The beginning of the naturalist romantic tradition, exemplified in the films of Robert Flaherty, roughly paralleled the development of anthropology as a social science. Sir James Frazer, a Scot who lived from , was the pioneer.
His monumental survey of the evolution of culture The Golden Bow, was published in in two volumes; the twelve-volume edition appeared between and Flaherty began to film the Eskimos in Contemporary with Frazer was Franz Boas , a German-born American anthropologist and ethnologist.
Boas maintained that the immediate task of anthropology should be to record endangered cultures that might soon vanish. He stressed the specifics of each culture and taught that only later extensive data had been collected through fieldwork could any theories be put forward. Fieldwork has been a foundation of anthropology ever since. Though Flaherty had no training as an anthropologist, he approximated fieldwork more closely than any other filmmaker preceding him, living with and observing the Inuit of the Hudson Bay region many years before filming them.
Boas' work was followed by that of the Polish-born Bronislaw Malinowski, who lived from to Flaherty lived from to Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific was published in the year Nanook of the North was released. It was about the people of the Trobriand Islands, located off the coast of New Guinea. Flaherty's Moana , dealing with the Samoans, was released in In the next chapter, the history of documentary proper will begin with the naturalist tradition. The newsreel tradition came out of the phenomenal expansion of journalism in the twentieth century.
Mass circulation newspapers and a practicable theory for radio transmission appeared about the same time as the movies Newsreels appeared in movie theaters in regular weekly form from on. They were simply an extension into motion pictures of equivalents to the rotogravure sections of the tabloids. They are touched upon in Chapter Three. The concept and term propaganda , Rotha's third tradition, goes back at least to the Congegatio de propaganda fide Congregation for propagating the faith , a committee of Cardinals established by Pope Gregory XV in A subsequent use of propaganda grew out of the revolutionary theory set forth by German political philosopher and socialist Karl Marx Propaganda became a key concern of' Russian communist leader Valdimir Ilyich Lenin Following tile October revolution of' , the new government in Russia--Union of' Soviet Socialist Republics--was the first to make sustained, extensive, and coordinated peacetime use of film propaganda.
Modern interest in propaganda is related to the intellectual disciplines of sociology, social psychology, and political science. Rotha's final tradition, realist continental , emerged as part of the European avant-garde of the I s, headquartered in Paris. One of its preoccupations was finding artistic means for dealing with the interrelatedness of time and space. This modern understanding, originating in the physical sciences, was enunciated by Max Planck in his quantum mechanics, by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity, and by others beginning about the turn of' the century.
Another preoccupation of the avant-garde was with expressing the unconscious human mind offered by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others in the new psychological science at all the same time. The contributions of the avant-garde to documentary will be the subject of Chapter Four. The filmed recordings of actuality in the experiments of' technicians at the Edison laboratory in West Orange, NJ may qualify.
For example, the sneeze of an employee named Fred Ott was filmed in and two of the workers dancing to phonograph music can be viewed during an attempt to synchronize sight with sound in Closer in intent and approach to subsequent documentaries are the first films produced by Louis Lumiere and projected for paying customers in Paris on December 28, A member of the audience at the showing is supposed to have exclaimed of' tile film being projected: "It's life itself!
In the first years of the motion picture that followed, films were mostly similar brief recordings showing everyday life, circus and variety acts, and skits. Only Georges Melies used specially conceived narrative and fantasy to any extent in the films made before , and even he began by recording snippets of' life on the streets of Paris Place de L'Opera, Boulevard des Italiens , both Gradually, as the novelty of the moving photographic image began to pale, the actualities recorded by filmmakers were selected for extra-cinematic interest.
Foreign and exotic subjects had a strong appeal. Traveling projectionists or cameramen of' the Lumiere organization roamed widely, showing "scenic views" of' the Eiffel Tower and Parisian boulevards to Russians or Spaniards, for example. While in Russia, they photographed troika rides and Cossacks, and in Spain, Flamenco dancing and bull fights, to be shown to audiences in France and elsewhere. In addition to such early travelogue forms-- Moscow Clad in Snow, , is a surviving French example produced by Pathe Freres ; The Durbar at Delhi , , a British one--were filmed reports of exploratory and anthropological expeditions, more serious in purpose and educative in effect-- With Scott in the Antarctic , , is a British example, made by Herbert Ponting.
About the Kwakiutl Indians of' the Pacific Northwest, it was the most ambitious experiment of its sort up to that time. Curtis was not only a professional photographer, but a trained and experienced ethnologist. Although working quite separately from Flaherty, he was headed in a similar direction. Flaherty met Curtis and saw his film in The newsreel tradition may be said to have begun in France with Louis Lumiere's Excursion of the French Photographic Society to Neuville , made in Called "interest films" at first, the subjects quickly became events of greater newsworthiness.
Many of them featured heads of state at ceremonial occasions. Warfare was another frequent subject. Among other examples that have lasted down to the present are Launching of "H. The newsreel in weekly form was begun by Charles Pathe of France Isolated examples of what might he called propaganda films in Rotha's sense of the term, appeared before the outbreak of World War I in In the United States, the Department of' the Interior produced and distributed motion pictures as early as to entice Eastern farmers to move to the newly opened agricultural areas of the West.
When America entered the war in , training films were produced to instruct troops in certain activities. Propaganda films were intended to inspire military personnel and civilians alike with hatred of the enemy and desire for victory. Pershing's Crusaders , America's Answer , and From Forest to France , were used to boost morale and the sale of' war bonds.
The Battle of the Somme , made by J. Although Todorov strongly suggested that narratives would have a chronological order, events can be presented to the audience out of sequence in a non-linear narrative. Narratives may also be single or multi-strand.
This means that the story could either focus on one central character on their journey or multiple main characters in separate subplots that may or may not converge to the overall arc.
In general, each character, their interactions, and the series of events that unfold all contribute to driving the narrative forward. As film has developed over the years, filmmakers have utilized the visual aspect of motion picture by including symbolism and other observable thematic elements to aid in conveying pertinent components of the story to the audience. The majority of Hollywood feature films are narrative films. They can be further broken down into various film genres, all with specific characteristics.
Some primary genres include romance, sci-fi, fantasy, westerns, film noir, and musicals, each with subcategories and hybrid genres. Many reputable academics, theorists, and documentary filmmakers have weighed in on how a documentary should be defined.
What's more, the genre itself has seen an evolution over time, causing even more ambiguity. John Grierson was a Scottish trailblazing documentary maker, often considered the founding father of British and Canadian documentaries. In fact, he was the first to coin the term "documentary" during a review of Robert Flaherty's Moana He defined documentary filmmaking to be: "a creative treatment of actuality. Grierson also defined the purpose of a documentary to be a: "desire to bring the citizen's eye in from the ends of the earth to the story, his own story, of what was happening under his nose".
Thus, it would indicate that he felt documentaries were to be experienced from the filmmaker's point of view. This was also echoed by American film critic and theorist Bill Nichols , who defined documentaries as: "a representation we already occupy and stands for a particular view of the world, one we may never have encountered before even if the aspects that are represented are familiar to us".
Both of these perspectives are in stark contrast to the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's position. Vertov's stance on documentaries was that of presenting "life as it is" that is, life filmed surreptitiously and "life caught unawares" life provoked or surprised by the camera. This vision was most notably realized in the series titled Kina-Pravda , which has the literal translation: "film truth".
This was one of the first instances of the use of a hidden camera. From this work, he derived a much-debated film philosophy that deduced film to have a more accurate truth than what can be seen by the human eye.
Although there are many differing nuances in the definitions provided, they all agree upon the notion that documentaries are non-fiction films that portray real events as they happened.
Therefore, the important distinction between a documentary and a narrative film is that documentaries are of the non-fiction genre. Hence, a narrative film, in contrast, is of the fictional genre.
In , Nichols outlined six main subcategories for the documentary genre in his book Introduction to Documentary. These were:. Juel, Henrik. Kalow, Nancy. Oleg lives with his beloved grandmother Alexandra in the small village of Hnutove.
Having no other place to go, Oleg and Alexandra stay as others leave the village. Life becomes increasingly difficult with each passing day, and there is no end to the war in sight. The Distant Barking of Dogs unveils the consequences of war bearing down on the children in eastern Ukraine and, by natural extension, the scars and life lessons this generation will carry with them into the future. When the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military in , small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals.
Some nations with histories of similar crimes against humanity have created truth and reconciliation initiatives and even jailed perpetrators. In Indonesia, the perpetrators are still in power, and death squad members are honored for their patriotism. Their choice: to dramatize their brutal deeds in the style of the American westerns, musicals and gangster movies they love—with themselves as the stars.
The result is a nightmarish vision of a banal culture of impunity in which killers joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows. For more information on the film and additional background on the Indonesian genocide, download the Discussion Guide for The Act of Killing.
Repeating her traumatic story to the world, this ordinary young woman finds herself thrust onto the international stage as the voice of her people. In On Her Shoulders , filmmaker Alexandria Bombach follows this strong-willed young woman, who survived the genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq and escaped the hands of ISIS to become a relentless beacon of hope for her people, even though at times she longs to set aside this monumental burden and simply lead an ordinary life.
For more information on the film and additional background on the Yazidi genocide, download the Discussion Guide for On Her Shoulders. AMC Filmsite. If the tables were turned, God forbid, I would never allow them to make a film about my tragedy. I am keenly aware of the hypocrisy of asking someone for access that I myself would probably not grant. What ethics should govern putting someone else on film?
The awareness of a power differential also leads filmmakers sometimes to volunteer to share decision-making power with some subjects. Notably, this attitude does not extend to celebrities, whom filmmakers found to be aggressive and powerful in controlling their image. Most subjects signed releases allowing the makers complete editorial control and ownership of the footage for every use early on during the production process.
The terms of these releases are usually dictated by insurers, whose insurance is required for most television airing and theatrical distribution. Perhaps because the terms of these releases were not their own, filmmakers often provided more leeway to their subjects than the strict terms provided in them.
Filmmakers often felt that subjects had a right to change their minds although the filmmakers found this deeply unpleasant or to see the material involving them or even the whole film in advance of public screenings. The informal basis upon which they operated also reflects the ambivalence they have about ceding control and their wish to preserve their own creative interests.
The ongoing effort to strike a balance, and the negotiated nature of the relationship, was registered by Gordon Quinn:. Our code of ethics is very different. We will show the film before it is finished. I want you to sign the release, but we will really listen to you.
But ultimately it has to be our decision. Some also believed that seeing material in advance helped make their subjects more comfortable with the exposure they would encounter, thus avoiding problems in the future. We showed her the piece first. Then she was okay. In one case, a subject who had signed a release asked Stanley Nelson not to use an interview.
The interview was important for the film, Nelson said, and he believed the request was motivated by desire to control the film. I felt that my obligation was fulfilled. Ultimately, the Center for Media and Social Impact concluded that filmmakers shared three general ethical principles that they attempted to balance in their work:. Thinking more deeply: In circumstances where filmmakers are working with vulnerable subjects, how can they ensure that the subjects are able to provide informed consent?
What other options did the subjects have? Were the subjects able to entrust their stories to this filmmaker because they were the best option or were they the only option?
What rights or protections should be provided to subjects who are survivors of violent trauma? Should their stories be handled any differently than those of other subjects? Why or why not? Should subjects reserve the right to withdraw consent? Under what circumstances? When children are the subject of a documentary, how can consent be fairly given?
What responsibility, if any, does the filmmaker have to the future adult who will live with the decisions made on their behalf when they were young? Further Reading: Rogow, Faith.
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