Lesson 13:
Documentary
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)
Professor Aaron Baker
Previous Lecture
• Film Authorship
• French Ideas of Auteurism
-Film as Art
-Director Unifies Film/Communicates
Personality (World View)
-Uses Style and Theme
-Film Can Be Commercial and Meaningful
Mira Nair
• Global Auteur
• Her Themes:
-Diasporic Indian Culture
-Gender Roles
• Represented Through Mise-en-Scene
(Color), Sound (Music), and Characters
Choosing Hybrid Identities, Strong Women
Resisting Traditional Roles
• The Namesake (2006)
Today’s Lecture
• Documentary
-Form
-History
-Economic Context
• The New Documentary
• Errol Morris, A Thin
Blue Line (1988)
4
Part I: Documentary Form
The River (Pare Lorentz, 1938)
5
Expectations
•
•
•
•
•
•
Shows Reality
Voice Over
Interviews
Stock Images
Animation
Boring: Lack of
Drama, Excitement
6
Errol Morris:
• “People think of
documentary . . . as
a species of the
news, or journalism .
. . about reality.”
7
All Films Have a Perspective
• No Film Fully
Objective
• Choices about
Content, How to
Interpret It
• Still Documentary
makes “claims to
truthfulness” – Pat
Aufderheide
When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee 2006)
8
A Certain Kind of Viewer
• Already
Knowledgeable
• Interested in
Learning More
• Willingness to Act
As Citizen Based on
Information Learned
from Documentary
Wal-Mart: The High Cost
of Low Price (2005)
9
Part II: History of
Documentary
10
From the Beginning
• Documentary Popular
from Origins of Cinema
• 1890s Lumiere Brothers
• Actualities
• Travelogues/ “Scenics”
• Flaherty, Nanook of the
North (1922)
• Cooper, Schoedsack
Grass (1925)
11
Clip # 1: The Lumieres’
Actualite
• Workers Leaving
Photographic
Factory in Lyon,
France
• 1895/First Film
• 46 seconds
• Louis Lumiere
• Cinematographe
12
Flaherty: “Artistic
Representation of Actuality”
• Artistic License
• Essential Truth
• “A definition that has
proved durable
because it is so
flexible” -Aufderheide
13
Cinema Verite
• Direct Cinema
• Location, Handheld
Camera, Synch
Sound
• Observation
• Minimal Director
Involvement
Frederick Wiseman’s High School (1968)
14
Political Documentary
• Harlan County 1976
Barbara Koppel
• Coal Miners’ Strike
in Kentucky
• Their Own Words
• 1976 Academy
Award
15
Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004
• Negative Portrayal
Pres. George W.
Bush
• Claims
-Inept Handling 9/11
Attacks
-Ties to Saudi Royal
Family
• Clip # 2
16
Angry, Controversial—Not
Boring
• Fits New Documentary Style
• Humor, Strong POV
• Top Earner All Time for
Documentary
17
Propaganda?
• Eternal Jew (1940)
Anti Semitism
• Olympia (1938)
Nazi Superiority
• The River (1938)
Support for New Deal
18
Oppositional Viewpoints
• Inform Public of
Views Don’t Often
Here
• Freedom of Speech
• Question Authority
• Instigate Reform
Emile de Antonio’s Point
of Order (1964)
19
Wal-Mart The High Cost of
Low Price, 2005
•
•
•
•
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald
DVD Distribution
Impact on Small Business, Employees
Sought Legislative Pushback
20
Reaction from Wal-Mart
• Attack Ads
• Blogs
• Mainstream Media
Coverage
• Bill O’Reilly on
Fox:
“Greenwald . . . is
a ridiculous human
being.”
21
An Inconvenient Truth, 2006
• Filmmaker, Davis
Guggenheim
• Presentation by Al
Gore
• Global Warming
• Information on
Climate Change and
a Definite POV
22
Jim Hansen, NASA:
“Al Gore may have
done for global
warming what Silent
Spring (1962 book)
did for pesticides.
He will be attacked,
but the public will
have information.”
--Quoted in
Auferdeide, 8.
23
Born Into Brothels, 2004
24
Original Plan: Show
Prostitutes
• Zana Briski, Ross
Kauffman
• Calcutta Red Light
District
• “An inherently abusive
place”--Briski
25
Their Kids
• Gave Cameras to
Kids
• To “See this world
through their eyes”
26
Their Perspective
• How do we get the
kids point of view in
this clip?
• Clip # 3
27
Their Voices/Viewpoints
• Kids are each
introduced.
• Protagonists
• We see them taking
pictures.
• Briski’s Voice Over
• Kids speak also.
28
But Filmmakers’s
Involvement
• Briski and Kauffman
tried to help kids.
• Avijit to Amsterdam
• Boarding School
• Still Documentary?
• Involvement Typical of
“New Documentary”
• Academy Award
29
Token Improvement
• Partha Banerjee
• No Improvement for
Other Children
• Social Context Too
Complicated
30
Awareness Through
Documentary Discourse
• Paolo Freire, Brazilian
Scholar, Activist
• Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (1968)
• Everyone can be a
human rights educator
• Raise awareness
through cultural
discourse.
31
Part III: Economic Context
32
Not Commercial?
• Documentaries
Teach
• No Entertainment?
• Too Serious?
33
Since 1990s, Popularity
Grows
Revenue in Millions:
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) $106.8
Bowling for Columbine (2002) $21.8
Super-Size Me (2004) $11.4
Winged Migration (2003) $10.8
Hoop Dreams (1994) $7.8
Spellbound (2003) $6.7
34
Less Costly to Make
• Fictional Films Avg.
$100 million (MPAA)
• Docs Cheaper
• Still Require
Business Model
• Must Reach
Audience
• Broadcasters (PBS,
HBO)
The Secret History
of the Credit Card
Frontline
Documentary on
PBS
35
Reality TV, Not
Documentary
• Unscripted
• Non Professionals
(Usually)
• But Artificial
Situations
• Emphasis on Drama
• “Docusoaps”
The Real World MTV 1992
36
Sensationalism Sells
• Sex, violence, controversy sell.
• Aufderheide: Are Films with Those
Elements,
-Truthful?
-Informative?
-Challenge viewers to know more?
37
Fahrenheit 9/11: Selling
Working-Class Rage?
“He was encouraging viewers to look critically
at the government’s words and actions.
Potentially weakening this encouragement,
however, was his calculated performance of
working class rage, which can lead viewers to
see themselves not as social actors but
merely as disempowered victims.”
Aufderheide, 7
38
Part IV: New Documentary
and The Films of Errol
Morris
39
New Documentary
• Ross McElwee
Sherman’s March 1986
• Errol Morris The Thin
Blue Line 1988
• Reenactments
• Stylized Form
• Personal and Objective
40
Errol Morris
• Eleven Films
• 2004 Oscar for Fog
of War
As Interviewer:
• Fewer Questions
• Let Subjects Talk
• Stream of
Conscious Interview
41
Interrotron
• Like Teleprompter
• Subjects Speak
Directly to Viewers
• No Filmmaker
Presence
• Clip # 4 Using
Interrotron from The
Thin Blue Line
42
Film to Video
• Changed from
shooting film to HD
Video
• Sony 24 P Camera
• From 11 Mins. In
Film Magazine to
Unlimited Shooting
• Marathon Interviews
43
The Thin Blue Line, 1988
• Argued Randall Adams
wrongly convicted for
murder of a police officer
in Dallas County, Texas
• Initially avoided
documentary label for
better marketing
44
Murder Case Reopened
• Adams served 11 years
for murder.
• Chief witness, David
Harris, confesses at
end of Morris’s film.
• Adams’ conviction
overturned. Thin Blue
Line
45
David Harris
• Harris Committed
Another Murder the
Weekend Scheduled for
Morris Interview
• After Adams acquittal
film called
“documentary”
• Harris Executed in
Texas in 2005
46
Worked as Private Detective
• Has called himself a "detective director”
• Spent 30 months investigating Adams case
for The Thin Blue Line.
• "Adams told me he was innocent," Morris
remembered. . . , "but everybody in prison
tells you they are innocent. It was only after I
met David Harris that I began to suspect that
the wrong man had been convicted of
murder."
47
New Documentary
Stylization
• Dramatic
Reenactments
• Staged Shots
• Slow Motion
• Clip # 5
48
Dreamscapes
“Part of what I love about documentary is this idea
that you can reinvent the form every time you make
one. And you can create visuals that are really
strange. Oddly enough, that are severed from reality.
They’re not reenactments, per se. . . . They’re
dreamscapes that you’re creating to go with
interview material.”
--Errol Morris
49
Critic Linda Williams:
• The Thin Blue Line upsets traditional opposition truth
vs. fiction
• Morris’s film instead shows more important choice
between which strategies of fiction to use to reach
relative truths.
Linda Williams, " iMirrors without Memories," in Barry
Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds), Documenting
the Documentary, Detroit, Wayne State University
Press, 1998.
50
Summary
• Documentary Informs
Us About World
• But Always Presents A
Perspective
• New Documentary
• “Fictionalize to Reach
Truth”
• Errol Morris, The Thin
Blue Line 1988
51
End of Lecture #13
52
Next Lecture
The Art Film