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Wikipedia

Documentary film

February 05, 2023

"Documentary" redirects here. For other uses, see Documentary (disambiguation).

A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record".[1] Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".[2]

A 16 mm spring-wound Bolex "H16" Reflex camera—a popular entry-level camera used in film schools

Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories. Some examples are educational, observational and docufiction. Documentaries are very informative, and are often used within schools as a resource to teach various principles. Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be truthful to their vision of the world without intentionally misrepresenting a topic.

Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary-film genre. These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease-of-accessibility.

Definition

 
The cover of Bolesław Matuszewski's 1898 book Une nouvelle source de l'histoire. (A New Source of History), the first publication about documentary function of cinematography.

Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film. He wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de l'histoire (eng. A New Source of History) and La photographie animée (eng. Animated photography). Both were published in 1898 in French and among the early written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film.[3] Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials.[4]

The word "documentary" was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for Grierson).[5]

Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality"[6] has gained some acceptance, with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).

The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as "a factual film which is dramatic."[7] Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, and a specific message, along with the facts it presents.[8] Scholar Betsy McLane asserted that documentaries are for filmmakers to convey their views about historical events, people, and places which they find significant.[9] Therefore, the advantage of documentaries lies in introducing new perspectives which may not be prevalent in traditional medias such as written publications and school curriculum.[10]

Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries.

Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism, advocacy, or personal expression.

History

Pre-1900

Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length, due to technological limitations (example on YouTube).

Films showing many people (for example, leaving a factory) were often made for commercial reasons: the people being filmed were eager to see, for payment, the film showing them. One notable film clocked in at over an hour and a half, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. Using pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented the entirety of a famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States.

In May 1896, Bolesław Matuszewski recorded on film a few surgical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen invited Bolesław Matuszewski and Clément Maurice and proposed them to recorded his surgical operations. They started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898.[11] Until 1906, the year of his last film, Doyen recorded more than 60 operations. Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of. For scientific purposes, after 1906, Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations, two of which survive, the six-film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulées (1906), and the four-film Les Opérations sur la cavité crânienne (1911). These and five other of Doyen's films survive.[12]

 
Frame from one of Gheorghe Marinescu's science films (1899).

Between July 1898 and 1901, the Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in his neurology clinic in Bucharest:[13] Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy (1898), The Walking Troubles of Organic Paraplegies (1899), A Case of Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis (1899), The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion Ataxy (1900), and Illnesses of the Muscles (1901). All these short films have been preserved. The professor called his works "studies with the help of the cinematograph," and published the results, along with several consecutive frames, in issues of La Semaine Médicale magazine from Paris, between 1899 and 1902.[14] In 1924, Auguste Lumiere recognized the merits of Marinescu's science films: "I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving La Semaine Médicale, but back then I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological studies. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me. Unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way."[15][16][17]

1900–1920

 
Geoffrey Malins with an aeroscope camera during World War I.

Travelogue films were very popular in the early part of the 20th century. They were often referred to by distributors as "scenics." Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time.[18] An important early film to move beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), which embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of Native Americans.

Contemplation is a separate area. Pathé is the best-known global manufacturer of such films of the early 20th century. A vivid example is Moscow Clad in Snow (1909).

Biographical documentaries appeared during this time, such as the feature Eminescu-Veronica-Creangă (1914) on the relationship between the writers Mihai Eminescu, Veronica Micle and Ion Creangă (all deceased at the time of the production) released by the Bucharest chapter of Pathé.

Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolor—known for the feature With Our King and Queen Through India (1912)—and Prizmacolor—known for Everywhere With Prizma (1919) and the five-reel feature Bali the Unknown (1921)—used travelogues to promote the new color processes. In contrast, Technicolor concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for fictional feature films.

Also during this period, Frank Hurley's feature documentary film, South (1919), about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was released. The film documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914.

1920s

Romanticism

With Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North in 1922, documentary film embraced romanticism; Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic films during this time period, often showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then. For instance, in Nanook of the North, Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun, but had them use a harpoon instead. Some of Flaherty's staging, such as building a roofless igloo for interior shots, was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time.

Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of Flaherty's Nanook and Moana with two romanticized documentaries, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), both directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.

City-symphony

The city-symphony sub film genre were avant-garde films during the 1920s and 1930s. These films were particularly influenced by modern art; namely Cubism, Constructivism, and Impressionism.[19] According to art historian and author Scott Macdonald,[20] city-symphony films can be described as, "An intersection between documentary and avant-garde film: an avant-doc"; However, A.L. Rees suggests to see them as avant-garde films.[19]

Early titles produced within this genre include: Manhatta (New York; dir. Paul Strand, 1921); Rien que les heures/Nothing But The Hours (France; dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926); Twenty Four Dollar Island (dir. Robert J. Flaherty, 1927); Études sur Paris (dir. André Sauvage, 1928); The Bridge (1928) and Rain (1929), both by Joris Ivens; São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole (dir. Adalberto Kemeny, 1929), Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (dir. Walter Ruttmann, 1927); Man with a Movie Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov, 1929) and Douro, Faina Fluvial (dir. Manoel de Oliveira, 1931).

 
In this shot from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), cyclists race indoors. The film is shot and edited like a visual-poem.

A city-symphony film, as the name suggests, is most often based around a major metropolitan city area and seeks to capture the life, events and activities of the city. It can be abstract cinematography (Walter Ruttman's Berlin) or may use Soviet montage theory (Dziga Vertov's, Man with a Movie Camera); yet, most importantly, a city-symphony film is a form of cinepoetry being shot and edited in the style of a "symphony".

 
In this shot from Man with a Movie Camera, Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman risking his life in search of the best shot

The continental tradition (See: Realism) focused on humans within human-made environments, and included the so-called "city-symphony" films such as Walter Ruttmann's, Berlin, Symphony of a City (of which Grierson noted in an article[21] that Berlin, represented what a documentary should not be); Alberto Cavalcanti's, Rien que les heures; and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. These films tend to feature people as products of their environment, and lean towards the avant-garde.

Kino-Pravda

Dziga Vertov was central to the Soviet Kino-Pravda (literally, "cinematic truth") newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the camera—with its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion—could render reality more accurately than the human eye, and made a film philosophy out of it.

Newsreel tradition

The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; newsreels were also sometimes staged but were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.

1930s–1940s

The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most celebrated and controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will (1935), which chronicled the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler. Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri Storck directed Borinage (1931) about the Belgian coal mining region. Luis Buñuel directed a "surrealist" documentary Las Hurdes (1933).

Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) and Willard Van Dyke's The City (1939) are notable New Deal productions, each presenting complex combinations of social and ecological awareness, government propaganda, and leftist viewpoints. Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942–1944) series was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. Constance Bennett and her husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature-length documentaries, Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali, and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) filmed in Indochina.

In Canada, the Film Board, set up by John Grierson, was created for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany (orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels).

 
Conference of "World Union of documentary films" in 1948 Warsaw featured famous directors of the era: Basil Wright (on the left), Elmar Klos, Joris Ivens (2nd from the right), and Jerzy Toeplitz.

In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They became known as the Documentary Film Movement. Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, Basil Wright, and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda, information, and education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary. Examples of their work include Drifters (John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Fires Were Started, and A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W. H. Auden, composers such as Benjamin Britten, and writers such as J. B. Priestley. Among the best known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face.

Film Calling mr. Smith (1943) was anti-nazi color film[22][23][24] created by Stefan Themerson and being both documentary and avant-garde film against war. It was one of the first anti-nazi films in history.

1950s–1970s

 
Lennart Meri (1929–2006), the second President of the Republic of Estonia, directed documentaries several years before his presidency. His film The Winds of the Milky Way won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival in 1977.[25][26][27]

Cinéma-vérité

Cinéma vérité (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some technical advances to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound.

Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave, the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded.

Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differences between cinéma vérité (Jean Rouch) and the North American "direct cinema" (or more accurately "cinéma direct"), pioneered by, among others, Canadians Allan King, Michel Brault, and Pierre Perrault,[28] and Americans Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles.

The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement with their subjects. Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-involvement (or at least no overt involvement), and Perrault, Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary.

The films Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker), Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles), Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman), Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by Robert Drew), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple), Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor) are all frequently deemed cinéma vérité films.

The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80 to one. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movement—such as Werner Nold, Charlotte Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovde—are often overlooked, but their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits.

Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs,[29] Showman, Salesman, Near Death, and The Children Were Watching.

Political weapons

In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing Quebec society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, from 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Arnold Vincent Kudales Sr., influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. Among the many political documentaries produced in the early 1970s was "Chile: A Special Report," public television's first in-depth expository look of the September 1973 overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile by military leaders under Augusto Pinochet, produced by documentarians Ari Martinez and José Garcia.

A June 2020 article in The New York Times reviewed the political documentary And She Could Be Next, directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia. The Times described the documentary not only as focusing on women in politics, but more specifically on women of color, their communities, and the significant changes they have wrought upon America.[30]

Modern documentaries

Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, Food, Inc., Earth, March of the Penguins, and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.

The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinéma vérité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.[31]

Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1986—Part 1 and 1989—Part 2) by Henry Hampton, 4 Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee, and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views. Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me placed far more interpretive control with the director. The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-ganda."[32] However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations.

Documentary filmmakers are increasingly using social impact campaigns with their films.[33] Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by converting public awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action, largely by offering the audience a way to get involved.[34] Examples of such documentaries include Kony 2012, Salam Neighbor, Gasland, Living on One Dollar, and Girl Rising.

Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive. Within the past decade, the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.[35]

Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The "making-of" documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.

Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.

Documentaries without words

Films in the documentary form without words have been made. Listen to Britain, directed by Humphrey Jennings and Stuart McAllister in 1942, is a wordless meditation on wartime Britain. From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to the images, but no spoken content. Koyaanisqatsi (part of the Qatsi trilogy) consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. Baraka tries to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies.

Bodysong was made in 2003 and won a British Independent Film Award for "Best British Documentary."

The 2004 film Genesis shows animal and plant life in states of expansion, decay, sex, and death, with some, but little, narration.

Narration styles

Voice-over narrator

The traditional style for narration is to have a dedicated narrator read a script which is dubbed onto the audio track. The narrator never appears on camera and may not necessarily have knowledge of the subject matter or involvement in the writing of the script.

Silent narration

This style of narration uses title screens to visually narrate the documentary. The screens are held for about 5–10 seconds to allow adequate time for the viewer to read them. They are similar to the ones shown at the end of movies based on true stories, but they are shown throughout, typically between scenes.

Hosted narrator

In this style, there is a host who appears on camera, conducts interviews, and who also does voice-overs.

Other forms

Hybrid documentary

The release of The Act of Killing (2012) directed by Joshua Oppenheimer has introduced possibilities for emerging forms of the hybrid documentary. Traditional documentary filmmaking typically removes signs of fictionalization to distinguish itself from fictional film genres. Audiences have recently become more distrustful of the media's traditional fact production, making them more receptive to experimental ways of telling facts. The hybrid documentary implements truth games to challenge traditional fact production. Although it is fact-based, the hybrid documentary is not explicit about what should be understood, creating an open dialogue between subject and audience.[36] Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010), Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (2012), Mads Brügger's The Ambassador, and Alma Har'el's Bombay Beach (2011) are a few notable examples.[36]

Docufiction

Docufiction is a hybrid genre from two basic ones, fiction film and documentary, practiced since the first documentary films were made.

Fake-fiction

See also: Pseudo-documentary § Film

Fake-fiction is a genre which deliberately presents real, unscripted events in the form of a fiction film, making them appear as staged. The concept was introduced[37] by Pierre Bismuth to describe his 2016 film Where is Rocky II?

DVD documentary

A DVD documentary is a documentary film of indeterminate length that has been produced with the sole intent of releasing it for direct sale to the public on DVD, as different from a documentary being made and released first on television or on a cinema screen (a.k.a. theatrical release) and subsequently on DVD for public consumption.

This form of documentary release is becoming more popular and accepted as costs and difficulty with finding TV or theatrical release slots increases. It is also commonly used for more "specialist" documentaries, which might not have general interest to a wider TV audience. Examples are military, cultural arts, transport, sports, etc.

Compilation films

Compilation films were pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. More recent examples include Point of Order! (1964), directed by Emile de Antonio about the McCarthy hearings. Similarly, The Last Cigarette combines the testimony of various tobacco company executives before the U.S. Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking.

Poetic documentaries, which first appeared in the 1920s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—"lifelike people"—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The "real world"—Nichols calls it the "historical world"—was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form. Examples of this style include Joris Ivens' Rain (1928), which records a passing summer shower over Amsterdam; László Moholy-Nagy's Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930), in which he films one of his own kinetic sculptures, emphasizing not the sculpture itself but the play of light around it; Oskar Fischinger's abstract animated films; Francis Thompson's N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city symphony film; and Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1982).

Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds "objective" and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and "objective" account and interpretation of past events.

Examples: TV shows and films like Biography, America's Most Wanted, many science and nature documentaries, Ken Burns' The Civil War (1990), Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New (1980), John Berger's Ways Of Seeing (1974), Frank Capra's wartime Why We Fight series, and Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936).

Observational

 
Film team at Port of Dar es Salaam with two ferries

Observational documentaries attempt to spontaneously observe their subjects with minimal intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this subgenre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.

Types

Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by their presence. Nichols: "The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)" The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov's kinopravda into French; the "truth" refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Reflexive documentaries do not see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead, they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this subgenre of films. They prompt us to "question the authenticity of documentary in general." It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of "realism". It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to "defamiliarize" what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1991). This subgenre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc.) to "speak about themselves". Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.

Educational films

Documentaries are shown in schools around the world in order to educate students. Used to introduce various topics to children, they are often used with a school lesson or shown many times to reinforce an idea.

Translation

There are several challenges associated with translation of documentaries. The main two are working conditions and problems with terminology.

Working conditions

Documentary translators very often have to meet tight deadlines. Normally, the translator has between five and seven days to hand over the translation of a 90-minute programme. Dubbing studios typically give translators a week to translate a documentary, but in order to earn a good salary, translators have to deliver their translations in a much shorter period, usually when the studio decides to deliver the final programme to the client sooner or when the broadcasting channel sets a tight deadline, e.g. on documentaries discussing the latest news.[38]

Another problem is the lack of postproduction script or the poor quality of the transcription. A correct transcription is essential for a translator to do their work properly, however many times the script is not even given to the translator, which is a major impediment since documentaries are characterised by "the abundance of terminological units and very specific proper names".[39] When the script is given to the translator, it is usually poorly transcribed or outright incorrect making the translation unnecessarily difficult and demanding because all of the proper names and specific terminology have to be correct in a documentary programme in order for it to be a reliable source of information, hence the translator has to check every term on their own. Such mistakes in proper names are for instance: "Jungle Reinhard instead of Django Reinhart, Jorn Asten instead of Jane Austen, and Magnus Axle instead of Aldous Huxley".[39]

Terminology

The process of translation of a documentary programme requires working with very specific, often scientific terminology. Documentary translators are not usually specialists in a given field. Therefore, they are compelled to undertake extensive research whenever asked to make a translation of a specific documentary programme in order to understand it correctly and deliver the final product free of mistakes and inaccuracies. Generally, documentaries contain a large number of specific terms, with which translators have to familiarise themselves on their own, for example:

The documentary Beetles, Record Breakers makes use of 15 different terms to refer to beetles in less than 30 minutes (longhorn beetle, cellar beetle, stag beetle, burying beetle or gravediggers, sexton beetle, tiger beetle, bloody nose beetle, tortoise beetle, diving beetle, devil's coach horse, weevil, click beetle, malachite beetle, oil beetle, cockchafer), apart from mentioning other animals such as horseshoe bats or meadow brown butterflies.[40]

This poses a real challenge for the translators because they have to render the meaning, i.e. find an equivalent, of a very specific, scientific term in the target language and frequently the narrator uses a more general name instead of a specific term and the translator has to rely on the image presented in the programme to understand which term is being discussed in order to transpose it in the target language accordingly.[41] Additionally, translators of minorised languages often have to face another problem: some terms may not even exist in the target language. In such cases, they have to create new terminology or consult specialists to find proper solutions. Also, sometimes the official nomenclature differs from the terminology used by actual specialists, which leaves the translator to decide between using the official vocabulary that can be found in the dictionary, or rather opting for spontaneous expressions used by real experts in real life situations.[42]

See also

Some documentary film awards

Sources and bibliography

  • Aitken, Ian (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 978-1-57958-445-0.
  • Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-19-507898-5. Still a useful introduction.
  • Ron Burnett. "Reflections on the Documentary Cinema" 9 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  • Burton, Julianne (ed.). The Social Documentary in Latin America. Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0-8229-3621-3.
  • Dawson, Jonathan. "Dziga Vertov".
  • Ellis, Jack C., and Betsy A. McLane. "A New History of Documentary Film." New York: Continuum International, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8264-1750-3, ISBN 978-0-8264-1751-0.
  • Goldsmith, David A. The Documentary Makers: Interviews with 15 of the Best in the Business. Hove, East Sussex: RotoVision, 2003. ISBN 978-2-88046-730-2.
  • Gaycken, Oliver (2015). Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science. ISBN 978-0-19-986070-8.
  • Klotman, Phyllis R. and Culter, Janet K.(eds.). Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-253-21347-1.
  • Leach, Jim, and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds.). Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8020-4732-8, ISBN 978-0-8020-8299-2.
  • Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-253-33954-6, ISBN 978-0-253-21469-0.
  • Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-253-34060-3, ISBN 978-0-253-20681-7.
  • Nornes, Markus. Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8166-4907-5, ISBN 978-0-8166-4908-2.
  • Nornes, Markus. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8166-4045-4, ISBN 978-0-8166-4046-1.
  • Rotha, Paul, Documentary diary; An Informal History of the British Documentary Film, 1928–1939. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. ISBN 978-0-8090-3933-3.
  • Saunders, Dave. Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-905674-16-9, ISBN 978-1-905674-15-2.
  • Saunders, Dave. Documentary: The Routledge Film Guidebook. London: Routledge, 2010.
  • Tobias, Michael. The Search for Reality: The Art of Documentary Filmmaking. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions 1997. ISBN 0-941188-62-0
  • Walker, Janet, and Diane Waldeman (eds.). Feminism and Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8166-3006-6, ISBN 978-0-8166-3007-3.
  • Wyver, John. The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television & Radio. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. in association with the British Film Institute, 1989. ISBN 978-0-631-15529-4.
  • Murdoch.edu 11 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Documentary—reading list

Ethnographic film

  • Emilie de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic Film," in Principles of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings. Berlin and New York City : Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 13–43.
  • Leslie Devereaux, "Cultures, Disciplines, Cinemas," in Fields of Vision. Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology and Photography, ed. Leslie Devereaux & Roger Hillman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 329–339.
  • Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin (eds.), Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-520-23231-0.
  • Anna Grimshaw, The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-521-77310-2.
  • Karl G. Heider, Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
  • Luc de Heusch, Cinéma et Sciences Sociales, Paris: UNESCO, 1962. Published in English as The Cinema and Social Science. A Survey of Ethnographic and Sociological Films. UNESCO, 1962.
  • Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible. New York & London: Routledge, 1990.
  • Pierre-L. Jordan, Premier Contact-Premier Regard, Marseille: Musées de Marseille. Images en Manoeuvres Editions, 1992.
  • André Leroi-Gourhan, "Cinéma et Sciences Humaines. Le Film Ethnologique Existe-t-il?," Revue de Géographie Humaine et d'Ethnologie 3 (1948), pp. 42–50.
  • David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-691-01234-6.
  • David MacDougall, "Whose Story Is It?," in Ethnographic Film Aesthetics and Narrative Traditions, ed. Peter I. Crawford and Jan K. Simonsen. Aarhus, Intervention Press, 1992, pp. 25–42.
  • Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8223-1840-8.
  • Georges Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma. Vol. 1, L'Invention du Cinéma 1832–1897. Paris: Denöel, 1977, pp. 73–110.
  • Pierre Sorlin, Sociologie du Cinéma, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1977, pp. 7–74.
  • Charles Warren, "Introduction, with a Brief History of Nonfiction Film," in Beyond Document. Essays on Nonfiction Film, ed. Charles Warren. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1996, pp. 1–22.
  • Ismail Xavier, "Cinema: Revelação e Engano", in O Olhar (in Portuguese), ed. Adauto Novaes. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993, pp. 367–384.

References

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Documentary films.
 
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  1. ^ "Oxford English Dictionary". oed.com. from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  2. ^ Nichols, Bill (1998). "Foreword to the new and expanded edition". In Grant, Barry Keith; Sloniowski, Jeannette (eds.). Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Contemporary approaches to film and media series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press (published 2013). p. xiv. ISBN 9780814339725. Retrieved 6 July 2020. Even after the word 'documentary' began to designate something that looked like a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception, it remains, to this day, a practice without clear boundaries.
  3. ^ Scott MacKenzie, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, Univ of California Press 2014, ISBN 9780520957411, p.520
  4. ^ James Chapman, "Film and History. Theory and History" part "Film as historical source" p.73–75, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, ISBN 9781137367327
  5. ^ Ann Curthoys, Marilyn Lake Connected worlds: history in transnational perspective, Volume 2004 p.151. Australian National University Press
  6. ^ "History/Film". wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au. from the original on 26 March 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  7. ^ . 24 July 2011. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. ^ Larry Ward (Fall 2008). (PDF). Lecture Notes for the BA in Radio-TV-Film (RTVF). 375: Documentary Film & Television. California State University, Fullerton (College of communications): 4, slide 12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 September 2006. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ McLane, Betsy A. (2012). A New History of Documentary Film (2nd ed.). New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4411-2457-9. OCLC 758646930.
  10. ^ Stoddard, Jeremy D.; Marcus, Alan S. (2010). "More Than "Showing What Happened": Exploring the Potential of Teaching History with Film". The High School Journal. 93 (2): 83–90. doi:10.1353/hsj.0.0044. ISSN 1534-5157. S2CID 145665551.
  11. ^ Charles Ford, Robert Hammond: Polish Film: A Twentieth Century History. McFarland, 2005. ISBN 9781476608037, p.10.
  12. ^ Baptista, Tiago (November 2005). ""Il faut voir le maître": A Recent Restoration of Surgical Films by E.-L. Doyen, 1859–1916". Journal of Film Preservation (70).
  13. ^ Mircea Dumitrescu, O privire critică asupra filmului românesc, Brașov, 2005, ISBN 978-973-9153-93-5
  14. ^ Rîpeanu, Bujor T. Filmul documentar 1897–1948, Bucharest, 2008, ISBN 978-973-7839-40-4
  15. ^ Ţuţui, Marian, A short history of the Romanian films at the Romanian National Cinematographic Center. 11 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ The Works of Gheorghe Marinescu 25 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine, 1967 report.
  17. ^ Excerpts of prof. dr. Marinescu's science films. 26 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, 2005.
  19. ^ a b Rees, A.L. (2011). A History of Experimental Film and Video (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-84457-436-0.
  20. ^ MacDonald, Scott (2010). "Avant-Doc: Eight Intersections". Film Quarterly. 64 (2): 50–57. doi:10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.50. JSTOR 10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.50.
  21. ^ Grierson, John. 'First Principles of Documentary', in Kevin Macdonald & Mark Cousins (eds.) Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. London: Faber and Faber, 1996
  22. ^ "Calling Mr. Smith – LUX". lux.org.uk. from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  23. ^ "Calling Mr Smith – Centre Pompidou". centrepompidou.fr. from the original on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
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  26. ^ "Ten years since the passing of Estonia's second president, Lennart Meri – ERR". 14 March 2016.
  27. ^ "'True European' Lennart Meri passes away – The Baltic Times".
  28. ^ Pevere, Geoff (27 April 2007). "Celebrating Allan King's video-era vérité". The Toronto Star. ISSN 0319-0781. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  29. ^ "Les raquetteurs". National Film Board of Canada. 15 August 2017.
  30. ^ Phillips, Maya (28 June 2020). "In 'And She Could Be Next,' Women of Color Take on Politics". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  31. ^ Struggles for Representation African American Documentary Film and Video, edited by Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler,
  32. ^ Wood, Daniel B. (2 June 2006). "In 'docu-ganda' films, balance is not the objective". The Christian Science Monitor. from the original on 12 June 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2006.
  33. ^ Johnson, Ted (19 June 2015). "AFI Docs: Filmmakers Get Savvier About Fueling Social Change". Variety. from the original on 4 June 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  34. ^ "social impact campaigns". www.azuremedia.org. from the original on 31 March 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  35. ^ , "Festivals: Post-Sundance 2001; Docs Still Face Financing and Distribution Challenges." 8 February 2001.
  36. ^ a b Moody, Luke (2 July 2013). "Act normal: hybrid tendencies in documentary film". Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  37. ^ Campion, Chris (11 February 2015). "Where is Rocky II? The 10-year desert hunt for Ed Ruscha's missing boulder". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
  38. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 110-111.
  39. ^ a b Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 111
  40. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 113
  41. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 113–114
  42. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 114–115

February 05, 2023
documentary, film, documentary, redirects, here, other, uses, documentary, disambiguation, documentary, film, documentary, fictional, motion, picture, intended, document, reality, primarily, purposes, instruction, education, maintaining, historical, record, bi. Documentary redirects here For other uses see Documentary disambiguation A documentary film or documentary is a non fictional motion picture intended to document reality primarily for the purposes of instruction education or maintaining a historical record 1 Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of a filmmaking practice a cinematic tradition and mode of audience reception that remains a practice without clear boundaries 2 A 16 mm spring wound Bolex H16 Reflex camera a popular entry level camera used in film schools Early documentary films originally called actuality films lasted one minute or less Over time documentaries have evolved to become longer in length and to include more categories Some examples are educational observational and docufiction Documentaries are very informative and are often used within schools as a resource to teach various principles Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be truthful to their vision of the world without intentionally misrepresenting a topic Social media platforms such as YouTube have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary film genre These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease of accessibility Contents 1 Definition 2 History 2 1 Pre 1900 2 2 1900 1920 2 3 1920s 2 3 1 Romanticism 2 3 2 City symphony 2 3 3 Kino Pravda 2 3 4 Newsreel tradition 2 4 1930s 1940s 2 5 1950s 1970s 2 5 1 Cinema verite 2 5 2 Political weapons 2 6 Modern documentaries 2 6 1 Documentaries without words 2 6 2 Narration styles 3 Other forms 3 1 Hybrid documentary 3 2 Docufiction 3 3 Fake fiction 3 4 DVD documentary 3 5 Compilation films 3 6 Observational 3 7 Types 3 8 Educational films 4 Translation 4 1 Working conditions 4 2 Terminology 5 See also 5 1 Some documentary film awards 6 Sources and bibliography 6 1 Ethnographic film 7 ReferencesDefinition Edit The cover of Boleslaw Matuszewski s 1898 book Une nouvelle source de l histoire A New Source of History the first publication about documentary function of cinematography Polish writer and filmmaker Boleslaw Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film He wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de l histoire eng A New Source of History and La photographie animee eng Animated photography Both were published in 1898 in French and among the early written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film 3 Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials 4 The word documentary was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty s film Moana 1926 published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926 written by The Moviegoer a pen name for Grierson 5 Grierson s principles of documentary were that cinema s potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form that the original actor and original scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world and that materials thus taken from the raw can be more real than the acted article In this regard Grierson s definition of documentary as creative treatment of actuality 6 has gained some acceptance with this position at variance with Soviet film maker Dziga Vertov s provocation to present life as it is that is life filmed surreptitiously and life caught unawares life provoked or surprised by the camera The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as a factual film which is dramatic 7 Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non fiction films for providing an opinion and a specific message along with the facts it presents 8 Scholar Betsy McLane asserted that documentaries are for filmmakers to convey their views about historical events people and places which they find significant 9 Therefore the advantage of documentaries lies in introducing new perspectives which may not be prevalent in traditional medias such as written publications and school curriculum 10 Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects It refers to what people do with media devices content form and production strategies to address the creative ethical and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism advocacy or personal expression History EditPre 1900 Edit Early film pre 1900 was dominated by the novelty of showing an event They were single shot moments captured on film a train entering a station a boat docking or factory workers leaving work These short films were called actuality films the term documentary was not coined until 1926 Many of the first films such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumiere were a minute or less in length due to technological limitations example on YouTube Films showing many people for example leaving a factory were often made for commercial reasons the people being filmed were eager to see for payment the film showing them One notable film clocked in at over an hour and a half The Corbett Fitzsimmons Fight Using pioneering film looping technology Enoch J Rector presented the entirety of a famous 1897 prize fight on cinema screens across the United States In May 1896 Boleslaw Matuszewski recorded on film a few surgical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals In 1898 French surgeon Eugene Louis Doyen invited Boleslaw Matuszewski and Clement Maurice and proposed them to recorded his surgical operations They started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898 11 Until 1906 the year of his last film Doyen recorded more than 60 operations Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of For scientific purposes after 1906 Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations two of which survive the six film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulees 1906 and the four film Les Operations sur la cavite cranienne 1911 These and five other of Doyen s films survive 12 Frame from one of Gheorghe Marinescu s science films 1899 Between July 1898 and 1901 the Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in his neurology clinic in Bucharest 13 Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy 1898 The Walking Troubles of Organic Paraplegies 1899 A Case of Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis 1899 The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion Ataxy 1900 and Illnesses of the Muscles 1901 All these short films have been preserved The professor called his works studies with the help of the cinematograph and published the results along with several consecutive frames in issues of La Semaine Medicale magazine from Paris between 1899 and 1902 14 In 1924 Auguste Lumiere recognized the merits of Marinescu s science films I ve seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses when I was still receiving La Semaine Medicale but back then I had other concerns which left me no spare time to begin biological studies I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me Unfortunately not many scientists have followed your way 15 16 17 1900 1920 Edit Geoffrey Malins with an aeroscope camera during World War I Travelogue films were very popular in the early part of the 20th century They were often referred to by distributors as scenics Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time 18 An important early film to move beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters 1914 which embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re enactments of the life of Native Americans Contemplation is a separate area Pathe is the best known global manufacturer of such films of the early 20th century A vivid example is Moscow Clad in Snow 1909 Biographical documentaries appeared during this time such as the feature Eminescu Veronica Creangă 1914 on the relationship between the writers Mihai Eminescu Veronica Micle and Ion Creangă all deceased at the time of the production released by the Bucharest chapter of Pathe Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolor known for the feature With Our King and Queen Through India 1912 and Prizmacolor known for Everywhere With Prizma 1919 and the five reel feature Bali the Unknown 1921 used travelogues to promote the new color processes In contrast Technicolor concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for fictional feature films Also during this period Frank Hurley s feature documentary film South 1919 about the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition was released The film documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914 1920s Edit Romanticism Edit Nanook of the North poster With Robert J Flaherty s Nanook of the North in 1922 documentary film embraced romanticism Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic films during this time period often showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then For instance in Nanook of the North Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun but had them use a harpoon instead Some of Flaherty s staging such as building a roofless igloo for interior shots was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of Flaherty s Nanook and Moana with two romanticized documentaries Grass 1925 and Chang 1927 both directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack City symphony Edit The city symphony sub film genre were avant garde films during the 1920s and 1930s These films were particularly influenced by modern art namely Cubism Constructivism and Impressionism 19 According to art historian and author Scott Macdonald 20 city symphony films can be described as An intersection between documentary and avant garde film an avant doc However A L Rees suggests to see them as avant garde films 19 Early titles produced within this genre include Manhatta New York dir Paul Strand 1921 Rien que les heures Nothing But The Hours France dir Alberto Cavalcanti 1926 Twenty Four Dollar Island dir Robert J Flaherty 1927 Etudes sur Paris dir Andre Sauvage 1928 The Bridge 1928 and Rain 1929 both by Joris Ivens Sao Paulo Sinfonia da Metropole dir Adalberto Kemeny 1929 Berlin Symphony of a Metropolis dir Walter Ruttmann 1927 Man with a Movie Camera dir Dziga Vertov 1929 and Douro Faina Fluvial dir Manoel de Oliveira 1931 In this shot from Walter Ruttmann s Berlin Symphony of a Great City 1927 cyclists race indoors The film is shot and edited like a visual poem A city symphony film as the name suggests is most often based around a major metropolitan city area and seeks to capture the life events and activities of the city It can be abstract cinematography Walter Ruttman s Berlin or may use Soviet montage theory Dziga Vertov s Man with a Movie Camera yet most importantly a city symphony film is a form of cinepoetry being shot and edited in the style of a symphony In this shot from Man with a Movie Camera Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman risking his life in search of the best shot The continental tradition See Realism focused on humans within human made environments and included the so called city symphony films such as Walter Ruttmann s Berlin Symphony of a City of which Grierson noted in an article 21 that Berlin represented what a documentary should not be Alberto Cavalcanti s Rien que les heures and Dziga Vertov s Man with a Movie Camera These films tend to feature people as products of their environment and lean towards the avant garde Kino Pravda Edit Dziga Vertov was central to the Soviet Kino Pravda literally cinematic truth newsreel series of the 1920s Vertov believed the camera with its varied lenses shot counter shot editing time lapse ability to slow motion stop motion and fast motion could render reality more accurately than the human eye and made a film philosophy out of it Newsreel tradition Edit The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film newsreels were also sometimes staged but were usually re enactments of events that had already happened not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening For instance much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re enact scenes to film them 1930s 1940s Edit The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point One of the most celebrated and controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl s film Triumph of the Will 1935 which chronicled the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri Storck directed Borinage 1931 about the Belgian coal mining region Luis Bunuel directed a surrealist documentary Las Hurdes 1933 Pare Lorentz s The Plow That Broke the Plains 1936 and The River 1938 and Willard Van Dyke s The City 1939 are notable New Deal productions each presenting complex combinations of social and ecological awareness government propaganda and leftist viewpoints Frank Capra s Why We Fight 1942 1944 series was a newsreel series in the United States commissioned by the government to convince the U S public that it was time to go to war Constance Bennett and her husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature length documentaries Legong Dance of the Virgins 1935 filmed in Bali and Kilou the Killer Tiger 1936 filmed in Indochina In Canada the Film Board set up by John Grierson was created for the same propaganda reasons It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels Conference of World Union of documentary films in 1948 Warsaw featured famous directors of the era Basil Wright on the left Elmar Klos Joris Ivens 2nd from the right and Jerzy Toeplitz In Britain a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson They became known as the Documentary Film Movement Grierson Alberto Cavalcanti Harry Watt Basil Wright and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda information and education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary Examples of their work include Drifters John Grierson Song of Ceylon Basil Wright Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy Humphrey Jennings Their work involved poets such as W H Auden composers such as Benjamin Britten and writers such as J B Priestley Among the best known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face Film Calling mr Smith 1943 was anti nazi color film 22 23 24 created by Stefan Themerson and being both documentary and avant garde film against war It was one of the first anti nazi films in history 1950s 1970s Edit Lennart Meri 1929 2006 the second President of the Republic of Estonia directed documentaries several years before his presidency His film The Winds of the Milky Way won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival in 1977 25 26 27 Cinema verite Edit Cinema verite or the closely related direct cinema was dependent on some technical advances to exist light quiet and reliable cameras and portable sync sound Cinema verite and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen in a broader perspective as a reaction against studio based film production constraints Shooting on location with smaller crews would also happen in the French New Wave the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably there are important differences between cinema verite Jean Rouch and the North American direct cinema or more accurately cinema direct pioneered by among others Canadians Allan King Michel Brault and Pierre Perrault 28 and Americans Robert Drew Richard Leacock Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement with their subjects Kopple and Pennebaker for instance choose non involvement or at least no overt involvement and Perrault Rouch Koenig and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary The films Chronicle of a Summer Jean Rouch Dont Look Back D A Pennebaker Grey Gardens Albert and David Maysles Titicut Follies Frederick Wiseman Primary and Crisis Behind a Presidential Commitment both produced by Robert Drew Harlan County USA directed by Barbara Kopple Lonely Boy Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor are all frequently deemed cinema verite films The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving often handheld camera to capture more personal reactions There are no sit down interviews and the shooting ratio the amount of film shot to the finished product is very high often reaching 80 to one From there editors find and sculpt the work into a film The editors of the movement such as Werner Nold Charlotte Zwerin Muffie Myers Susan Froemke and Ellen Hovde are often overlooked but their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co director credits Famous cinema verite direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs 29 Showman Salesman Near Death and The Children Were Watching Political weapons Edit In the 1960s and 1970s documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general especially in Latin America but also in a changing Quebec society La Hora de los hornos The Hour of the Furnaces from 1968 directed by Octavio Getino and Arnold Vincent Kudales Sr influenced a whole generation of filmmakers Among the many political documentaries produced in the early 1970s was Chile A Special Report public television s first in depth expository look of the September 1973 overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile by military leaders under Augusto Pinochet produced by documentarians Ari Martinez and Jose Garcia A June 2020 article in The New York Times reviewed the political documentary And She Could Be Next directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia The Times described the documentary not only as focusing on women in politics but more specifically on women of color their communities and the significant changes they have wrought upon America 30 Modern documentaries Edit Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9 11 Super Size Me Food Inc Earth March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples Compared to dramatic narrative films documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verite style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal such as Marlon Riggs s Tongues Untied 1989 and Black Is Black Ain t 1995 which mix expressive poetic and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials 31 Historical documentaries such as the landmark 14 hour Eyes on the Prize America s Civil Rights Years 1986 Part 1 and 1989 Part 2 by Henry Hampton 4 Little Girls 1997 by Spike Lee and The Civil War by Ken Burns UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re enactments and Michael Moore s Roger amp Me placed far more interpretive control with the director The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries critics sometimes refer to these works as mondo films or docu ganda 32 However directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations Documentary filmmakers are increasingly using social impact campaigns with their films 33 Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by converting public awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action largely by offering the audience a way to get involved 34 Examples of such documentaries include Kony 2012 Salam Neighbor Gasland Living on One Dollar and Girl Rising Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD funding for documentary film production remains elusive Within the past decade the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source 35 Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms with the development of reality television that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged The making of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced Usually made for promotional purposes it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer based editing have greatly aided documentary makers as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes Voices of Iraq where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves Documentaries without words Edit Films in the documentary form without words have been made Listen to Britain directed by Humphrey Jennings and Stuart McAllister in 1942 is a wordless meditation on wartime Britain From 1982 the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems with music related to the images but no spoken content Koyaanisqatsi part of the Qatsi trilogy consists primarily of slow motion and time lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States Baraka tries to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies Bodysong was made in 2003 and won a British Independent Film Award for Best British Documentary The 2004 film Genesis shows animal and plant life in states of expansion decay sex and death with some but little narration Narration styles Edit Voice over narratorThe traditional style for narration is to have a dedicated narrator read a script which is dubbed onto the audio track The narrator never appears on camera and may not necessarily have knowledge of the subject matter or involvement in the writing of the script Silent narrationThis style of narration uses title screens to visually narrate the documentary The screens are held for about 5 10 seconds to allow adequate time for the viewer to read them They are similar to the ones shown at the end of movies based on true stories but they are shown throughout typically between scenes Hosted narratorIn this style there is a host who appears on camera conducts interviews and who also does voice overs Other forms EditHybrid documentary Edit The release of The Act of Killing 2012 directed by Joshua Oppenheimer has introduced possibilities for emerging forms of the hybrid documentary Traditional documentary filmmaking typically removes signs of fictionalization to distinguish itself from fictional film genres Audiences have recently become more distrustful of the media s traditional fact production making them more receptive to experimental ways of telling facts The hybrid documentary implements truth games to challenge traditional fact production Although it is fact based the hybrid documentary is not explicit about what should be understood creating an open dialogue between subject and audience 36 Clio Barnard s The Arbor 2010 Joshua Oppenheimer s The Act of Killing 2012 Mads Brugger s The Ambassador and Alma Har el s Bombay Beach 2011 are a few notable examples 36 Docufiction Edit Docufiction is a hybrid genre from two basic ones fiction film and documentary practiced since the first documentary films were made Fake fiction Edit See also Pseudo documentary Film Fake fiction is a genre which deliberately presents real unscripted events in the form of a fiction film making them appear as staged The concept was introduced 37 by Pierre Bismuth to describe his 2016 film Where is Rocky II DVD documentary Edit A DVD documentary is a documentary film of indeterminate length that has been produced with the sole intent of releasing it for direct sale to the public on DVD as different from a documentary being made and released first on television or on a cinema screen a k a theatrical release and subsequently on DVD for public consumption This form of documentary release is becoming more popular and accepted as costs and difficulty with finding TV or theatrical release slots increases It is also commonly used for more specialist documentaries which might not have general interest to a wider TV audience Examples are military cultural arts transport sports etc Compilation films Edit Compilation films were pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty More recent examples include Point of Order 1964 directed by Emile de Antonio about the McCarthy hearings Similarly The Last Cigarette combines the testimony of various tobacco company executives before the U S Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking Poetic documentaries which first appeared in the 1920s were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns both in terms of time and space Well rounded characters lifelike people were absent instead people appeared in these films as entities just like any other that are found in the material world The films were fragmentary impressionistic lyrical Their disruption of the coherence of time and space a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter model of cinematic narrative The real world Nichols calls it the historical world was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form Examples of this style include Joris Ivens Rain 1928 which records a passing summer shower over Amsterdam Laszlo Moholy Nagy s Play of Light Black White Grey 1930 in which he films one of his own kinetic sculptures emphasizing not the sculpture itself but the play of light around it Oskar Fischinger s abstract animated films Francis Thompson s N Y N Y 1957 a city symphony film and Chris Marker s Sans Soleil 1982 Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles proposing a strong argument and point of view These films are rhetorical and try to persuade the viewer They may use a rich and sonorous male voice The voice of God commentary often sounds objective and omniscient Images are often not paramount they exist to advance the argument The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and objective account and interpretation of past events Examples TV shows and films like Biography America s Most Wanted many science and nature documentaries Ken Burns The Civil War 1990 Robert Hughes The Shock of the New 1980 John Berger s Ways Of Seeing 1974 Frank Capra s wartime Why We Fight series and Pare Lorentz s The Plow That Broke The Plains 1936 Observational Edit Film team at Port of Dar es Salaam with two ferries Observational documentaries attempt to spontaneously observe their subjects with minimal intervention Filmmakers who worked in this subgenre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic The first observational docs date back to the 1960s the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound Often this mode of film eschewed voice over commentary post synchronized dialogue and music or re enactments The films aimed for immediacy intimacy and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations Types Edit Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist participant observation Not only is the filmmaker part of the film we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by their presence Nichols The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice over commentary steps away from poetic meditation steps down from a fly on the wall perch and becomes a social actor almost like any other Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera and with it a certain degree of potential power and control over events The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film Rouch and Morin named the approach cinema verite translating Dziga Vertov s kinopravda into French the truth refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth Reflexive documentaries do not see themselves as a transparent window on the world instead they draw attention to their own constructedness and the fact that they are representations How does the world get represented by documentary films This question is central to this subgenre of films They prompt us to question the authenticity of documentary in general It is the most self conscious of all the modes and is highly skeptical of realism It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us in order to defamiliarize what we are seeing and how we are seeing it Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world They are strongly personal unconventional perhaps poetic and or experimental and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own e g that of black gay men in Marlon Riggs s Tongues Untied 1989 or Jenny Livingston s Paris Is Burning 1991 This subgenre might also lend itself to certain groups e g women ethnic minorities gays and lesbians etc to speak about themselves Often a battery of techniques many borrowed from fiction or avant garde films are used Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities Educational films Edit Documentaries are shown in schools around the world in order to educate students Used to introduce various topics to children they are often used with a school lesson or shown many times to reinforce an idea Translation EditThere are several challenges associated with translation of documentaries The main two are working conditions and problems with terminology Working conditions Edit Documentary translators very often have to meet tight deadlines Normally the translator has between five and seven days to hand over the translation of a 90 minute programme Dubbing studios typically give translators a week to translate a documentary but in order to earn a good salary translators have to deliver their translations in a much shorter period usually when the studio decides to deliver the final programme to the client sooner or when the broadcasting channel sets a tight deadline e g on documentaries discussing the latest news 38 Another problem is the lack of postproduction script or the poor quality of the transcription A correct transcription is essential for a translator to do their work properly however many times the script is not even given to the translator which is a major impediment since documentaries are characterised by the abundance of terminological units and very specific proper names 39 When the script is given to the translator it is usually poorly transcribed or outright incorrect making the translation unnecessarily difficult and demanding because all of the proper names and specific terminology have to be correct in a documentary programme in order for it to be a reliable source of information hence the translator has to check every term on their own Such mistakes in proper names are for instance Jungle Reinhard instead of Django Reinhart Jorn Asten instead of Jane Austen and Magnus Axle instead of Aldous Huxley 39 Terminology Edit The process of translation of a documentary programme requires working with very specific often scientific terminology Documentary translators are not usually specialists in a given field Therefore they are compelled to undertake extensive research whenever asked to make a translation of a specific documentary programme in order to understand it correctly and deliver the final product free of mistakes and inaccuracies Generally documentaries contain a large number of specific terms with which translators have to familiarise themselves on their own for example The documentary Beetles Record Breakers makes use of 15 different terms to refer to beetles in less than 30 minutes longhorn beetle cellar beetle stag beetle burying beetle or gravediggers sexton beetle tiger beetle bloody nose beetle tortoise beetle diving beetle devil s coach horse weevil click beetle malachite beetle oil beetle cockchafer apart from mentioning other animals such as horseshoe bats or meadow brown butterflies 40 This poses a real challenge for the translators because they have to render the meaning i e find an equivalent of a very specific scientific term in the target language and frequently the narrator uses a more general name instead of a specific term and the translator has to rely on the image presented in the programme to understand which term is being discussed in order to transpose it in the target language accordingly 41 Additionally translators of minorised languages often have to face another problem some terms may not even exist in the target language In such cases they have to create new terminology or consult specialists to find proper solutions Also sometimes the official nomenclature differs from the terminology used by actual specialists which leaves the translator to decide between using the official vocabulary that can be found in the dictionary or rather opting for spontaneous expressions used by real experts in real life situations 42 See also EditActuality film Animated documentary Citizen media Concert film Dance film Docudrama Documentary mode Documentary theatre Ethnofiction Ethnographic film Filmmaking List of documentary films List of documentary film festivals List of documentary television channels List of directors and producers of documentaries Mockumentary Mondo film Nature documentary Outline of film Participatory video Political cinema Public access television Reality film Rockumentary Sponsored film Television documentary Travel documentary Visual anthropology Web documentary Women s cinema Some documentary film awards Edit Grierson Awards Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Joris Ivens Award International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam IDFA named after Joris Ivens Filmmaker Award Margaret Mead Film Festival Grand Prize Visions du ReelSources and bibliography EditAitken Ian ed Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film New York Routledge 2005 ISBN 978 1 57958 445 0 Barnouw Erik Documentary A History of the Non Fiction Film 2nd rev ed New York Oxford University Press 1993 ISBN 978 0 19 507898 5 Still a useful introduction Ron Burnett Reflections on the Documentary Cinema Archived 9 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine Burton Julianne ed The Social Documentary in Latin America Pittsburgh Penn University of Pittsburgh Press 1990 ISBN 978 0 8229 3621 3 Dawson Jonathan Dziga Vertov Ellis Jack C and Betsy A McLane A New History of Documentary Film New York Continuum International 2005 ISBN 978 0 8264 1750 3 ISBN 978 0 8264 1751 0 Goldsmith David A The Documentary Makers Interviews with 15 of the Best in the Business Hove East Sussex RotoVision 2003 ISBN 978 2 88046 730 2 Gaycken Oliver 2015 Devices of Curiosity Early Cinema and Popular Science ISBN 978 0 19 986070 8 Klotman Phyllis R and Culter Janet K eds Struggles for Representation African American Documentary Film and Video Bloomington and Indianapolis IN Indiana University Press 1999 ISBN 978 0 253 21347 1 Leach Jim and Jeannette Sloniowski eds Candid Eyes Essays on Canadian Documentaries Toronto Buffalo University of Toronto Press 2003 ISBN 978 0 8020 4732 8 ISBN 978 0 8020 8299 2 Nichols Bill Introduction to Documentary Bloomington Ind Indiana University Press 2001 ISBN 978 0 253 33954 6 ISBN 978 0 253 21469 0 Nichols Bill Representing Reality Issues and Concepts in Documentary Bloomington Ind Indiana University Press 1991 ISBN 978 0 253 34060 3 ISBN 978 0 253 20681 7 Nornes Markus Forest of Pressure Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press 2007 ISBN 978 0 8166 4907 5 ISBN 978 0 8166 4908 2 Nornes Markus Japanese Documentary Film The Meiji Era through Hiroshima Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press 2003 ISBN 978 0 8166 4045 4 ISBN 978 0 8166 4046 1 Rotha Paul Documentary diary An Informal History of the British Documentary Film 1928 1939 New York Hill and Wang 1973 ISBN 978 0 8090 3933 3 Saunders Dave Direct Cinema Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties London Wallflower Press 2007 ISBN 978 1 905674 16 9 ISBN 978 1 905674 15 2 Saunders Dave Documentary The Routledge Film Guidebook London Routledge 2010 Tobias Michael The Search for Reality The Art of Documentary Filmmaking Studio City CA Michael Wiese Productions 1997 ISBN 0 941188 62 0 Walker Janet and Diane Waldeman eds Feminism and Documentary Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press 1999 ISBN 978 0 8166 3006 6 ISBN 978 0 8166 3007 3 Wyver John The Moving Image An International History of Film Television amp Radio Oxford Basil Blackwell Ltd in association with the British Film Institute 1989 ISBN 978 0 631 15529 4 Murdoch edu Archived 11 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine Documentary reading list Ethnographic film Edit Emilie de Brigard The History of Ethnographic Film in Principles of Visual Anthropology ed Paul Hockings Berlin and New York City Mouton de Gruyter 1995 pp 13 43 Leslie Devereaux Cultures Disciplines Cinemas in Fields of Vision Essays in Film Studies Visual Anthropology and Photography ed Leslie Devereaux amp Roger Hillman Berkeley University of California Press 1995 pp 329 339 Faye Ginsburg Lila Abu Lughod and Brian Larkin eds Media Worlds Anthropology on New Terrain Berkeley CA University of California Press 2002 ISBN 978 0 520 23231 0 Anna Grimshaw The Ethnographer s Eye Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press 2001 ISBN 978 0 521 77310 2 Karl G Heider Ethnographic Film Austin University of Texas Press 1994 Luc de Heusch Cinema et Sciences Sociales Paris UNESCO 1962 Published in English as The Cinema and Social Science A Survey of Ethnographic and Sociological Films UNESCO 1962 Fredric Jameson Signatures of the Visible New York amp London Routledge 1990 Pierre L Jordan Premier Contact Premier Regard Marseille Musees de Marseille Images en Manoeuvres Editions 1992 Andre Leroi Gourhan Cinema et Sciences Humaines Le Film Ethnologique Existe t il Revue de Geographie Humaine et d Ethnologie 3 1948 pp 42 50 David MacDougall Transcultural Cinema Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1998 ISBN 978 0 691 01234 6 David MacDougall Whose Story Is It in Ethnographic Film Aesthetics and Narrative Traditions ed Peter I Crawford and Jan K Simonsen Aarhus Intervention Press 1992 pp 25 42 Fatimah Tobing Rony The Third Eye Race Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle Durham NC Duke University Press 1996 ISBN 978 0 8223 1840 8 Georges Sadoul Histoire Generale du Cinema Vol 1 L Invention du Cinema 1832 1897 Paris Denoel 1977 pp 73 110 Pierre Sorlin Sociologie du Cinema Paris Aubier Montaigne 1977 pp 7 74 Charles Warren Introduction with a Brief History of Nonfiction Film in Beyond Document Essays on Nonfiction Film ed Charles Warren Hanover and London Wesleyan University Press 1996 pp 1 22 Ismail Xavier Cinema Revelacao e Engano in O Olhar in Portuguese ed Adauto Novaes Sao Paulo Companhia das Letras 1993 pp 367 384 References Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Documentary films Wikiversity is calling for essays on Film Studies Oxford English Dictionary oed com Archived from the original on 25 April 2018 Retrieved 25 April 2018 Nichols Bill 1998 Foreword to the new and expanded edition In Grant Barry Keith Sloniowski Jeannette eds Documenting the Documentary Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video Contemporary approaches to film and media series Detroit Wayne State University Press published 2013 p xiv ISBN 9780814339725 Retrieved 6 July 2020 Even after the word documentary began to designate something that looked like a filmmaking practice a cinematic tradition and mode of audience reception it remains to this day a practice without clear boundaries Scott MacKenzie Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures A Critical Anthology Univ of California Press 2014 ISBN 9780520957411 p 520 James Chapman Film and History Theory and History part Film as historical source p 73 75 Palgrave Macmillan 2013 ISBN 9781137367327 Ann Curthoys Marilyn Lake Connected worlds history in transnational perspective Volume 2004 p 151 Australian National University Press History Film wwwmcc murdoch edu au Archived from the original on 26 March 2018 Retrieved 25 April 2018 Pare Lorentz Film Library FDR and Film 24 July 2011 Archived from the original on 24 July 2011 Retrieved 25 April 2018 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Larry Ward Fall 2008 Introduction PDF Lecture Notes for the BA in Radio TV Film RTVF 375 Documentary Film amp Television California State University Fullerton College of communications 4 slide 12 Archived from the original PDF on 3 September 2006 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help McLane Betsy A 2012 A New History of Documentary Film 2nd ed New York and London Continuum International Publishing Group ISBN 978 1 4411 2457 9 OCLC 758646930 Stoddard Jeremy D Marcus Alan S 2010 More Than Showing What Happened Exploring the Potential of Teaching History with Film The High School Journal 93 2 83 90 doi 10 1353 hsj 0 0044 ISSN 1534 5157 S2CID 145665551 Charles Ford Robert Hammond Polish Film A Twentieth Century History McFarland 2005 ISBN 9781476608037 p 10 Baptista Tiago November 2005 Il faut voir le maitre A Recent Restoration of Surgical Films by E L Doyen 1859 1916 Journal of Film Preservation 70 Mircea Dumitrescu O privire critică asupra filmului romanesc Brașov 2005 ISBN 978 973 9153 93 5 Ripeanu Bujor T Filmul documentar 1897 1948 Bucharest 2008 ISBN 978 973 7839 40 4 Ţuţui Marian A short history of the Romanian films at the Romanian National Cinematographic Center Archived 11 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine The Works of Gheorghe Marinescu Archived 25 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine 1967 report Excerpts of prof dr Marinescu s science films Archived 26 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine Miriam Hansen Babel and Babylon Spectatorship in American Silent Film 2005 a b Rees A L 2011 A History of Experimental Film and Video 2nd ed Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 1 84457 436 0 MacDonald Scott 2010 Avant Doc Eight Intersections Film Quarterly 64 2 50 57 doi 10 1525 fq 2010 64 2 50 JSTOR 10 1525 fq 2010 64 2 50 Grierson John First Principles of Documentary in Kevin Macdonald amp Mark Cousins eds Imagining Reality The Faber Book of Documentary London Faber and Faber 1996 Calling Mr Smith LUX lux org uk Archived from the original on 25 April 2018 Retrieved 25 April 2018 Calling Mr Smith Centre Pompidou centrepompidou fr Archived from the original on 31 January 2018 Retrieved 25 April 2018 Franciszka and Stefan Themerson Calling Mr Smith 1943 artincinema artincinema com 21 June 2015 Archived from the original on 31 January 2018 Retrieved 25 April 2018 McNeil Donald G Jr 7 April 2001 Estonia s President Un Soviet and Unconventional The New York Times The New York Times Ten years since the passing of Estonia s second president Lennart Meri ERR 14 March 2016 True European Lennart Meri passes away The Baltic Times Pevere Geoff 27 April 2007 Celebrating Allan King s video era verite The Toronto Star ISSN 0319 0781 Retrieved 21 February 2022 Les raquetteurs National Film Board of Canada 15 August 2017 Phillips Maya 28 June 2020 In And She Could Be Next Women of Color Take on Politics The New York Times Retrieved 28 June 2020 Struggles for Representation African American Documentary Film and Video edited by Phyllis R Klotman and Janet K Cutler Wood Daniel B 2 June 2006 In docu ganda films balance is not the objective The Christian Science Monitor Archived from the original on 12 June 2006 Retrieved 6 June 2006 Johnson Ted 19 June 2015 AFI Docs Filmmakers Get Savvier About Fueling Social Change Variety Archived from the original on 4 June 2016 Retrieved 23 June 2016 social impact campaigns www azuremedia org Archived from the original on 31 March 2016 Retrieved 23 June 2016 indiewire com Festivals Post Sundance 2001 Docs Still Face Financing and Distribution Challenges 8 February 2001 a b Moody Luke 2 July 2013 Act normal hybrid tendencies in documentary film Retrieved 14 April 2020 Campion Chris 11 February 2015 Where is Rocky II The 10 year desert hunt for Ed Ruscha s missing boulder The Guardian ISSN 0261 3077 Archived from the original on 22 October 2016 Retrieved 22 October 2016 Matamala A 2009 Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries In J Cintas Ed New Trends in Audiovisual Translation pp 109 120 Bristol UK Multilingual Matters p 110 111 a b Matamala A 2009 Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries In J Cintas Ed New Trends in Audiovisual Translation pp 109 120 Bristol UK Multilingual Matters p 111 Matamala A 2009 Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries In J Cintas Ed New Trends in Audiovisual Translation pp 109 120 Bristol UK Multilingual Matters p 113 Matamala A 2009 Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries In J Cintas Ed New Trends in Audiovisual Translation pp 109 120 Bristol UK Multilingual Matters p 113 114 Matamala A 2009 Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries In J Cintas Ed New Trends in Audiovisual Translation pp 109 120 Bristol UK Multilingual Matters p 114 115 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Documentary film amp oldid 1132086033, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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