Assignment 1: The DOCUMENTARY- a CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Documentaries are experiencing a surge in popularity demonstrated by ‘blockbusters’ such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Super-Size Me and An Inconvenient Truth.

In this article, I will discuss the history, development, core areas and practitioners of documentary filmmaking. Additionally, I will critically analyze the documentary format and what it offers as an art form.

Documentaries originated from actual lives of people when filmmakers simply turned their cameras on real-life events. The very first films called actuality films go back to pre-1900 using footage of actual events and places.

 

La sortie des usines Lumière (1895)

La sortie des usines Lumière made by The Lumiere Brothers is considered the earliest actuality film. The Lumiere Brothers who are known for the principals of the actuality genre in France used a camera that could only hold 50 feet of film stock, so their films were short unedited clips capturing life around them. They used the term Actualités as the descriptor of the genre.

 

La sortie des usines Lumière (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, 1895)

 

Moscow Clad in Snow (1909)

Moscow Clad in Snow directed by Joseph Louis Mundwiller is a short silent documentary in four parts about winter in Moscow. The camera first pans the Kremlin and Marshal’s Bridge, then the mushroom and fish market where common people work and shop, then some people in Petrovsky Park, and the last part is a general view of Moscow. The silent film was given the music of Alexander Borodin.

 

 

Nanook of the North (1922) 

Nanook of the North by American filmmaker Robert Flaherty profiles a real Eskimo family life. This silent documentary is considered as the first original documentary with elements of docudrama. Robert Flaherty used a Bell and Howell camera and some lighting equipment to shoot hours of film which took him one year. He captured the struggles of the Inuits and a man named Nanook and his family, living in the Canadian Arctic Circle.

 

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) 

Man with a Movie Camera, a Soviet silent documentary by Dziga Vertov, demonstrates the urban life of Soviet cities in which Vertov gathered the raw footages by having a cameraman going into the streets, homes, and factories to record their lives. Then Vertov thought that constructing a story might make the whole film less authentic, so he followed a set of rules for the process of editing in a way that tells the truth which he called the Kino Pravda method, or film truth. Man with a Movie Camera is famous for its cinematic effects such as double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, extreme close-ups and self-reflexive visuals.

 

Nightmail (1936)

The major exponent of a poetic-realist approach to documentary, Grierson, made Nightmail as an informational film about the mail train from London to Edinburgh. It emphasized the poetic elements of film form which resulted in some criticism with some accusing him of neglecting political and social issues in favor of celebrating industrial machinery rather than human beings.

 

Direct Cinema (1950s-1970s)

The next movement began in the United States which was aimed at social and political issues in a direct way that presents events exactly as they happen without the involvement of their filmmakers. The fundamental feature of this style was following the character during a crisis with a moving, handheld camera to film more personal spontaneous reactions, even though they are in control of the editing process. Don’t Look Back and Grey Gardens by pioneers of the style, D.A. Pennebaker and The Mayles Brothers were the origins of modern social documentary Supersize Me.

 

 

 Cinéma-vérité

The next movement began in the United States which was aimed at social and political issues in a direct way that presents events exactly as they happen without the involvement of their filmmakers. The fundamental feature of this style was following the character during a crisis with a moving, handheld camera to film more personal spontaneous reactions, even though they are in control of the editing process. Don’t Look Back and Grey Gardens by pioneers of the style, D.A. Pennebaker, and The Mayles Brothers were the origins of modern social documentary Supersize Me.

 

Mockumentaries

The use of Cinéma-vérité in which the filmmakers used the codes and conventions of documentaries which led to a style of documentary filmmaking which depicts fictional events to comment on a current event or to parody the documentary form itself.

(Zelig, 1983) A black-and-white 1983 film (NAME?!) made American mockumentary film by Woody Allen which presents an enigmatic character who takes on characteristics of strong personalities around him can be considered as a good early example of a mockumentary.

 

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

The rock music masterpiece mockumentary directed by Rob Reiner portrays the heavy metal band Spinal Tap with three actors playing musical instruments and speaking with mock English accents. Rob Reiner used the mockumentary style in interviewing the characters to make the film. He appears as Marty Di Bergi in the film.

 

 

 

Some historical documentaries such as Eyes on the Prize by Henry Hampton, 4 Little Girls by Spike Lee, 500 Years Later on slavery by Owen Shahadah and The Civil War by Ken Burns demonstrate a distinctive voice with a very specific point of views.

Modern Documentaries

Bowling for Columbine (2002)

Michael Moore brought an obvious change to the face of the documentary style of filmmaking when he made Bowling for Columbine in 2002. The film demonstrates the fear-mongering in American society contributing to an epidemic of gun violence. Moore challenges the audience with new ideas of the situation in Columbine which he believes caused the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

Based on Box Office, the documentary genre has become successfully improved with examples such as Fahrenheit 9/11, SuperSize Me, Food, Earth, Religulous, March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth.

Its nature has expanded since the Cinéma-vérité period, technical advances have made an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject possible.

 

References: