Announcements •  Problem with link to film on e-reserves.

•  What to focus on in the reading.

•  Note: change in next week reading, ch 6, not ch 5 in Nichols

•  Quizzes will be distributed in your section meetings after next Tuesday.

•  Screening in Section: Crisis, (Robert Drew & Associates) Richard Leacock, James Lipscomb, D.A. Pennebaker, & Hope Ryden, 1963

Announcements

Preproduction Notebooks: What to do if you have an overly ambitious pitch/treatment to work from.

•  Selecting a key segment for script and storyboard

•  Focusing on a significant conflict or issue within the film

Announcements

Opportunity to Volunteer at the San Diego Latino Film Festival (March 11-21) as a representative of BINACOM

BINACOM volunteers must attend the volunteer orientation on Tuesday February 9, 2010 at 6:00pm at UltraStar Cinemas.

For more information about the festival check out: http://www.sdlatinofilm.com/

Contact Dr. Kristin Moran (kmoran@sandiego.edu)

Documentary / Non-Fiction Film and Video Making

Representing Realities and

Engaging in Public Discourse

Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, USA, 1989)

Defining Documentary   Non-fiction?   Non-narrative?   Instructive or educational?   Truthful? Objective?

Every media-object can be understood as a document. (The Great Train Robbery, or Trip to the Moon)

Nichols: Documents of Wish Fulfillment or Documents of Social Representation

Documentary can be understood as a set of practices of media-making, distribution, and viewing/reception.

Documentary and Reality

“Documentaries are the creative treatment of actuality” John Grierson, Critic and Filmmaker

“Documentaries are representations of reality” Bill Nichols, Historian and Theorist

“Documentaries are performed reality” Stella Bruzzi, Historian and Theorist

What other ways might we describe documentary?

Images: Disparate image and sound sources (original footage/recordings, archival, dramatized, photographs, paper documents)

Editing: Evidentiary

Organization: Development of idea / argument

The Form of Documentary

Nichols: The Representational Form of Documentary

1.  Offer a likeness or depiction that has relationship to the familiar…but presents it anew

2. Stands for or represents the interests of others

3. Makes a case for a particular view or interpretation (often for others)

Form in Documentary “Since there is nothing natural about the representation of reality in

documentary, documentary filmmakers are acutely aware that all their choices shape the meanings they choose” Patricia Aufterheide

The history of documentary is a history of media producers creatively struggling with how to represent or engage reality.

Key concerns that have shaped formal conventions:   Authenticity and honesty - to be true to the subject and avoid

misleading viewers.

  Agency - to motivate or prompt action of the viewer, and facilitate the subjects’ voice or expression of desires.

Technical changes have shaped these conventions as well, such as availability of lightweight camera, introduction of TV and video, etc

Emergence of Documentary   Film emerged in the context of the late European

colonialism and US expansion.   Early documentary practice intersects with

practices of ethnography and anthropology.   At the same time it is seen as a tool in the service

of modern national-building and war (propaganda).   Envisioned as addressing the difficulty of social and

political participation in a complex world. Conceived in contrast to entertainment cinema; and as an extension of popular press.

“The importance of Documentaries is linked to a notion of the public as a social phenomenon”- Aufterheide

Outlined by documentary historian and theorist, Michael Renov:

1. To record, reveal or preserve 2. To persuade or promote 3. To analyze or interrogate 4. To express

Out of what (public) contexts and for what reasons do these tendencies develop?

What means do filmmakers use to achieve these ends?

Four Tendencies of Documentary

Subject and Voice of Documentary   Who/what is being represented? And why?   Who is being looked at?   Who is looking?   Who is speaking for whom?   Who is speaking about whom?   Who is being spoken to?   Can the ‘subject’ speak about themselves? To themselves?

A good place to see examples of non-fiction film in the public domain: The Internet Archive http://archive.org

Styles or Modes of Documentary

•  Expository •  Poetic •  Observational •  Reflexive •  Participatory •  Performative

These six categories are suggested by Bill Nichols

Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, Soviet Union, 1928

  Poetic mode, but also, observational and reflexive

  Argued that documentary was a more appropriate use of film to the modern world than narrative fiction.

  Kino-Eye: argued that the camera extended and transformed vision in ways that were superior to the human eye. At the same time he saw the role of editing (human agency) as central to making sense or a truthful representation out of the chaos of modern life.

Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty, 1922

  Poetic but also Expository mode   Use of narrative as a device - Flaherty argued that

this was more true to his intentions of presenting a humanizing view of the Inuit.

  Anachronistic representation of Inuit   Didn’t credit actors with their actual names   Projecting foreign values such as nuclear family

Inuit Broadcasting Corp: http://inuitbroadcasting.ca/ (A contemporary example of self-determined media)

Poetic or Impressionist mode •  Emphasizes visual associations, impressionistic

descriptive passages, tonal and rhythmic qualities •  de-emphasizes strictly linear or logical sequencing •  Lyrical •  Photogenie - overwhelmed by sensation; defamiliarizing •  Stylized: “historical world” broken up into fragments and

aesthetically reconstituted •  Time is often expanded •  Might blur fact and fiction •  Sometimes uses strong musical elements •  Subjective position of film(maker) is more evident.

Examples of the Poetic mode Man With a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1928 (USSR)

Rain, Joris Ivens, 1928 (Dutch)

Expository Documentary   Argumentative logic / rhetorical frame   Verbal commentary; authoritative “voice of

god” narration   Single perspective, not acknowledging

subjectivity   Addresses the viewer directly   Evidentiary editing - serves the argument

primarily, crosses space and time   Image/sound - images respond to sound

Expository Documentary

The Drifters, 1928, John Grierson. Great Britain. A film on herring fishermen. Influenced by Flaherty’s films; sought to apply the form to local/national issues.

Listen to Britain, Humphrey Jennings. 1942

Flow: For the Love of Water, 2008, Irena Selina

Listen to Britain Humphrey Jennings, 1942, UK

Flow: For the Love of Water 2008, Irena Selina

Observational Documentary •  A highly visual approach: the shots tell the story •  Extensive use of long takes and close-ups. •  Usually lacks an overarching narrative--follows the

unfolding of observed situation or event. •  Attempts to record events spontaneously, with

minimum of intervention. . Dedicated to presentation of real-time events.

•  Sound is mostly diegetic. Absence of narrator or voiceover.

•  Direct Cinema (the American counterpart Cinema Verité) was dedicated to a "fly on the wall" approach.

Observational Documentary •  This mode is often described as a critical response to the

expository form. (Renouncing its moralist tone and rejecting its disembodied, authoritative "the voice of God" narration.)

•  Made possible by new technologies: lightweight, quiet, sync-sound cameras (magnetic sound) enable field interviews, and allowed the story to be told through the action itself rather than dubbed narration.

Observational Documentary  Primary and Crisis, Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, James Lipscomb, DA Pennebaker, & Hope Ryden, 1961.

 High School, Frederick Wiseman, 1968

 An American Family, PBS, 1973 http://subcin.com/americanfamily.html

High School, Frederick Wiseman, 1968

Reflexive Documentary   Apparatus revealed (filmmaker, crew or aspects of production process enter the frame or narrative)   The text is about viewer / filmmaker relationship   Reveals perspective of filmmaker - perhaps his/her voice   Confronts/readjusts our assumptions as viewers   Can be reflexive from formal and political perspectives

Examples: Reassemblage, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1978 Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 1988 Bus 174, José Padilha, 2002 (Brazil) Land without Bread, Bunuel, 1932

Reassemblage Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1978

•  Comments on conventions of expository mode used in ethnographic film and travelogues

•  Reflexivity--aims to make viewers self-conscious of their and the filmmaker’s relationship to the subjects. Aware of the dynamics of making the film.

Thin Blue Line Errol Morris, 1988

•  Film explores the evidence in murder of a Dallas police officer in 1976 was entered as evidence in a retrial that overturned the original conviction .

•  Heightens our awareness of the subjective nature of knowledge and memory

•  Interrogates Point of View (POV)

•  Employs self-consciously dramatic use of music and graphics, slow motion, theatrical lighting.

Thin Blue Line Errol Morris, 1988

Interrotron and Megatron

Thin Blue Line Errol Morris, 1988

Interrotron and Megatron

Thin Blue Line Errol Morris, 1988

Participatory (Interactive) Documentary

•  Attempts to confront the social and power dynamics that occur during filmmaking and structure a film's meaning.

•  Filmmaker and crew's relationships to the subject are more evident or embodied in film. They are participant-observers.

•  The filmmaker may participate, intervene in, or provoke the events or actions being filmed.

•  Sometimes the filmmaker attempts to shift aspects of control of the production into the subjects' hands. For example: an ethnographer who gives cameras to to his subjects or allows them to determine what shots should be included. These contribute to a heightened sense of Morris’s hand or authorial presence for the viewer.

Participatory Documentary

Cinema Verite (and Direct Cinema to a lesser degree)

Examples: •  Chronicle of a Summer, Jean Rouch (France , 1960) •  Goodbye CP, Kazuo Hara (Japan, 1972) •  George, Henry Cora & Grahame Weinbren, (US,1998) •  Who’s Going to Pay for These Donuts Anyway, (Janice

Tanaka, 1992) •  Navajo Talking Picture, Arlene Bowman (US, 1986) •  When Billy Broke His Head, Billy Golfus & David

Simpson (US,1994)

Goodbye CP Kazuo Hara (Japan, 1972)

•  Film follows a number of adults living with Cerebral Palsy

•  Shows agency of subjects and facilitates the expression of their ideas, feelings, experiences through conversation and interaction with film maker.

Who’s Going to Pay for these Donuts Anyway? Janice Tanaka (US, 1992)

•  Uses interaction with her father, children and relatives to convey personal conflicts, family dynamics, complex historical events.

•  Multiple subjective views contribute to understanding of the perception of reality as negotiated through social and cultural processes.

•  Can be described as both a interactive and personal documentary

George Henry Cora & Grahame Weinbren, (US,1998)

•  HBO film about a boy with autism

•  George participates in the filming and editing, a process which involves the film makers with their subject and is represented in the film (therefore it is both highly interactive and reflexive)

Performative (or Personal) Documentary

•  Expression of embodied knowledge •  Attempts to convey understanding that can not

simply be observed •  Filmmaker is or has intimate relationship to subject •  Meaning expressed poetically, through gesture,

reenactment, etc

Examples: •  Tongues Untied, Marlon Riggs, 1989 •  The Body Beautiful, Ngozi Onwarah, 1991 •  Who’s Going to Pay for These Donuts Anyway,

(Janice Tanaka, 1992)

Access: Video Technology and Documentary Activism�

•  Introduction of real-time playback. •  Video became available in the age of street activism. •  In the early period (late 1960s through the 1970s)

there was little distinction between video art and activist video as both were involved in street documentary.

•  Video was seen as alternative to broadcast TV. •  It had an immediacy not found in broadcast TV. •  Much more interactive and personal than the film

movements it draws upon.

Access: Video Technology and Documentary Activism

Early West Coast Video Collectives:

  Four More Years, 1972, TVTV (True Value Television)

  Media Burn, and The Eternal Frame 1975, Ant Farm

East Coast Video Collectives:   Downtown Community TV   Paper Tiger TV

Reality TV •  Appropriates the formal styles of observational and

interactive modes. (direct cinema and cinema verité) •  Truth is associated with formal conventions from low

budget and home video technology. For example: raw footage or jerky camera work are used to suggest fact or reality.

•  Re-enactment is common. •  Unlike direct cinema or cinema verite: the reality of

reality TV is associated with the exceptional, the extreme, or the crisis.

•  The authority of the film or program often relies on experts or insiders associated with government or law enforcement.