Announcements
• Exams will be distributed in your section
meetings after next Tuesday.
• Screening in Section: Crisis, (Robert Drew &
Associates) Richard Leacock, James
Lipscomb, D.A. Pennebaker, & Hope Ryden,
1963
• Next week screening and discussion, Land
without Bread, by Luis Bunuel, 1932
Paper Tiger TV
Wed Feb 13, 7pm, Free
Vis Arts Performance Space
A presentation by an alternative Television
collective that has been active since 1981.
Documentary - Non-Fiction
Film and Video Making
Representing Reality
Defining Documentary
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Non-fiction?
Non-narrative?
Instructive or educational?
Truthful? Objective?
Every media-object can be understood as a document.
(The Great Train Robbery?)
Documentary can be understood as a set of practices of
media-making, distribution, and viewing/reception.
The Internet Archive: http://archive.org
Defining Documentary
“Documentaries are the creative treatment of actuality”
- John Grierson, Critic and Filmmaker
“Documentaries are representations of reality” - Bill
Nichols, Historian and Theorist
“Documentaries are performed reality” - Stella Bruzzi,
Historian and Theorist
The Form of Documentary
Images: Disparate image and sound sources (original
footage/recordings, archival, dramatized,
photographs, paper documents)
Editing: Evidentiary
Organization: Development of idea / argument
The Form of Documentary
1.
Offer a likeness or depiction that has relationship to
the familiar…but see it anew
2.
Stand for or represent the interests of others
3.
Make a case for a particular view or interpretation
Form in Documentary
“Since there is nothing natural about the representation of reality in
documentary, documentary filmmakers are acutely aware that all
there choices shape the meanings they choose” Aufterheide
The history of documentary is a history of media producers creatively
struggling with how to represent or engage reality.
Some key concerns that have driven decisions about formal
conventions:
 Authenticity and honesty - to be true to the subject and avoid
misleading viewers.
 Agency - to facilitate action on the part of the viewer, allow for the
voice or desires of the subject, etc.
Technical changes have shaped these conventions as well, such as
availability of lightweight camera, introduction of TV and video, etc
Four Tendencies of Documentary
Documentary historian and theorist, Michael Renov:
1. To record, reveal or preserve
2. To persuade or promote
3. To analyze or interrogate
4. To express
Out of what (public) contexts and for what reasons do
these tendencies develop?
What means do filmmakers use to achieve these ends?
Emergence of Documentary
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Film emerged in the context of the late European
colonialism and US expansion.
Early documentary practice intersects with
practices of ethnography and anthropology.
At the same time it is seen as a tool in the service
of modern national-building and war (propaganda).
Envisioned as addressing the difficulty of social and
political participation in a complex world. Conceived
in contrast to entertainment cinema; and as an
extension of popular press.
“The importance of Documentaries is linked to a notion
of the public as a social phenomenon”- Aufterheide
Subject and Voice of Documentary
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What is being represented? And why?
Who is being looked at?
Who is looking?
Who is speaking for whom?
Who is speaking about whom?
Who is being spoken to?
Can the ‘subject’ speak about themselves?
Voice of Documentary
Who is “speaking” about or for whom is an important
characteristic of documentaries:
I (film/media-maker) speak about them to you.
It (media) speaks about them to us.
I or we speak about us to you.
I facilitate them speaking to you/us/themselves.
Styles or Modes of Documentary
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Expository
Poetic
Observational
Reflexive
Participatory
Performative
These six categories are suggested by Bill Nichols
Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty,
1922
 Expository / observational / poetic?
 Use of narrative as a device - Flaherty argued that
this was more true to his intentions of presenting a
humanizing view of the Inuit.
 Anachronistic representation of Inuit
 Didn’t credit actors with their actual names
 Projecting foreign values such as nuclear family
Inuit Broadcasting Corp: http://inuitbroadcasting.ca/
(A contemporary example of self-determined media)
Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga
Vertov, Soviet Union, 1928
 Poetic / observational / reflexive?
 Argued that documentary was a more appropriate
use of film to the modern world than narrative fiction.
 Kino-Eye: argued that the camera extended and
transformed vision in ways that were superior to the
human eye. At the same time he saw the role of
editing (human agency) as central to making sense
or a truthful representation out of the chaos of
modern life.
Expository Documentary
 Argumentative logic / rhetorical frame
 Verbal commentary; authoritative “voice of
god” narration
 Single perspective, not acknowledging
subjectivity
 Addresses the viewer directly
 Evidentiary editing - serves the argument
primarily, crosses space and time
 Image/sound - images respond to sound
Expository Documentary
The Drifters, 1928, John Grierson. Great Britain.
A film on herring fishermen. Influenced by
Flaherty’s films; sought to apply the form to
local/national issues.
The River, Pare Lorentz, 1937. Produced for the
Farm Works Administration to promote the
Roosevelt’s New Deal and the TVA.
Listen to Britain, Humphrey Jennings. 1942
Poetic or Impressionist mode
• Lyrical
• Photogenie - overwhelmed by sensation;
defamiliarizing
• Stylized / aestheticized: “historical world” broken up
into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted.
• Might blur fact and fiction
• Sometimes uses strong musical elements in
soundtrack
• The subjective position of the film(maker) is more
evident.
Example: Rain, Joris Ivens, 1928 (Dutch)
Observational Documentary
• A highly visual approach: the shots tell the story
• Extensive use of long takes and close-ups.
• Usually lacks an overarching narrative--follows the
unfolding of observed situation or event.
• Attempts to record events spontaneously, with
minimum of intervention.
• Sound is mostly diegetic. Absence of narrator or
voiceover. Dedicated to presentation of real-time
events
• Direct Cinema (the American counterpart Cinema
Verité) was dedicated to a "fly on the wall"
approach.
Observational Documentary
• This mode is often described as a critical response to the
expository form. (Renouncing its moralist tone and rejecting
its disembodied, authoritative "the voice of God" narration.)
• Made possible by new technologies: lightweight, quiet, syncsound cameras (magnetic sound) enable field interviews,
and allowed the story to be told through the action itself
rather than dubbed narration.
Observational Documentary
Primary, Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, James
Lipscomb, DA Pennebaker, & Hope Ryden, 1961.
High School, Frederick Wiseman, 1968
An American Family, PBS, 1973
http://subcin.com/americanfamily.html
Reflexive Documentary
 Apparatus revealed (filmmaker, crew and/or aspects of
production process enter the frame or narrative)
 The text is about viewer / filmmaker relationship
 Reveals the perspective of the filmmaker - perhaps his or
her own voice
 Confronts/readjusts our assumptions as viewers
 Can be reflexive from formal and political perspectives
Examples:
Reassemblage, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1978
Land without Bread, Bunuel, 1932
Human Remains, Jay Rosenblatt, 1999
Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 1988
Bus 174, José Padilha, 2002 (Brazil)
Land Without Bread, Luis
Bunuel, 1932
• Parodying conventions of expository
mode used in ethnographic film and
travelogues
• Reflexivity--aims to make viewers selfconscious of their and the filmmaker’s
relationship to the subjects
Thin Blue Line
Errol Morris, 1988
• Film explores the evidence in murder of a Dallas
police officer in 1976 was entered as evidence in a
retrial that overturned the original conviction .
• Heightens our awareness of the subjective nature of
knowledge and memory
• Interrogates POV
• Employs self-consciously dramatic use of music and
graphics
Participatory (Interactive)
Documentary
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Attempts to confront the social and power dynamics that occur during
filmmaking and structure a film's meaning.
• Filmmaker and crew's relationships to the subject are more evident or
embodied in film. They are participant-observers.
• The filmmaker may participate, intervene in, or provoke the events or
actions being filmed.
• Sometimes the filmmaker attempts to shift aspects of control of the
production into the subjects' hands. For example: an ethnographer who
gives cameras to to his subjects or allows them to determine what shots
should be included.
Participatory Documentary
Cinema Verite (and Direct Cinema to a lesser degree)
Examples:
• Chronicle of a Summer, Jean Rouch, 1960 (France)
• Grey Gardens, Maysles Brothers, 1976
• George, Henry Cora and Grahame Weinbren, 1998
• Capturing the Friedmans, by Andrew Jarecki, 2003
• Navajo Talking Picture, Arlene Bowman, 1986
• When Billy Broke His Head, Billy Golfus & David E.
Simpson, 1994
Performative (or Personal)
Documentary
• Expression of embodied knowledge
• Attempts to convey understanding that can not
simply be observed
• Filmmaker is or has intimate relationship to subject
• Meaning expressed poetically, through gesture,
reenactment, etc
Examples:
• Tongues Untied, Marlon Riggs, 1989
• The Body Beautiful, Ngozi Onwarah, 1991
• History and Memory, Rea Tejira, 1991
Godmilow: Kill the
Documentary As We Know It
 Documentaries are supposedly sober
unauthored texts
 Wants documentary to shift - become poetry,
speculative fiction, critique, self-conscious
 Fearful of the ideology they hide
 Her manifesto is inspired by the Dogme 95
manifesto/ vow of chastidy (Lars von Trier
and Thomas Vinterberg)
 http://www.dogme95.dk/the_vow/vow.html
Godmilow: Kill the
Documentary As We Know It
• Documentary form has great respect as
a way of achieving truth
• Claim the real - privileged position
Godmilow: Kill the Documentary
As We Know It
• Knowing is feeling better about oneself as
viewer - knowing is enlightenment
• First world - looking at third world
• Middle / upper class - looking at lower
class
Godmilow’s Manifesto
1.
Don't produce "real" time and space: your audience
is in a movie theatre, in comfortable chairs.
2. Don't produce the surface of things: have a real
subject and a real analysis -- or at least an
intelligent proposition – that is larger than the
subject of the film. If you forget to think about this
before starting to shoot, find it in the editing room,
and then put it in the film, somehow.
Godmilow’s Manifesto
3. Don’t produce freak shows of the oppressed, the
different, the criminal, the primitive. Please don't
use your compassion as an excuse for social
pornography. Leave the poor freaks alone.
4. Don’t produce awe for the rich, the famous, the
talented, the highly successful: they are always
everywhere and we feel bad enough about
ourselves already. The chance to envy, or hate
them, in the cinema doesn't help anybody.
Godmilow’s Manifesto
5. Don’t make films that celebrate "the old ways"
and mourn their loss. Haven’t you yourself
enjoyed change? How are the "old ways" people
different from you?
6. Keep an eye on your own middle-class bias, and
on your audience's: don’t make a film that feeds it.
Remember that you are producing human
consciousness in people who are very susceptible
to suggestion... and alone in the dark.
Godmilow’s Manifesto
7. Don't address an audience of "rational animals":
we have not yet evolved beyond the primitive
urges of hatred, violence, and exploitation of the
poor and the weak.
8. Try not to exploit your social actors: just being
seen in your film is not enough compensation for
the use of their bodies, voices and experience.
Godmilow’s Manifesto
9. Whatever you do, don't make "history". If you
can't help yourself, try to remember that you’re
just telling a story -- and at the very least, find a
way to acknowledge your authorship.
10. Watch that music: what's it doing? who is it
conning?
11. Leave your parents out of this.
Access: Video Technology and
Documentary Activism
• Introduction of real-time playback.
• Video became available in the age of street activism.
• In the early period (late 1960s through the 1970s)
there was little distinction between video art and
activist video as both were involved in street
documentary.
• Video was seen as alternative to broadcast TV.
• It had an immediacy not found in broadcast TV.
• It is much more interactive and personal than the film
movements it draws upon.
Access: Video Technology and
Documentary Activism
Early West Coast Video Collectives
 Four More Years, 1972, TVTV (True Value Television)
 Media Burn, and The Eternal Frame 1975, Ant Farm
Reality TV
• Appropriates the formal styles of observational and
interactive modes. (direct cinema and cinema verité)
• Truth is associated with formal conventions from low
budget and home video technology. For example: raw
footage or jerky camera work are used to suggest fact or
reality.
• Re-enactment is common.
• Unlike direct cinema or cinema verite: the reality of
reality TV is associated with the exceptional, the
extreme, or the crisis.
• The authority of the film or program often relies on
experts or insiders associated with government or law
enforcement.