Research: History of documentary

History of documentary

Throughout the course of history documentaries were used as a way to depict “reality” through the use of the different modes. Documentaries were originally shot on film stock however through the years due to the advancement of technology can include video or digital productions which could be made for television series or put directly on video.

Timeline:

Pre 1900

·         The French used documentary to mean any non fiction film medium, this included: travelogues and instructional films. The earliest “moving pictures” were defined as documentaries, they were single shots taken on film which could be a train entering a station or a factory of people getting off to go to work. The purpose of documentaries was to show an event through the course of the narrative. These short films were named “actuality films” and were short due to lack of technology as the cameras could only hold a small amount of film.

Key examples:

·         Auguste and Louis Lumiere

Earliest documentary: Auguste & Louis

1900- 1920

·         During this time the travelogue films were very popular. Some were known as scenics. These were the most popular sort of films at the time.  An important early film that moved from the idea of scenic were In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) this film encompasses the  which embraced primitive lifestyle in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of Native Americans.

Documentary: In the land of the head hunters 1914

During this period Frank Hurley's documentary film about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition south was released in 1919. In this documentary he documented the failed Antarctic expedition which was led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914.


Romanticism
Robert J. Flaherty's documentary Nanook of the North in 1922, embraced the element of romanticism.
 Flaherty was able to film a number of staged romantic films, usually in these films he showed how the people in the film would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then, for example, 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
Due to lack of technology his use of building, for example the roofless igloo for interior shots were done not only to make the film more realistic but show the filming technology of the time.

Robert J Flaherty: Nanook of the north 1922

The city symphony

The realist tradition focused on humans within human-made environments, were called the city symphony, these films included: The Berlin, Symphony of a City (in an article he noted that Berlin represented what a documentary should not be). The documentary Rien que les Heures, and Man with the Movie Camera tend to feature people as products of their environment.

Newsreel tradition

The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; although newsreels were sometimes staged they were usually re-enacted out what had already happened. For instance, much of the battle footage in documentaries from the early 20th century were staged; they would get the footage by arriving on site after a major battle and re-enacting scenes in order to film them.

"Cinema truth", part one

Dziga Vertov was central to the Russian Kino-Pravda ("cinema truth") newsreel series of the 1920s.
He believed that the camera could be used in order to show reality more accurately to the human eye by varying lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, and ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion. Through this he made a philosophy out of it.

1930s-1940s: wartime propaganda

Propaganda documentaries are made with the explicit aim of persuading the audience to a point. Usually these documentaries centres upon the wars. One of the most notorious propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will.
In Britain, Humphrey Jennings succeeded in incorporating propaganda with a poetic approach to documentary with films such as Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy.

1950s-1970s

"Cinema truth," part two

Cinema verite (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some technical advances in order to depict the element of reality. This could be seen through light, reliable cameras, and portable sync sound.
Cinema verite and similar documentary traditions can therefore be seen, in a broader perspective, against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, the filmmakers would also take advantage of advances in technology allowing for smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound.

There are differences between cinema verite (which was coined by Jean Rouch) and Direct Cinema.

Cinema verite inlcudes:
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 80:1. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film.

Whereas the style of direct cinema were: 

• They avoided voice over narration and used interviews more
•  Filmmakers had very little to do with the
• Subjects such as film, music, and political celebrities were of interest and the fly-on-the-wall approach in order to reveal the subject behind the celebrity.

Political weapons

In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neo-colonialism and capitalism in general, which was seen more in Latin America. (The Hour of the Furnaces, from 1968) influenced a whole generation of filmmakers.