAN A GOOD FILM

THEORY

By Henry BreitroseDepartment of Communication

Stanford University

USEFULL THEORIES FOR TEACHING DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS

Im interested in useful theories for teaching the practice of

documentary film making. Perhaps the most important word in that

first sentence is useful because the arts and humanities in general,

film in particular, and documentary film specifically, have not been

deprived of theory. While film theory has provided considerable

academic employment for humanists, which on the whole I take to be

a social good, I believe that production students have been grievously

misled by theories that are not only useless, for practical purposes,

but frequently toxic to their ability to clearly see. The social

psychologist Kurt Lewin said that there is nothing so challenging as a

practical problem. He also said that there is nothing so practical as a

good theory. While there is a plethora of theories about theory, we

lack helpful theories about practical problems.

In teaching documentary film and video making in a professional

graduate program, I meet superbly well-qualified students who have

been educated at some of the best universities in the world. While

we insist that our students are well-educated and have some

experience, we dont insist on an undergraduate film or media-

studies degree. On the contrary, we are deeply suspicious of

applicants who have studied film as undergraduates, because too

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frequently there is a need to de-toxify their imagination. They can

tell us all about the gaze and the gays, and invoke Gledhill,

Foucault, DeMan, Derrida, Deleuze, and proclaim that the very act of

photographing an other is a statement of political oppression or

that the very act of photographing an other is intrinsically

transgressive, and thus an act of courage, or that the very act of

photographing an other pushes the envelope too far because it is

intrusive, or not far enough because it is not overtly reflexive, or

that it invades personal space, or that it deconstructs the myth of

autonomy, or that it constitutes symbolic assault.

None of this strikes me as particularly useful in getting ideas on thescreen with clarity, precision, and economy, which, perhaps

somewhat naively, I take to be the basic requirements of

documentary, much as George Orwell took them to be the essential

elements of the non-fiction essay.

How could this have happened? In America, I think that this is the

result of the rise of Cinema Studies as a distinct discipline,

different from its antecedent, the plain-vanilla, slightly outlaw, and

not quite academically respectable Film, which, compared with Art

and Drama was the new kid on the creative arts block. It was

signaled by the invention of the Society of Cinematologists, latterly

known as the Society for Cinema Studies, whose founding actually

preceded what a colleague refers The French Disease, the

importation of the trendy, the transient, and the poorly translated

latest news from the deep thinkers of the rive gauche.. I was present

at the birth of the SCS, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York

sometime around 1960, when Robert Gessner, who taught film at

NYU, made the case that in order for film to be accepted as

legitimate in academia, it must establish its scholarly credentials by

forming a professional society that looked just like the older ones.

Thus the origins of the great Anglo-Saxon schism, because being

academically traditional meant that the new organization would not

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deal with the actual making of film, as did the existing University

Film Association, many of whose members actually made films, but

rather that it be about film. (It reminds me of the line in Beyond The

Fringe, a popular English comedy review of the 1960s that spawned

Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett. Miller

asks Bennett Do you know algebra? Bennett replies Certainly not,

but I know about algebra. That Professor Gessner proposed that the

constitution of the new group be modeled on that of the American

Metaphysical Society was neither a shock nor a surprise. That the

delegates from USC, who actually taught students how to make films,

fled the meeting in horror was no surprise either.)

But surely, the Theory and Practice dichotomy wasnt invented by

Professor Gessner, nor was it uniquely about film. It was about ways

of thinking about the world.

In her paper Theory and Praxis in Aristotle and Heideggeri, Catriona

Hanley notes that for Aristotle, Theora meant the activity of

contemplation of necessary objects. Actual production, the making

of things, consisted of praxis and posis, and unlike Theoria, which

required only the necessary object for contemplation, it required

knowledge of contingent objects, those objects and events

necessary and sufficient for the existence of the object of

contemplation. In film language, rawstock, laboratories, cameras,

lenses, are examples of the stuff on which the film, the object of

contemplation, is contingent. Theoria need deal with only the

finished film, the necessary object of contemplation, stripped of

praxis and posis.

Posis aims at a goal, as distinct from the process of achieving the

goal. It is the intention, the target audience, the purpose of the

proposed film, while praxis is the process of attaining the goal. For

Aristotle, theoria, the contemplation of the necessary object, and

the posis and praxis which enabled its production, were two sides

of the same drachma.

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For many of our students, very phrase theory and practice is

associated with Karl Marx. Istvn Mszros gives us an interesting

interpretation of this distinction in his discussion of Marxs Theory ofAlienation in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

Marx, ever the dialectician, needed two categories for a proper

dialectic (it wont work with three) so he combined Poeisis with

Praxis as the action components, and he put them in opposition to

Theoria, or as he put it in German, Theorie.

Mszros tells us that Marx was greatly concerned about the

separation of theorie and praxis in philosophy. Theorie, Marx

argued, had somehow become divorced from practice, and functions

as a domain unto itself, proclaiming independent and universal

powers. He describes Marxs critique of theorie without praxis:

Thus instead of being a universal dimension of

all activity, integrated in practice and in its

various reflections, it functions as an independent(verselbstndigt) alienated universality,

displaying the absurdity of this whole system of

alienations by the fact that this fictitious

universality is realised as the most esoteric of

all esoteric specialities, strictly reserved for the

alienated high priests (the Eingeweihten) of

this intellectual trade.

the abstractly contemplative character of

philosophy expresses the radical divorce of theory

and practice in its alienated universality. ii

Examining Marxs 1844 ideas reminds us of how prescient the great

man was about certain aspects of the world to come, even if his theories

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about political and economic organization didn't work out very well in

praxis. In 1844 Marx anticipated the contemporary academic theory

industry, in which alienated high priests of the intellectual trade would

make assertions of the universality of their theories, independent from

practice. Those of us who have seen semiotics, structuralism, critical

theory, deconstruction, post-modernism, and other esoteric specialities

claim universality, and then fall out of fashion, will be tempted to a nod or

perhaps even a smile of recognition. The problem is not that these werent

good ideas, as much as it was that they became orthodoxies that

pronounced Fatwa and declared intellectual Jihad on other theories.

There are theories about why the very idea of documentary isimpossible, why objectivity is impossible, why Photoshop has made

documentary untenable, why everything pretending to be factual or

fictional is but a discourse and all discourses are equally privileged, why all

discourses are fictions, and all reality is social construction. These are not

useful theories. Indeed, they are profoundly unhelpful. They dont do a very

good job of helping the film maker think deeply about what he or she is

doing, which I take to be one of the more valuable aspects of theoreticalwork in other disciplines. Most film theories are not particularly useful as

predictors, nor do they spawn useful ways for documentary film makers to

make sense of the world. In my view, making sense of the world is what

were really about when we teach documentary film making.

Let me put aside the very useful physical theories of photography,

optics and acoustics with which all film makers should be acquainted, and

let us agree that the film theories of Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudokvin, even

Dziga Vertov and Mitry, all informed by practice, can be useful to all film

students. As a teacher, Im interested in theory that gives the young

documentary-maker some confidence in the non-fiction enterprise, and

theory that helps him or her craft a work that is honest and that succeeds in

engaging the audience, and presenting the the really true story in ways that

are clear, instructive, and edifying. I like the word edifying because of

its precise derivation, from Late Latin aedificare, to instruct or improve

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spiritually. I think that understanding a complex aspect of the real world is

literally edifying. An elegantly crafted work that helps us make sense of an

aspect of our world gives us pleasure and lifts the spirit.

In useful modern theory, I think that the Cognitive Theorists whowork mainly in psychology have a great deal to say about how we make

sense of the world. Torben Grodal notes that while romantic and

psychoanalytic theories of film, mainly imported from the academic study of

literature, plumb the unconscious for the true context, cognitive

psychology provides rather more satisfying results. iii The cognitivists tell us

that by virtue of evolution and physiology, humans have developed certain

ways of dealing with information. Some aspects of the world are moresalient to us than are others, and emotions have developed to represent our

strongest interests and goals. Simply stated, we feel strongly about those

things we are interested in: a romantic partner, the World Cup, social

justice, protection of the environment, globalization, religion, for example.

Our emotions are strong motivating forces that control our attention and

action. Our cognitive skills enable us to analyze situations that are

interesting to us, in ways that help us achieve our goals. Thus, depending onthe subject and the audience, we can expect that documentaries will be

attended to in very different ways, and we can use theory to think about

how the structure of the documentary ought to mediate between the

content and the presumed audience.

These analytic aspects of our cognitive skills are of great interest,

because we share a strong tendency to analyze by inventing narrative in

order to make sense of things that might otherwise be random objects and

events. Dorrit Cohn gives us a useful definition of narrative as a series of

statements that deal with a causally related sequence of events that

concern human (or human-like) beings.iv David Bordwell and Kristin

Thompson point out that audience postulate causal connections between

the most disparate images, and even random montage attains narrative

status. vAll useful theoretical perspectives.

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From the intensely practical outlook of documentary production,

much of this translates to the observation that people tend to structure

objects and events as narrative, composed of chains of cause-effect, in

chronological time

. The narratives are ways of analyzing persons, objects and events

that are of interest, in ways that are consistent with furthering the

achievement of their goals. (We meet posis in the strangest places. Here,

it arises among the cognitive theorists. )

Since cognitivists demonstrate that no matter what, narrative

happens, then a useful theory would be one that helps our students

understand narrative structure. There are several. Some prefer Bakhtin,

others Propp, but my nominations for very useful theories are Aristotles

Poetics, and Kenneth Burkes Grammar of Motives as a reasonable neo-

Aristotelian alternative. Aristotle, in his Poetics, tells us about how to tell

stories, and alerts us to the structural elements of exposition, complication,

conflict, climax, and resolution. In short, he describes the narrative arc, or

in documentary terms, a through-line.

Burke elaborates this scheme and re-frames it. In his pentad of terms he

tells us about structure and about the necessary elements of a narrative arc

when we try to explain why something happened.

We shall use five terms as generating principle of our

investigation. They are: Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, Purpose. In

a rounded statement about motives, you must have some word

that names the act (names what took place, in thought or

deed), and another that names the scene (the background of

the act, the situation in which it occurred); also, you must

indicate what person or kind of person (agent) performed the

act, what means or instruments he used (agency), and the

purpose. Men may violently disagree about the purposes

behind a given act, or about the character of the person who

did it, or how he did it, or in what kind of situation he acted;

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or they may even insist upon totally different words to name

the act itself. But be that as it may, any complete statement

about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five

questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done

(scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why

(purpose)' vi

Aristotle and Burke, among others, are helpful with story telling, but

if a documentary is, as I contend, a really true story, how do we help our

students understand the idea of really true.

Epistemology, together with aesthetics and ethics, is the tripod on

which classical philosophy rests. It is a recurring concern in the discussion of

documentary, and to borrow a phrase from Bordwell, et al, these days

pretty well post-theory in that it is a discipline suspicious of sweeping

claims of universality, and relies on logic and rationality.viiThe most useful

contemporary theory is Critical Realism. Two important proponents are John

Searle, who is a logician and linguistic philosopher, and Nol Carroll, who isan aesthetician and film scholar and whose home, unlike most writers on

the aesthetics of film, is in an actual department of philosophy. They both

deal with critical realism.

In an article entitled "Literary Theory and its Discontents," John

Searleviii argues that there are three different theoretical approaches to

questions concerning the meaning of texts. Here, Searle appears to refer

specifically to literary texts and literary theory, but to separate his

argument from film is to create a distinction without making a difference.

The three approaches are those of Stanley Fish, who believes that

meaning resides solely in the response of the reader; Stephen Knapp and

Walter Michaels, who assert that that meaning is entirely a matter of the

authors intention; and Jacques Derrida, whose position seems to be that

that meanings are undecidable and have relative indeterminacy'or

not. Searle illustrates by quoting Derridas statement that , there is

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rather the free play of signifiers and the grafting of texts onto texts within

the textuality and intertextuality of the text. ix

Ironically, Derridarians and other post-modernists are very concerned

about clearly drawn categorical distinctions, such as the distinction betweenfiction and fact. This may well be the residue of the French encyclopedistes,

who specialized in the manufacture of exquisite intellectual pigeon holes

and clearly mutually exclusive categories.

Curiously, Critical Realism, which derives from the rigorous British

tradition of analytic philosophy (Searle was a student of Ludwig

Wittgensteins student, Peter Strawson, at Oxford) is comfortable with the

absence of precisely drawn boundaries, and accepts that philosophical

distinctions inevitably have imprecise edges that allow for rough more or

less kinds of distinctions. That is to say, while there may be certain

similarities between two objects and events, we recognize that they are

more-or-less different from one another.

The relevance for the documentary maker is that the categorical

distinction between fictional and factual, or literal and metaphorical, oreven true and false are valid even if they are not sharply exclusive. In my

view, thats why Chris Marker and Robert Flaherty and Frederic Wiseman,

and Dziga Vertov and Michael Apted all are appropriately described as

documentary film makers. In a nutshell, something may be different from

something else even if it is more or less different, and not absolutely

different. Even a rough distinction is a difference, if there is general

acceptance. Derrida and the Derridarians dont agree, and his that unlessthere is a sharply drawn dichotomous distinction, there is no difference at

all.

In the introduction to his anthology Theorizing Documentary, a

deceptive title for an un-useful book, Michael Renov essentially

attacks the fundamental and underlying premise of documentary,

which is that there is a difference between fact and fiction.x He

basis this on the claim that all discursive forms use similar methods

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and rhetorical figures. He quotes Hayden White, who argues that

there are no objects, only social constructions, that all discourse

constitutes the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically

and to analyze objectively.xiRenov argues that the techniques used

in fiction films, like cross-cutting and flashbacks are used in films

that represent themselves as nonfiction, and that techniques

associated with non-fiction films, such as handheld camera are used

in fiction films.

Nol Carroll points out that the distinction between fiction and

nonfiction is not one of formal technique, and the extent to which

one uses formal methods associated with the other is of no particularrelevance.

Carroll argues that audiences generally are able to determine

whether a film is fiction or nonfiction by virtue of the film coming to the

audience with its factual or fictional status inherently visible. As he and

Carl Plantinga put it, it arrives indexed. Audiences are generally pretty

smart about distinguishing between fictional and non-fictional films, and

film makers who index fiction as non-fiction inevitably reveal the fictional

nature as part of the plot structure of the film, usually through some absurd

assertion. One need only think of Zelig or This is Spinal Tap to get this idea.

Searle, a philosopher, clarifies the situation of the documentary film

maker, who by the very act of making a film imposes a narrative structure

on a set of sounds and images. In the same manner as Renov, one might

argue, and many do, that the use of narrative is what fiction film makers

do, and therefore there is no fundamental categorical distinction between

fiction and so-called factual or non-fiction or documentary film makers. But,

even roughly speaking, there is an immense difference, a veritable chasm,

between drawing sounds and images from the imagination and using the

artistic imagination to make sense of the sounds and images that one finds

in the real world.

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Brian Winston recognized that even so obviously reconstructed a film

as Humphrey Jennings Fires Were Started was properly a documentaryxii.

Winston drastically revised his previous position,xiii in which he seemed to

negate the very possibility of documentary. Writing about Griersons

famously elusive definition of documentary, the creative treatment of

actuality, Winston wrote Surely, no actuality (that is, evidence and

witness) can remain after all this brilliant interventionist creative

treatment (that is, artistic and dramatic structuring) has gone on.

Griersons enterprise was too self-contradictory to sustain any claims on the

real, and renders the term documentary meaningless.

While the truth claims of Fires Were Started differ radically from the

observational fly-on-the-wall or reflexive fly-in-the-soup direct cinema

paradigms, it is certainly is a documentary. As Grierson rather modestly put

it in the original coinage, when describing Robert Flahertys Moana, it has

a certain documentary quality. The documentary quality, I believe, derives

from the correspondence between the subject matter on the screen and

what we know of the world, but even more importantly, from the ways in

which Jennings organized images and sounds drawn from the real world to

create a credible model of the world on the screen.

Searles theoretical ideas are useful in several other ways. Ever since Jean

Rouch brought his clair camera and Perfectone tape recorder to Ghana and

made Le Maitre Fou, observational film makers have avoided expending very

much energy to helping their audiences understand what they were seeing

on the screen. The usual explanation often invoked purity, or

objectivity, or protecting against bias, and many audiences were

suitably confounded.

Implicit interpretation, by means of the selection of subject, structure,

frame, usable takes, sounds, and the other means of film making was

accepted as pure, or ethically superior to overt explanation narration,

because words somehow interfered with the proper allegedly unbiased

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apprehension of the film. The standard Frederick Wiseman-model

documentary makers response to a puzzled audiences was that the film

speaks for itself.

Searle helpfully points out that meanings, concepts, and

intentionality by themselves are never sufficient to determine the full

import of what is said or thought because they only function within a

Network of other intentionality and against a Background of capacities that

are not and could not be included in literal meaning, concepts, or

intentional states.xiv In other words, the meaning of a communication, a

shot, a sequence, a film, relies on the understanding of a rich bed of

contexts in which the communication itself resides.

The student documentary maker would be well advised to consider

his or her intentions and the intentional systems of the audience, as well as

the background of knowledge and abilities that the audience brings to the

screen. In plain language, it is useful for the student to deeply consider his

intentions and goals in the film (poesis, yet again) and give thought to the

predispositions, and the degree of knowledge and concern that both film

maker and audience bring to the documentary transaction. It is useful for

the audience to understand whats on the screen, and for the film maker to

understand that if the audience doesnt get it then it is a film makers

problem and not the problem of the audience.

In his book The Construction of Social Reality, xv Searle addresses the issue

of socially constructed reality. The title of his book is a sly word-play, by re-

ordering social construction to read construction of social " much the

same way as Marx re-ordered the title of Proudhons book Philosophy of

Poverty to entitle his book The Poverty of Philosophy. Like Marxs

response to Proudhon, it Searle gives a critique of the view that reality is a

social construct and exists only as it is subjectively perceived. For Prudhon,

poverty was a social construct. For Marx is was an objective fact. The

recognition of objective facts, people, objects and events that exist in the

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world whether or not we see them, is a most useful conjoining of theory and

practice for documentary film makers, The confounding of subjective

perception with what Noel Carroll, describes as post-modern skepticism

about whether the world exists apart from ourselves is endemic among

students, especially non-scientists, but for the documentary student, the

existence of an objective world is a fundamental concern, because it lies

directly on the cleavage plane between objective fact and subjectively

imagined fiction.

Searle helps students understand that there is indeed a real world out

there, that it is comprised of facts, and that the facts are of two types:

some facts are "brute facts" that they exist independently of what humans

think, and others are social facts, which depend for their existence on

human thought. The first sort are mental facts, such as that one is in pain,

and the physical facts that Mount Everest has snow and ice at its summit,

and hydrogen atoms have one electron.xvi

Examples of social facts, are that this piece of paper is a five dollar bill,

that he is a citizen of the U. S., and that the New York Giants won the 1991

Superbowl. Social facts exist as a layer superimposed on physical facts.

Thus, the physical fact of particular ink inscribed on specific paper in a

unique way is a physical fact. The social fact is that its a dollar bill, is

incontestably objective, too. If the ink and the paper and the inscription are

not correct, then we may argue about whether or not it is counterfeit, but

this can be objectively determined.

As a logician and a philosopher of language, Searle observes that At least

one of the functions of language is to communicate meanings from speakers

to hearers, and sometimes those meanings enable the communication to

refer to objects and states of affairs in the world that exist independently

of language.xvii Although film and video are not precisely languages, but are

language-like, the formulation still makes sense for documentary. We make

documentaries to communicate meanings from film makers to audience

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members, and sometimes those meanings enable the documentary to refer

to objects and states of the world that exist independently of language. The

process of acquiring and displaying images enables us to replace the verbal

description of objects and states of affairs in the real world with more

direct and less abstracted representations than words. The goal, not always

realized, is for the film maker and the audience member to share the same

thought about a reality independent of either.

What, then, is a useful way of helping students struggle with the idea of

truth in documentary? The correspondence theory in epistemology, which is

a pretty useful theory, states that truth is whether the things in the world

really are the way we say they are. In philosophical language, a statement is

true if and only if the statement corresponds with the facts. One of the

functions of language, and I would argue one of the functions of

documentary, is to truthfully represent how things are in the world by

ensuring that statements correspond to facts.

Nol Carrol asks whether the non-fiction film delivers truth? Does it

or can it represent the world in objective ways? The argument goes like this:

After all, the acts of framing and editorial choice are acts of selection, and

selectivity is necessarily biased. The problem is built into the very apparatus

of cinema. Since cinema is, by its very nature, selective, it is by its very

nature biased, and incapable of objectivity.xviiiBut is there something in the

preceding argument that makes nonfiction film any more incapable of

objectivity than, say, a sociological treatise? Does selectivity guarantee

bias? If thats the case, we may as well abandon the documentary

enterprise, and sociology, and science, all of which are based on the twin

ideas of selectivity and objectivity.

Carroll argues that selectivity isnt particularly unique to film. Every

mode of inquiry is selective, whether it be physics or history or journalism.

But if we dont consider that the selectively accumulated facts of history or

physics or economics or chemistry are exiled from objectivity in

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Carrolls words, why should we assume that nonfiction films can never, a

priori, be objective?

The Nia, Pinta, and Santa Maria, the boiling point of water at sea

level, the value of the Euro in U.S. dollars, sodium chloride are selectedfacts, but objective facts nevertheless. Searle suggests that if you dont

accept this, take your car to the post-modernist garage and listen to the

post-modernist theorist tell you that theres nothing wrong with your

carburetor, because after all, the carburetor is a selective social

construction.

Does selectivity necessarily entail bias? Carroll points out that

selectivity certainly invites bias, but it does not guarantee bias. Neither

does the non-fiction nature of documentary guarantee objectivity, but it

certainly allows it.

Protection against bias. and need to ensure of the objectivity of any

statement is not unique to film. All manner of discourses have protocols

that work to diminish the opportunity for bias. Do they work all the time?

Certainly not, but they work much, perhaps most, of the time. For thestudent, I would argue the most important protocol, the most important

protection against bias and assurance of truth, is self-awareness. Being

aware of what one is doing is a powerful way of encouraging self-regulation.

In documentary, the normative assumption is that the film maker tells the

truth, and bias or untruth is open to determination by colleagues and critics

in the public forum. After all, documentary film is not a private art.

As an example of how this works, consider the case of Michael

Moore and his film about the ethical failings of General Motors, Roger

and Me. To a great extent, the film, like many films, bases its

argument and analysis on causal connections and chronological

narrative. The argument is roughly that General Motors did something

in its self-interest, which caused bad things to happen to its workers.

In this more of argument, when the historical facts and causal

connections are distorted because of bias, the film maker is put in

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the uncomfortable position of defending a falsified argument, usually

on grounds that some higher truth justifies playing fast and loose

with facts and chronology. The film critic Pauline Kaels criticized

Roger and Me because events were presented out of chronological

order and the implied chain of causation was incorrect. A newspaper

reporter described Moores reaction as follows: Moore has heard

this criticism a lot lately. Yes, events are presented out of order in

his film, he says. ``So what? I'm tired of it. It avoids talking about the

politics of the story. Your story is not gonna be in the sequential

order you reported it in. So what's the accusation, that I'm a

journalist?xix

Essentially Moore is saying that the altering of chronology to

make causal connections for his noble purposes is well within the

canons of journalism, what one might describe as the history will

absolve me defense. Journalists frequently lose their jobs for that

sort of logic. Thus, the protocol of film criticism serves to guard

against bias.

But what is allowable? How much may the documentarian

creatively treat actuality? In my view, the appropriate standards of

objectivity depend on the context. Take, for example, the films of

the Canadian/Australian film maker Michael Rubbo. My favorite is

probably Daisy, which uses the objective events of Daisy de

Bellefeuilles, face-lift as an armature around which to construct a

meditation on the idea of physical beauty.

Daisy is a colleague of Rubbos at the National Film Board of

Canada.. Rubbo uses the tropes of observational documentary to

record the objective reality of Daisys facelift, but as he does in

many of his films, he introduces a deeply reflexive accompanying

through-line, which is his clearly personal, biased and somewhat

idiosyncratic meditation on the idea of beauty. Does the bias matter?

Hardly, because in the context of the film, he presents what Searle

would recognize as objects and states of the world that exist

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independently of language, and one side of a conversation into which

the audience member is invited to participate, on the meaning of the

face lift as a social fact.

There are other useful theories for documentary practice, butlittle time in which to discuss them in detail. I think that cognitive

theory is rich mine of ideas, especially as documentary intersects

with digital technologies and non-linear modes of presentation.

Knowing how human beings organize their perceptual and conceptual

worlds cannot but be useful.

In my own thinking, Ive been influenced by two books, that

are actually and specifically about documentary film, each deeply

influenced by Critical Realism, and intelligently in tune with the

interests and concerns of documentary film makers. Carl Plantingas

Rhetoric and Representation in Non-Fiction Filmxxand the somewhat

less well known What is Non-Fiction Cinema?xxiby Trevor Ponech, are

chock full of interesting and challenging ideas for students of

documentary production, and I recommend them with enthusiasm, as

ways to help our students learn how to tell really true stories.

iPresented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts from

August 10-15, 1998. Available on-line at http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Acti/ActiHanl.htmiiIstvn Mszros, Marxs Theory of Alienation, New York:1972, Harper Torchbooks, p. 103

iiiTorben Grodal. Emotions, Cognitions and Narrative Patterns in Film in Carl Plantinga and

Greg M. Smith, Passionate Views, Baltimore and London: 1998, Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, p. 127iv

Dorrit Cohn , The Distinction of Fiction, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, p.12v

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film As Art, 3rd

. ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1990. p.

55viBurke, Kenneth.. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: Univ. of California 1945p.XV

viiDavid Bordwell and Nol Carroll (eds), Post-theory : Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison,

University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.viii

John R. Searle, Literary Theory and its Discontents, New Literary History, 1994, 25:637667ix

Searle, (1994) p. 7x

Michael Renov, Introduction: The Truth About Non-Fiction in Theorizing Documentary,(ed.) Michael Renov. NY:Routledge, 1993, p. 3xi

ibid. p.7xii

Brian Winston, Fires Were Started, London: British Film Institute, 1999. 79p.xiii

Brian Winston, Claiming the Real, London : British Film Institute, 1995.xiv

Searle (1994) p. 6xv John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, New York: Free Press, 1995xvi

Searle, 1995, p.35

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http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Acti/ActiHanl.htmhttp://jenson.stanford.edu:9081/pls/sirwebdad/su_in_get?key_action=fsearch&inrowid=19578&sid=4087&pgcnt=2&lnum=1&authid=http://jenson.stanford.edu:9081/pls/sirwebdad/su_in_get?key_action=fsearch&inrowid=19578&sid=4087&pgcnt=2&lnum=1&authid=http://jenson.stanford.edu:9081/pls/sirwebdad/su_in_get?key_action=fsearch&inrowid=19578&sid=4087&pgcnt=2&lnum=1&authid=http://jenson.stanford.edu:9081/pls/sirwebdad/su_in_get?key_action=fsearch&inrowid=19578&sid=4087&pgcnt=2&lnum=1&authid=http://jenson.stanford.edu:9081/pls/sirwebdad/su_in_get?key_action=fsearch&inrowid=19578&sid=4087&pgcnt=2&lnum=1&authid=http://jenson.stanford.edu:9081/pls/sirwebdad/su_in_get?key_action=fsearch&inrowid=19578&sid=4087&pgcnt=2&lnum=1&authid=http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Acti/ActiHanl.htm


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xvii

John R. Searle. Rationality and Realism, What is at Stake Daedalus, Fall, 1993, p. 61xviii

Nol Carrol, Nonfiction Film and Postmodernist Skepticism, in David Bordwell and NoelCarroll (eds.) Post-theory : Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison : University of WisconsinPress, 1996, p.283xix

Sheryl James, A hometown film maker's drama in Wheel Life // Film drives home a point

about GM and the fall of Flint, Mich., St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg; Jan 21, 1990;xxCarl R. Plantinga, Rhetoric and Representation in Non-Fiction Film, Cambridge ; New York

: Cambridge University Press, 1997.xxi

Trevor Ponech, What is Non-Fiction Cinema On the Very Idea of Motion PictureCommunication, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1999.

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