Understanding Non-Fiction: Exploring Documentary Film Theory
School
University of Toronto, Mississauga**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
CIN 101
Subject
Arts & Humanities
Date
Dec 11, 2024
Pages
49
Uploaded by Alice30062006
Lesson 7: Documentary Theory & ObservationNB: Quiz Two Next Week!!!!
Agenda•Part I: Nonfiction Film •Part II: Documentary Film •Part III: Documentary Theory & Observation •Part IV: Harlan County, USA(1976)
Part I: Non-Fiction Film and Documentary Theory
Sideways, Alexander Payne (2004)
Non-Fiction Film•A non-fiction film is one in which the people and events depicted are known to have (or are asserted to have) a real-world experience •The fiction film by contrast, is one where places and characters may be fabricated, the non-fictional is a realm where there is a basis in the world of actuality •It would seem to be the case that fiction is “made-up”, non-fiction is “real”
Non-Fiction Film•But, this is often complicated! •What happens, for instance, when fiction films have documentary style? Or when documentaries use fictional techniques and conventions? •Perhaps the key distinction then is never narrative structure, editing style, or any other formal technique, but purpose and context?
Hinterland Who’s Who: Grizzly, NFB (1972)
House Hippo, Media Smart, 1999
Non-Fiction Film•Some of the earliest films were non-fiction: simple recordings of an event •For example, the Lumiere Brothers actualities •They are “unstaged” events •In other words: they seem to be without any style!
Workers Leaving the Factory, Lumiere Brothers (1895)
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, Lumiere Brothers (1895)
Non-Fiction Film•On the one hand, we take these for reality because they seem unstaged •But note that staging is an inevitable part of making a film! •Perhaps the issue then is not whether a non-fiction film is staged or not, but our attitudes towards what non-fiction is •Non-fiction film makes a truth claim about the real world or real people in that world •Apart from this, it is very diverse!!
Non-Fiction FilmThere are many kinds of non-fiction moving image media: what are some examples?
Non-Fiction Film•Documentary •Essay Film •Pornography(?) •Industrial Film •Docudrama •Home MoviesMany of these shade into one another and incorporate aesthetic strategies of other forms of moving image media Ex. An industrial film (technically an advertisement) that looks like an avant-garde film!
Non-Fiction Film: Documentary •John Grierson •Scottish Filmmaker who coined the term “documentary” in a review of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North •Compared documentary to other non-fiction forms: documentary is for him the “creative treatment of actuality”
Non-Fiction Film: Documentary Documentary films “address the historical world itself rather than construct an imaginary or fictional world. They typically seek to engage the viewer in relation to some aspect of the world in which we live. Rather than inviting engagement with the poetic form of the world itself, as most avant-garde films do, documentaries invite engagement with their representation of the historical world. This is a matter of emphasis rather than either/or alternatives, and many documentaries make frequent use of poetic and narrative storytelling techniques as well as rhetorical ones”
Non-Fiction Film: Documentary •For Bill Nichols, the documentary seeks to “engage the viewer persuasively by emotional or persuasive means” •Documentary, for Nichols, seeks to “move or affect, persuade or convince” the viewer of something •What is an example of a documentary that does this very obviously?
There are six types of documentary film for Nichols
Non-Fiction Film: Expository Documentary•Very common! •Voice that speaks directly to the viewer: the “voice of god” (merely heard) or “voice of authority” (seen and heard) •Images illustrate what the voice of god/authority says! •Why we Fight (Capra and Litvak, USA, 1943-1945)
Non-Fiction Film: Poetic Documentary•Link between avant-garde and documentary •Stresses form or pattern over an explicit argument about the world •Poetic “meandering” through the world •Sometimes called an “essay film” •San Soleil (Chris Marker, France, 1980) •Koyaanisqatsi(Godfrey Reggio, USA, 1982)
Koyaanisqatsi(Godfrey Reggio, USA, 1991)
Non-Fiction Film: Participatory Documentary•Sometimes called interactive cinema or cinema verité •Synchronous sound often used and strong sense of internal continuity (ie. not fragmentary) •The filmmaker returns: prioritize interviews •Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch and Morin, France, 1961)
Non-Fiction Film: Reflexive Documentary•Somewhat more abstract: it is a form of meta-commentary on film and reality •Draws the viewers attention to the conventions of documentary •Stimulates reflection on the viewing process and how it differs from viewing a fiction film •Prompts viewer to not take for granted the conventions like the interview, for instance •Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, USSR, 1929)
Man with a Movie Camera(Dziga Vertov, Soviet Union, 1929)
Non-Fiction Film: Performative Documentary•Where the reflexive mode stresses intellectual engagement, performative mode stresses emotional involvement with what it is like to witness a particular kind of experience •Rely less heavily on commentary •Knowledge of the world is incomplete without emotional engagement to supplement intellectual engagement •The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000)
Non-Fiction Film: Observational Documentary•The observational mode, sometimes referred to as direct cinema, relies on a fiction-like continuity of time and space •Synchronous sound is often used •Where expository and poetic documentary build up fragments of the world, there is a sense of simply observing the world happen with observational documentary •High School (Fredrick Wiseman, 1968)
Attendance Word: Wiseman
Part III: Documentary Theory and Observation
Documentary Theory and Observation•Since the first documentary films have been made, lots has been written about documentary film: documentary theory •One question that documentary theory has relentlessly come back to is the question of the efficacy of the observational mode: can a filmmaker just turn a camera on and film the world as it actually is? Or are moving images always shaped by the perspectives (and formal techniques!) of the filmmakers?A still from Welfare(Fredrick Wiseman, USA, 1975)
Documentary Theory and Observation“To examine the vanguard of documentary theory and practice over the last thirty years, for instance, is to encounter a deep and pervasive suspicion of its relationship to the real and, more particularly, a robust rejection of its observational mode, a strain that minimizes the intervention of the filmmaker, eschews commentary, and accords primacy to lens-based capture.” Erika Balsom, “The Reality-Based Community”, E-Flux Journal (2017)
Documentary Theory and Observation•One reason the observational mode was under suspicion? The advent of digital images! •It was once significantly more difficult to doctor images: the advent of digital photography in the early 1990s (and now widely available photo editing software) forced a new skepticism about the representation of reality! •Academic trends also contributed to this: the rise of post-modernismand post-structuralism (trends that began in the late 1960s) were premised on unsettling our conception of truth •Truth, philosophers began to suggest, was multiple! •What is the truth? It depends on your perspective!
Documentary Theory and Observation•This provoked a “turn” in documentary •“New documentary” films of the 1990s would foreground (as Tout va biendid) their status as films •As if to say: remember that even documentaries are not reality! •“These films took seriously postmodern critiques, but rather than succumb to cynicism, they foregrounded the construction of contingent truths. They took up strategies of reenactment, essayism, heightened subjectivism, and docufiction” (Balsom)
The Thin Blue Line(Errol Morris, USA, 1988)
Documentary Theory and ObservationStylistically, The Thin Blue Linehas been most remarked for its film-noirish beauty, its apparent abandonment of cinema-vérité realism for studied, often slow-motion, and highly expressionistic reenactments of different witnesses' versions of the murder to the tune of Philip Glass's hypnotic score. Like a great many recent documentaries obsessed with traumatic events of the past, The Thin Blue Lineis self-reflexive. Like many of these new documentaries, it is acutely aware that the individuals whose lives are caught up in events are not so much self-coherent and consistent identities as they are actors in competing narratives….The documentarian's role in constructing and staging these competing narratives thus becomes paramount. In place of the self-obscuring voyeur of vérité realism, we encounter, in these and other films, a new presence in the persona of the documentarian (Linda Williams in “Mirrors without Memories”)
Documentary Theory and Observation•This suspicion emerged as a left wing concern, but over the course of the first quarter of the twentieth century, it was more and more appropriated by the right •Example: climate change denial - those who believe in climate change are only expressing one opinion amongst many! •Another example: “alternative facts” debacle of 2017
Documentary Theory and Observation“We live in an age of “alternative facts,” in which the intermingling of reality and fiction, so prized in a certain kind of documentary practice since the 1990s, appears odiously all around us. Questioning documentary’s access to the real was once oppositional: it broke away from a pseudoscientific conception of documentary that saw truth as guaranteed by direct inscription.” Erika Balsom, “The Reality-Based Community”, E-Flux Journal (2017)Kellyanne Conway (a senior counsellor to Donald Trump) “coined” the term “alternative facts” in 2016
Documentary Theory and Observation“Already in 1988, Donna Haraway [an academic] recognized that though the critique of objectivity had been necessary, there were dangers in proceeding too far down the path of social constructivism.She warned that to do so is to relinquish a needed claim on real, shared existence. Our planetisheating up. In the realm of documentary, too, thereisa visible world “out there,” the traces of which persist in and through the codes of representation. It is a world that demands our attention in all its complexity and frailty. A pressing question emerges: Is putting documentary’s claim to actuality under erasure through reflexive devices in all cases still the front-line gesture it once was, or have such strategies ossified into clichés that fail to offer the best response to the present emergency?” Erika Balsom, “The Reality-Based Community”, E-Flux Journal (2017)
Documentary Theory and ObservationInstead of taking for granted that there is something inherently desirable about blurring the boundary between reality and fiction and something inherentlyundesirable about minimizing an attention to processes of mediation in the production of visible evidence, we must ask: Do we need to be told by a film—sometimes relentlessly—that the image is constructed lest we fall into the mystified abyss of mistaking a representation for reality? Or can we be trusted to make these judgments for ourselves? Erika Balsom, “The Reality-Based Community”, E-Flux Journal (2017)
Part IV: Harlan County, USA(1976)
Harlan County, USA(1976)•Directed by Barbara Kopple •Kopple’s contribution to documentary is significant not only because of the films she made, but also because of the fact that she is not a man! •Kaplan: Female directors were very rare in post-war Hollywood - many turned to documentary filmmaking (also very male-dominated!)
Harlan County, USA(1976)•In 1973, Kopple went to Appalachia (a part of the USA where there were lots of mines) to make a documentary about a union reform movement Miners for Democracy (MFD) •Then 27 years old, Kopple spent about a year living in Appalachia before the Brookside mine strike broke out, and she refocused her efforts on documenting these events •The result shows the way that the company and the state used force to suppress the strike
Harlan County, USA(1976)•Harlan County, USAis a complicated instance of observational cinema •Unlike many documentaries made in years to come, Harlan Countyis not especially in foregrounding its author’s presence, but it also does not seek to conceal it either: for tutorial you can maybe think about some places where this is the case
Harlan County, USA(1976)•The film also presents a social conflict and it confidently and decisively takes a side in that conflict: the side of the workers who are striking •This is underscored in the film, for instance, by the constant use of working-class anthems and through the films really dense soundscape (machines, voices/accents, cars, animals, conflict)! •NB: Kopple recorded the sound herself
Harlan County, USA(1976)•It’s obvious that the film is concerned with class, but the film is also concerned with gender: focuses on the efforts of the wives of the coal miners organize, form picket lines and engage in the same level (perhaps more?) that their husbands engage in •The film in particular foregrounds the strong voice and leadership of Lois Scott (a union organizer whose husband worked at another mine)
Harlan County, USA(1976)•Harlan County, USAalso poses some questions about truth! •In other words, it is not just interesting for its content, but for howit presents that content •The film very decisively never tries to take the “perspective” of the Duke Power Company: this would seem to fly in the face of ideals of “neutral” or “objective” reporting - so why do this? Is there value in presenting both sides of a conflict? Why would Kopple not do so in this case?
Non-Fiction Film: Documentary“With a frequency not found in other forms of nonfiction image-making, documentary reflects on its relationship to truth. And unlike the written word, it partakes of an indexical bond to the real, offering a mediated encounter with physical reality in which a heightened attunement to the actuality of our shared world becomes possible. But precisely for these same reasons, documentary is simultaneously a battleground, a terrain upon which commitments to reality are challenged and interrogated.” Erika Balsom, “The Reality-Based Community”, E-Flux Journal (2017)
Reminder: Quiz Two is next week!