Docudrama
The British Tradition
Table of Contents
1) What is ‘docudrama’?
2) The British tradition in docudrama
3) The British docudrama tradition in the 60s
What is docudrama?
• A film that re-creates and dramatizes real events,
real situation or occurrences in history, often
recent history, by blending fact and fiction.
• Movies that purport to be factual recreations of
newsworthy people or occurrences.
• Popular staples in TV in the 60s and 70s.
What is docudrama?
• More accurate interpretations of reality than
other fiction films
• ‘Non-fiction Drama’ (oxymoron) indicates
that the docudrama borders on the fields of
invention and reality, and of imagination
and fact.
The British Tradition
• The documentary movement in the 30s led
by John Grierson and the war-time
documentaries of Humphrey Jennings,
Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watts, Basil
Wright, etc.
→ Inspirations for the post-war
docudrama filmmakers
The British Tradition
• Humphrey Jennings (19071950), painter, poet,
filmmaker, journalist and
historian
• Maker of experimental and
creative documentaries
The British Tradition
• His tightly scripted documentaries blend
vérité-like footage with reconstructed and
restaged scenes.
• This process often blurs the line between
documentary and fiction
The British Tradition
• Fires Were Started (1943)
about a fire unit working
through the blitz
• Shot during the days of
the blitz combining the
newsreel and real footage
with restaged one.
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• The Dramatised Documentary Group in
BBC
⇨ ‘story documentary’
• ‘[we wanted] to stretch reality’ – Ken Loach
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• Peter Watkins (1935-)
• Established an
innovative style
combining a drama
acted out ‘real people’
with newsreel
techniques
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• Culloden (1964)
• A modern TV crew
(anachronistic)
follows the build-up,
the fighting of and the
bloody aftermath to
the 1764 battle of
Culloden.
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• Bold montage,
revealing close-ups
and hand-held
camera deconstruct
the myth of the battle
and the conventions
of costume drama
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• The War Game (1965)
• Does not reconstruct
but preconstruct the
nuclear fallout in
southern England.
• Juxtaposes interviews,
graphics, raw data
with staged horrific
images
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• What Watkins refers
as ‘you are there’
style.
• Banned till 1985 but
won the special
award in Venice and
the Oscar for the Best
Documentary
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
‘The film is in the guise of a documentary
and the action sequences are broken by the
commentaries of doctors, psychiatrists,
churchmen and strategists. While the
presentation seems authoritative, the film is
straight propaganda for the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament.’ Evening Standard,
8 Feb. 1966
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• Ken Loach (1935 - )
• Maker of TV drama
turned filmmaker
• Realist filmmaker per
excellence
• Makes a drama like a
documentary
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• Cathy Come Home (1968)
• Made for the Wednesday Play
• Drama completely made out of the studio and
harnessed to documentary techniques
The British Tradition (in the 60s)
• Unknown actors achieve uncanny naturalism
through improvisation.
• The outcome is as close to documentary as a
drama can be.
The British Tradition (contemporary)
• Paul Greengrass (1935 - )
• Worked as a director in ITV
for World in Action
(investigative
documentaries)
• Co-author of Spycatcher
with Peter Wright (former
MI5)
The British Tradition (contemporary)
• Greengrass moved to TV drama creating The
One That Got Away (1996) about SAS in the
Gulf War and The Fix (1997) about the fictional
story of corruption in football.
• The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999) the
story of a black youth, whose murder was not
properly investigated by the police.
• Bloody Sunday (2002) about the 1972 massacre
of Catholics in Northern Ireland by the British
security force.
The British Tradition (contemporary)
• United 93 (2006) - the highjack of the United
Airlines Flight 93
• The filmmakers claim that it was produced with
‘full’ support of the families of passengers.
The British Tradition (contemporary)
• Kevin Macdonald (1967 - ) - grandson of Emeric
Pressburger and brother of Andrew Macdonald
(producer of Trainspotting)
• Documentary filmmaker - One Day in September
(1999)
The British Tradition (contemporary)
• Touching the Void (2003) Joe Simpson and Simon Yates
attempted to climb the
Peruvian mountain Siula
Grande in 1985. They reached
the summit but during the
descent Simpson fell and
broke his leg - and Yates had
to make the agonising
decision to cut the rope.