 Congrats on being so voluable: discussion last session was
really cool -- I'm really impressed and hope we can keep the
energy level up! Already off my syllabus...
 Reminder re enrolling in BlackBoard...
 Those of you not here last class: pls see me after class -need to assign you to a discussion group
 Waiting list people check in with Marcus?
 Reading journals for about 2/3 of you...keep plugging!
Questions?
So...what did we learn last week?
{PPT slides}
LECTURE II: The Prehistory of Documentary Film
So…where do documentary films begin?
The invention of the movies is the culmination of
1

several centuries of toys, gizmos, whirly gigs meant largely
to amuse the viewer with the illusion of people, animals,
everyday things in motion.
The range of such amusements was enormous:

ombres chinoise (shadow plays),

moving dioramas and panoramas...

magik lanterns

all manners of moving gewgaws and whirlygigs aimed at
tricking the eye.
SHOW Mickey Magic Langern
In the mid to late 19th century, inventors and enterprising tinkers
upped the ante in the attempt to capture images of the real
world and make them come alive.
Time of great technological advances in general…

the thick of the industrial revolution...
2

the rise of a new middle class just clamoring for amusing
ways to spend their newly found free time.

In the 1820's and 30's,

Thomas Wedgewood in Britain

Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre in France
pretty much simultaneously working on rudimentary
photographic technology.
As revolutionary as these inventions were,
they still didn't push the image beyond the flat, unmoving
surface of the photographic plane
But things were brewing…
The real history of the movies may be said to have started with a
completely whacked out Brit expatriate named Eadweard
Muybridge.

Born in 1830, (originally named Edward James Muggeridge)
3

Muybridge moved to the US in 1851as a publisher's
representative.

He rambled West in the early1860's --stage coach accident - returned to England to convalesce...taught himself
photography

Set up shop as book seller and photographer in San
Francisco in1867 and gained recognition for a prize-winning
series of dramatic Yosemite views. (stage coach

Around this time he became the official photographer with
the American military presence in recently purchased
Alaska. He took over 2000 photographs of the American Far
West between 1868 and 1873.
During his time in San Francisco, Muy got to know Leland
Stanford,
former gov of California and one of the 4 directors of the
Central Pacific Railroad. Big deep pockets guy who's social
climbing wife, Jane, bankrolled that other university down the
penninsula
4
In 1872 Stanford enlisted EM to help him settle an odd bet (said to
be $25,000--a staggering amount of dough). Stanford wanted to
prove that at some point in a running horses stride, all four feet
left the ground
Using the fastest shutter available, Muybridge attempted to
photograph one of Stanford's prize pony's, Occident, in motion at a
track in Sacramento, He was able to provide only the faintest image,
but sufficient to show that at certain stages a trotting horse did have
all four feet off the ground
Stanford's bet would have to wait a couple of year for more definitive
proof
Muybridges photographic experiments were interrupted by a little
affair in which he was accused (and later acquitted) of killing his
wife's lover.
Beats it for South America.
Returns in 1877 to resume his work.
5

This time, Muybridge tried brilliant and singular
experiment.

On June 15, 1878, a clear and sunny day in Palo Alto,
amid a gathering of art and sports journalists,
Muybridge set up a series of evenly spaced trip wires
across the track attached the shutters of 12 cameras.

When Stanford's prize horse, ran the track, Muybridge
captured a sequence of photographs that proved
Stanford's bet.
SHOW MUY FILM CLIPS
Muybridge later perfected this technique by increasing the number of
cameras.

Even more startlingly: he found a way to print the
sequential images on a circular photographic plate,
which, when rotated in front of strong light source and
projected on a screen, provided the primitive illusion of
movement. Called this gizmo a zoopraxiscope
6

Muyerbidge's invention like earlier moving image toys relied
upon a physiological phenomenon known as
PERSISTENCE OF VISION.
SHOW DOG
Muybridge's experiments had a huge influence on other inventors
{PPT SLIDE}
In France the physician Etienne-Jules Marey had also been working
on the problem of capturing animals and humans in motion (he had
corresponded with Muybridge).

In the 1880's invented a gizmo he called "une fusil
photographique" -- a photographic gun for capturing
photographic sequences of humans birds and other animals
in motion…multiple images captured on the same
photographic plate.
7
These experiments didn't escape the attention of another brilliant
inventor…Thomas Edison.
EDISON/PHONOGRAPH
A year before Muybridge's experiments in Palo Alto, Edison
unveiled another, perhaps more startling invention--the
phonograph.

Edison had met with both Muybridge and Marey.in the late
1880's…the potential of "moving pictures" whetted his inventor
and businessman's appetite.

Edison put one of his trusted lieutenant's W.K.L.Dixon on the
project.

In an attempt to protect his future, he filed a patent on October
17, 1888, describing his ideas for a device that would "do for
the eye what the phonograph does for the ear.". He called it a
"Kinetoscope," using the Greek words "kineto" meaning
"movement" and "scopos" meaning "to watch."
8
Although the project interested Edison, his main interest in the
invention seems to have been to provide visual accompanyment to
his phonograph.
Edison's motion picture had more than a few shortcoming
{SHOW PPT}

Edison's camera was a monsterously huge contraption…the
camera--which had to remain fixed due to its size and
weight--was situated in a kind of rambling lean-to studio in
West Orange New Jersey, which was nick-named THE
BLACK MARIA.

Filming was dependent on natural sunlight and the subjects
of the film had to be brought in front of the camera, filmed at
a fixed distance from the camera against a dark backdrop,
devoid of context.
9
Edison's earliest films were not projected for audiences at all…:
they were initially produced and marketed as a single-viewer peep
show … carnivals, midways, nickelodeons…
First copyrighted film: Fred Ott's sneeze
In general, Edison showed only passing interest in the invention…at
least not early on..
The real breakthroughs were happening across the Atlantic in
France.
On a cold and blustery night in Paris--December 28, 1895, in the
backroom of a café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, a
revolution took place.
From the back of the room, a small box projected a moving image of
workers leaving a factory against a screen... They appeared to be
walking off the screen into the the theater itself...
10
Audiences were dumbfounded...
This most definitely was NOT the kind of theatrical spectacle most
audiences of the day were used to…these were images that captured
life and hurled them at the audience.
When a similar showing was held the following year that featured a a
moving image of a train entering the railroad station in the town of
Ciotat, members of the audience reportedly cowered in fear, ran for
the back of the café, or fled into the street in terror.
Maxim Gorky reporting on the exhibition:
"Last nite I was in the kingdom of shadows - it is terrifying to
see, but it is the movement of shadows. Suddenly something
clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen.
It speeds straight at you -- Watch out! It seems as though it will
plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a
ripped sack of lacerated flesh and broken fragments this hall
and building, so full of women, wine, music, and vice.
11
Discuss: Does this huge cognitive revolution have any
counterpart today…?
Is anything as transformative human perception and culture?
Can anyone raised in the past century put yourself in the place
of these first movie audiences? Or are we too worked over…
What part of the experience would fascinate you the most?
*****This startling event and the invention that made it possible were
the handiwork of two brothers from Lyon, Auguste and Louis Lumiere
Sons of a prosoperous factory owner (leading manufacturer of
photographic equipment in europe), both lumieres grew up with
around photography and photographic equipment…
In the early 1890's Louis began experimenting and tinkering with
Edison's primitive kinetoscope. What he came up with changed the
course of the movies:
12
 Unlike Edisons elephepant of a camera, Lumiere's camera, which
he called the "Cinematographe" weighed only 16 lbs-- less than
1/100th the weight of the Edison camera.
 It was powered by a hand-crank (unlike edison's electrically-driven
contraption) and could easily be carried into the streets.
 Just as significant was the fact that the camera not only shoot the
filmed but also developed and projected it--unlike Edison's peep
show…
If you were the inventor of the first portable camera…with
no film vocabulary, no movie-going and little movie-making
experience, What would you film? How would you film it?
What do home movie enthusiasts film?
Realism
The Lumieres and other early filmmakers inevitably turned to one of
several subjects: perhaps the most common was life on the street.
13
Both brothers rejected the theatre as a model for motion pictures.
Instead, their express interest was in capturing "Vie sur le vif" -- life
being lived…early films did just that: babies being fed; trains coming
and going; workmen working, workers leaving a factory. The
Lumieres their called short pieces (usually no longer than a minute)
ACTUALITIES…
The Lumieres, Edison, other citizens of the late 19th century, had
certainly been exposed to prevailing trends in the arts. One of
movement which had currency at this time in both literature and
visual arts was -- Realism.
Realism attempted

to create objective representation of the world based on
impartial observation of contemporary life…

it sought to portray both the surface look of a subject and the
psychological underpinnings beneath this surface.

Realism was consciously democratic, including in its subjectmatter and audience activities and social classes previously
considered unworthy of representation in high art
14
This artistic trend toward recording the visible facts of everyday life,
combined with the newness and technological limits of the new
moving picture medium, undoubtedly shaped the subject matter of
the Lumieres earliest films.
The notion that film could be shaped and used to tell a story or
to create a narrative would be a good twenty years in coming.
................
If these were perfectly ordinary things--things that could be seen
everyday on the street--what were early audiences reacting to so
enthusiastically… ???

fidelity of the images to their subject (even more so than
photography and certainly more so than painting): direct
evidence of what the camera saw…

The novelty of motion itself held the audience in thrall

A fascination with the surface look of the world.
15
The voice of the filmmaker--the filmmakers point of view,
shaping of the images--didn't have to be present to enthrall
audiences at this point .
These images seem to provide an unprecedented window
into the real/historical world…a revelation and sense of
seeing things previously obscured or at least overlooked.
SHOW LUMIERE FIRST FILMS (62 min)
Watch these very closely…
QUESTIONS:

Are these films really straight reportage…or do they bear
glimmerings of a "voice" and style shaped by the filmmaker?

Any glimmerings of feature films or narrative films? (i.e. film
doing something more than reporting?)
LECTURE III
16
From that first December showing onward, the cinematographe
proved to be a smash popular success.
The lumieres were first and foremost businessmen…the enormous
commercial potential of their invention wasn't lost on them.
Almost immediately, they chartered and trained a small army of
cameramen/projectionists to fan out over Europe and Asia--capturing
new and increasingly exotic locals and happenings, showing these
films to audiences in music halls and cafes, auditoriums and other
urban meeting places, and later, rural villages and fairs.
Often, foreign concessionaries shared the revenues…they rented the
hall and publicized the events…but the Lumiere's jealously guarded
the technology.
SHOW LUMIERE foreign films
17
In these early days of MP, the Lumieres easily maintained the world
monopoly on film distribution …
Unlike Edison, they early realized the huge market potential of their
inventions. They were shrewd businessmen with a tightly efficient and
well-oiled marketing organization. The technology they had
developed was tailor-made for spreading the new medium far and
wide: it was portable, allowed a steady supply of new content.
Audiences were in love with--intoxicated with-- product.
Edison quickly saw that his kinetoscope peep shows were simply not
competition of projected movies

moved into taking over development of his own projected
film (which he called the Vitoscope and premiered in New
York a few months before the Lumiere cinematescope
reached the US.
18
Within ten years, motion picture technology (both Lumiere's invention
and parallel developments in Great Britain and the US) had spread
globally.
New motion picture companies sprang up like crabgrass. Most of
these companies turned to the portable camera to make their fortune.
Their stock in trade was still largely non-fiction (or at least quasifiction):

actualities,

travel films (what the french called documentaires),

expedition films,

educationals,

newsreels.

Although Lumiere-style travelling exhibitions continued throughout the
last decades of the 19th Century, fixed movie theaters began to be
more an more common fixtures in the urban landscape.
19
Despite the immense popularity and success of the Lumieres'
worldwide organization, in the late 1890's the Brothers withdrew
from exhibition tours and film distribution.
Louis Lumiere had always contended that "The Cinema Is an
Invention without a future." He contended that audiences would
not continue to pay to gaze upon events which they could witness
themselves on the streets.
The brothers turned their commercial attention to selling their
cinematographe to others who wished to make a go at this "doomed
medium."
And in some sense, Louis was right.
As audience sophistication increased, patience with "life on the hoof"
and movement for movement's sake seemed to decrease. As Brian
Wilson has said: by the late 1890's,
"audiences required of the new medium what they expected of
older media: stories, narrative with beginnings, middles,
20
climaxes, denouements, and ends. And it was the fiction film
that was to provide this age old want."
This is what non-fiction filmmaking was competing with by the turn of
the century
Magic of Melies DVD 1099
Great Train Robbery (1903) DVD 1096
Although it may not look like it, Edwin S. Porter's Grt Train Robbery
revolutionized movie storytelling…HOW? A completely new form of
art…movies are suddenly able to deal with stories--with the treatment
of time and action-- in ways that are unique in the history of art.
By 1900, production companies were beginning to crank out "story
films" for hungry audiences. At this time, Edison's Biograph had
become America's foremost producer. It made at least one story film
a month. Many of these films, notably THE ESCAPED LUNATIC and
PERSONAL, were "hits" available only to theaters subscribing to
Biograph's own exhibition service.
21
Fiction film at this time went into a sort of artistic tailspin.
No longer content or economically able to simply document daily
unadorned life of bourgeoise subjects, non-fiction filmmakers turned
to increasingly exotic subjects…far away places, royalty, the
presidency, dramatic world events, such as wars and disasters.
There was often a sense that actuality was, in itself, no longer a
strong enough draw. What to do when the historical world doesn't
give you the kind of images audiences demand? You make them up,
forge them, restage them to suit dramatic tastes. And if the
spectacle took liberties with reality…audiences didn't seem to care…
Fact and fantasy in the popular imagination at the turn of the century
wasn't all that clearly dilineated in any case…The real world (or a
reasonable facsimile) was enough to hold the audiences imagination
and attention.
The wonder of the image, the ability to tickle the imagination was the
point…the medium was still largely the message, and reality seemed
22
to be whatever was being projected on the screen. After 1910 these
bits of synthesized reality increasingly made their way into newsreels
which had initially been developed by European companies such as
Pathe and Gaumont and which spread rapidly to the US. These were
compilations of clips dealing with current events and famous people,
fads, fashions, and public frivolities.
SHOW CLIP FROM DAWN OF THE EYE…
In the latter part of the 19th Century other things were happening that
shaped audience tastes and filmmaking directions. US and British
colonialism was cranking into gear, bringing Western nations into
unprecedented contact with foreign lands and cultures (often at the
point of a gun). There was a growing fascination in the West with the
exoticism of far away lands and peoples. The colonial push also
continued to provide fresh new markets for the movies abroad.
Films of travel and exploration also continued to fascinate the viewing
public well into the early part of the 20th Century. The French called
these early travel films "documentaires." For workingclass audiences,
23
seeing faraway places on the screen was often as close as they'd get
to distant travel.
In 1904, Hale's Marvelous Tours of the World were introduced at the
St Louis Exhibition: what might have been the first multimedia
experience -- rocking carriage, ticket taker…projected
scenes…Became a fabulously popular travelling show.
Four years later, world traveller Burton Holmes cointed the term
Travelog and began presenting lectures illustrated with slides and
footage he had taken on his trips…
I mentioned earlier that factual films increasingly turned to
glamourous subjects such as the doings of royalty, generals,
presidents…well, if the president was a world traveller and
adventurer--so much the better… When Teddy Roosevelt made his
famous 1907 hunting trip to Africa, enterprising film makers lost no
time in covering the action: even if the action involved restaging the
events with a Teddy look-alike and a flea-bitten lion from the Chicago
zoo!
24
It's difficult to believe in this age of global travel and communication
that in the early decades of the Century, many parts of the world
remained uncharted or unvisited by Westerners--the world was a
much smaller and much more provincial place. Increasingly, as
explorers and adventurers fanned out into the great unknown, they
schlepped moving picture cameras along with them.
An example: 1910 photographer and filmmaker Herbert Ponting
accompanied Captain R.F. Scott on the first 2 year leg of his
disasterous expedition to the Antarctic…The film was originally
released in 1913 and later re-edited with narration in the 1930's into
the film 90 Degrees South…
SHOW CLIP
Travel and exploration also had a darker side in these year.
Nichols suggests that one of the streams down which early cinema
floated -- "Cinema of attractions": the focus on spectacles, the
wonders of the larger world beyond our own…For late
25
Victorians…and citizens of the early 20th century the line between
spectacle and exhibitionism was often pretty thin…
Late 19th and early 20th Century saw a fascination with fairs,
exhibitions, and other venues devoted to glorifying technological and
cultural progress. One of the most popular exhibits of The St. Louis
World's Fair 1904 was a reconstructed "native" villages inhabited by
imported indigenous peoples from the Phillipines upon which
fairgoers could gaze and wonder. For Western audiences at least,
there was a sense that gazing upon exotic spectacles such as these
somehow confirmed the viewers' exhalted position in the Great Chain
of Being, which stretched from the lowly beasts to the pinnacle of
culture--represented of course by Civilized Nations.
SHOW SAVAGE ACTS clip
In an era that demanded increasing novelty and entertainment thrills
the representation of faraway places and peoples often took a
markedly sensational, if not downright exploitative turns. The first
quarter of the Century are filled with sorry examples of what can only
26
be called racist ethnography. Probably the worst offenders were the
husband and wife team of Martin and Osa Johnson. …Or as Kevin
Brownlow has said : To the pure documentarian, Mr and Mrs
Johnson are beyond the pale, for they regarded the African continent
as a kind of special effects department. They were obsessed by
adventure and aimed exclusively fo thrills.
SHOW CLIPS
What can you say? Is there worth in this material at all--documentry,
social?
How is this film different from acuality?
Not all early filmmakers wielding their cameras in the service of
ethnography were this blatantly sensational or driven by commercial
interests. From the turn of the Century on, vanishing cultures,
including those in the US, were the focus of sympathetic cinematic
scrutiny. As early as 1910 the US Dept of the Interior sponsored
photographers and filmmakers involved in documenting the American
West and Native American cultures in particular. There was also a
27
long succession of commercial and academic non-fiction films dealing
with Native cultures in the US. The most talented of the early
photographers of Native Americans was Edward S. Curtis -- like his
contemporary, Robert Flaherty, Curtis had a profound humanistic
interest in documenting disappearing cultures and spent over 20
years doing this through photography. "What is it," he wrote, "that
lies behind this door that history wants to close so suddenly?"
In 1914, convinced of the power of film to reach mass audiences and
to accomplish his aims, Curtis made his only motion picture--In the
land of the War Canoes (originally in the Land of the Headhunters)
about the Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest. In part, the film
was made to subsidize Curtis' photographic work.
In this film he established or at least reinforced a tradition that would
mark many of the ethnographic films of the first part of the Century:
the view of traditional cultures in the light of soft light of humanism
and romanticism rather cold light of science. Like Flaherty, Curtis
embraced an idealized view of "traditional cultures" as somehow
more noble than "civilized cultures", more finely in tune with nature
28
and self. In such a view, there was little room for the realities of
history and little love for present day circumstances.
SHOW CURTIS CLIPS
What questions does this clip raise about the role of the filmmaker
and the relationship to subject? (Nicholas: What responsibility do
filmmakers have for the effect of their acts on the lives of those
filmed?)
What are the implications and possible outcomes of Curtis'
manipulation of subjects and circumstances surrounding filming (and
photography)? What participation of subjects in the process of
filming.
Does this mean the film isn't worth anything as documentation of the
historical world.
What do the descendants of the film's subjects have to say…
29
Curtis' film was a substantial hit with critics but a box-office flop…
(WHY?)
Films of travel and exploration managed to keep the documentary
film on life support in the first decades of the 20th Century…even
though, as I mentioned earlier, audiences had other things on their
minds--things like D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin and Edwin S.
Porter…
Robert Flaherty
(Nanook - 69 min)
The man who successfully managed to bring the form back into the
public eye and who is credited with producing the first commerciallyreleased documentary film was Robert Flaherty. Flaherty was a
contemporary of Curtis…a fairly unlikely savior. Flaherty was the son
of a mining engineer and prospector for US steel who plied his trade
in Michegan and Canada. As a boy, Flaherty often accompanied his
father on business trips and grew up in and around mining campus…
30
From an early age, he had had contact with native people's-American Indians and Eskimos…
Flaherty eventually followed in his fathers footsteps, by 1910 he had
embarked on a career in prospecting and exploring… He was hired
by Sir William McKenzie (developer of the trans-Canadian railroad) to
check out iron deposits around Hudson Bay. On his third expedition,
McKenzie called him into his office and suggested:
"You're going into interesting country--strange animals and all
that. Why don't you include in your outfit a camera for making
film?"
Flaherty took the bait. Bought a camera and film printing equipment,
took a 3 week course in cinematography in NY, and between 1914
and 1915 began shooting film of indigenous inhabitants of Hudson
Bay. Filming became a kind of obsession… He shoot thousands of
feet of film, some of which he shows around and wins praise for
(Director of Ontario Museum of Archaelogy for eg)
31
1916 - his stock goes up in flames. He takes stock of his previous
work, deciding it was too much in the travelogue mold -- not enough
focus or drama. He decides to travel back north, this time
concentrating on filming a single Eskimo family… Difficulty in raising
funds. WWI makes the task even more difficult.
At end of war, fur company, Revillon Freres takes an interest in his
proposal and underwrites a 1920 filming expedition to Hudson Bay.
Flah. hooks up with his chief character, a celebrated Inuit hunter
names Itivimiut -- whom he renames Nanook for his film. Flaherty
quickly established a close friendship with Nanook and his family -enlisted their enthusiastic support in filming. In fact, it is said that
many of the key scenes in the film (e.g. the walrus hunt) were
suggested by Nanook himself (even tho walrus hunting hadn't been
practiced in years by Nanook's tribe).
Fascinating interchange about filming the walrus hunt recorded in
Flaherty's diaries:
32
--"Suppose we go. Do you know that you and your men may
have to give up making a kill if it interferes with my film? Will
you remember that it is the picture of you hunting that I want,
and not their meat?"
--"Yes, yes! The aggie (film) will come first. Not a man will stir,
not a harpoon will be thrown until you give the sign. It is my
word." We shook hands and agreed to start the next day. (A
conversation between Robert Flaherty and Nanook)
This film was produced in 1922 -- huge public acclaim
SHOW FILM
Questions:
--What did you think of this film? What do you think 1920's
audiences thought?
--what was the filmmaker's intent in making this film?
--What are the themes of this film?
--What is the relationship between man and nature? How
does RF's story line develop this relationship?
--What is the tone (how are the subjects treated?).
--What things AREN'T shown in the film
33
--Nichols' poses the question: What do we do with people
when we make a documentary? What responsibility do filmmakers
have for the effect of their acts on the lives of those filmed?
Filmmakers role and relationship to his subjects? View of his
subjects?
How does he interact during Walrus hunt? Trading Post
scene? Phonograph record biting scene?
RF's subjects were paid. What does this imply for the
film? For RF's relationship to his subjects?
--How are Flaherty's subject's portrayed? What is the relation
of the subject to his environment? Family? Others of his tribe?
What is filmmakers view of his subject?
--How did Flaherty's sponsorship impact what is portrayed and
how
--Does the film seem scripted?
How does Flathery represent Nanook and his family as just like us?
Flaherty examines Nanook's life and culture through the events of one
family;
34
what do you make of this micro-level analysis of culture? Does it succeed in
giving the audience a larger sense of what it means to Inuit? What, if at all,
is missing in this film?
--How "truthful" or "real" is this film? Relationship between
dramatic convention and fact. Is this a straight ethnographic
film? Why? Does the film "look Real"?
--How accurate is Flaherty's portrayal of Inuit culture? How
accurate is the
Flaherty: "Sometimes you have to lie. One has to distort a thing to
catch its true spirit."
--How do the visuals support Flaherty's themes and approach to his
subject?
Flaherty called in to shoot walrus…pretents not to understand and
keeps on shooting
Cuts igloo in half to get better light
Use of clothing and customs long out of date
35
Showed eskimos rushes. If unsatisfactory or he wanted addl footage
or shoot from different angle, action was repeated.
Major themes in RF films: 1. natural beauty 2. Older traditions 3.
Conflicts between man and nature 4. Endurance of family 5.
Knowledge thru suffering 6. Longing for the past
Dignity of man as major theme…perserverence in the face of natural
adversity. Ascendancy thru wisdom and learned skills, skills handed
down…competence and bravery
Happiness exists when man is free and lives simply and
harmoniously with nature.
Requires heightened drama in order to confirm ascendancy of
human spirits: focuses on conflicts between man and nature rather
than man and man
36
Romantic neglect of human evil (least advanced people are happiest
and least corrupt -- Rouseauean romanticism)
Technology and civilization as corrupting…ignores the impact that
has already irretrievably changed innuit culture.
In man of Aran: RF sez
"we select a group of the most attractive and appealing
characters we can find to represent a family and thru them tell
our story. It is always a long and difficult process…for it is
surprising how few faces stand the test of the camera."
"His films are travelogues to places that never were: they charm but
no not instruct audiences with their narrative simplicity and cinematic
beauty (Barsam)
37