Unit 1: Part 2: Film Forms

Experimental Documentary and the Archive

The Problem with Documentary 'The contradictory or paradoxical thing is that

in a documentary the real things depicted are liable to lose their reality by being photographed and presented in that documentary way, and there's no poetry in that. In poetry, something else happens. Hard to say what it is. Presence let's say, soul or spirit, an empathy with whatever it is that's dwelt upon, feeling for it - to the point of identification.' - Margaret Tait

Since the very earliest photography there has been a sense that an image can reveal the truth of the world. Photographic images as soon as they could be reproduced were thought to be able to say more about what was actual than words ever could.

Woman with injured finger being administered first aid in the infirmary of the Hood Rubber Co: Photo by Lewis Hine

Objective or Subjective truth? But in truth, reality has been framed by someone with a particular agenda

and particular prejudices and is viewed later by a viewer with their own prejudice.

There is no objective truth to be filmed and the framing of an image only serves to reminds us of this.

The classic documentary filmmaker's main battle is with this dilemma: to ensure his or her neutrality; to find strategies for documenting given reality as fully as possible.

WHAT IS A DOCUMENTARY?

A documentary film attempts to present a point of view or factual information often regarding an event, subject or place. Typically they should be in contrast to the narrative fiction films and genres we have already looked at.

Documentaries are nearly always labeled as such and we therefore consider them in reflection of the genre and other documentary films. We watch documentaries with expectations. But what are these expectations?

Ideally we should believe that the information given to us is factual/true

Aesthetic Devices and their effects Objective or Subjective? Filming of events as they happen An historical/social/political event is recorded before the camera

without scripting or staging. However, the filmmaker still controls where the camera is placed, what is in focus, the editing. The ‘raw’ footage can then be further manipulated in post production through editing and the addition of a voicover/visual aids/music etc. The filmmaker cannot entirely control the events/interview that unfolds before the camera.

Visual aids (Maps/charts/photographs/animations) Staged/reconstructed events Narrative voiceover Presenting to camera

The Awful Truth 1999 Dir. Michael Moore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE Watch the extract from Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth. What techniques does Moore use to create his arguments? Do you think his techniques work are they subjective or

objective? The show emulated television newsmagazine shows (such as

60 Minutes, or Moore's own previous show, TV Nation) in that it comprised a series of documentary segments. Here the format involved presenting them to a studio audience, often accompanied by a coda and commentary by Moore as to what happened after the segment was first filmed. The show focused on exposing problems in American government, business, and society. It often used outlandish sketches and stunts to point out the inherent absurdity of a situation and hint at potential solutions.

Often documentaries contain the identity, voice and even presence of the documentary filmmaker himself .

Filmmakers like Michael Moore express the subjective and complex nature of documentaries.

Many documentaries have been challenged as inaccurate. Michael Moore’s Roger and me is one such case.

The film presents in sequences the response of the people of Flint, Michigan, to a series of layoffs at General Motors plants during the 1980’s . Much of the film shows inept efforts of the local government to revive the towns economy. Ronald Regan visits, a television evangelist holds a mass rally and an expensive building project is opened.

However all of these events happen before the plant closings in 1986. Moore rearranges the chronology of the events to suit his own views and the theme of the documentary.

Documentary truth?

There are many different types of documentary. They are not always objective or even accurate. However, the evidence that is assembled in whatever form is always presented as if it is trustworthy.

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARY.

Compilation Film An assembly of images from archives ‘Found Footage’ The Atomic Café 1982 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOUtZOqgSG8 Watch the clip of Atomic Café, the film was made in

1982 during the height of the fears surrounding the arms race for Nucleaur weapons and escalating confrontations between USA and the USSR.

What is the effect of using archive footage? Does it make the argument more convincing or

less?

The Atomic Cafe

The Atomic Café is an acclaimed documentary film about the beginnings of the era of nuclear warfare, created from a broad range of archival film from the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s - including newsreel clips, television news footage, U.S. government-produced films (including military training films), advertisements, television and radio programs. News footage reflected the prevailing understandings of the media and public.

The film was produced over a five-year period through the collaborative efforts of three directors: Jayne Loader, and brothers Kevin and Pierce Rafferty. For this film, the Rafferty brothers and Loader formed the production company "Archives Project Inc." The filmmakers opted to not use narration and instead they deploy carefully constructed sequences of film clips to make their points. The soundtrack utilizes atomic-themed songs from the Cold War-era to underscore the themes of the film.

Though the topic of atomic holocaust is a grave matter, the film approaches it with black humor. Much of the humor derives from the modern audience's reaction to the old training films, such as the Duck and Cover film shown in schools.

The film was released in April 1982. Its release coincided with a peak in the international disarmament movement, and the film received much wider distribution than was the norm for politically-oriented documentaries. It rapidly became a cult classic, and greatly influenced documentary filmmaking.

The Danube Exodus Dir. Peter Forgacs 1998 The Hungarian filmmaker Péter Forgács is one of the most prominent so-called

found footage filmmakers. In particular home movies and amateur films serve as the basis of stories he reveals and compose by using recovered personal and historical events.

He is primarily interested in the way in which these films seem to depict only happy moments, but on closer consideration they also appear to tell a hidden history, which can be brought back to the surface by the recycling filmmaker.

In the travelogue The Danube Exodus, he documents the Jewish exodus from Slovakia just before the beginning of World War II. In two boats, a group of nine hundred Slovak, Austrian Jews tried to reach the Black Sea via the river Danube, in order to get to Palestine from there. Forgács based his film on the amateur films of Captain Nándor Andrásovits, the captain of one of the boats.

He filmed his passengers while they prayed, slept and even got married. At the end of this journey, it is clear that the boat will not return empty: a reverse exodus takes place, this time of repatriating Bessarabian Germans, fleeing to the Third Reich because of the Soviet invasion of Bessarabia . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2zzc9ZDGu0

Interview/Talking Heads

Records testimonies about events or social movements through interviews with witnesses and experts.

Direct-cinema (Cinema-verite) Records an ongoing event as it happens, with

minimal interference from the filmmaker (Emerged in the 1950’s/60’s when portable camera and sound equipment became available.

Hoop Dreams 1994 Dir. Steve James Hoop Dreams follows the story of two Chicago, Illinois

high school black students and their dream of becoming professional basketball players.

Originally intended to be a 30-minute short produced for the Public Broadcasting Service, it eventually led to 5 years of filming and 250 hours of footage. It premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. Despite its length (171 minutes) and unlikely commercial genre, it received high critical and popular acclaim. It was on more critics' top ten lists than any other film that year, including Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Heavenly Creatures and Quiz Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEzyolIXOFs

Portrait Documentary

Often unobtrusive films of a single sometimes famous individuals, their lives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck5AIB43p_I American Movie is a 1999 documentary about the making of an

independent film. Milwaukee filmmaker Mark Borchardt feverishly works to finish his independent horror film Coven, but slides into a downward spiral of poor financing and lack of planning. American Movie was produced by Sarah Price and directed by Chris Smith.

The film is subtitled "The Making of Northwestern", but only the first fifteen minutes of the film are about the making of Northwestern; the rest of the film centers on the making of Coven.

Synthetic Documentary

Often documentaries combine all these techniques together mixing archive footage, interviews and material shot on the fly

D.I.A.L. History Dir. Johan Grimonperez 1998 http://www.ubu.com/film/grimonprez_dial.html

Documentary Versus Fiction – Blurring the lines Often fiction films such as historical films and biographies base themselves on

actual events and can use archive footage and photographs, the actual locations, buildings and costumes to more accurately reflect the period. Despite their similarity to documentary these films use actors are scripted and dramatised.

JFK Dir. Oliver Stone 1991 USA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vW2ryP16Vk Watch the clip of the introduction to Oliver Stone’s JFK. Stone weaved archive

footage into newly shot footage. Is it possible to tell the difference? What does it mean to change or re-interprete historical events?

There is a large crossover area between documentary and fiction with both similarly containing archive and dramatised footage. Fiction films can also be made entirely out of archive material such as Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America. Despite its use of archive materials and pre-shot footage its intentions are to create a fictional story.

TYPES OF FORM IN DOCUMENTARY FILMS Many documentaries are organised as

narratives, there are, however, other non-narrative types of documentary form.

Categorical form – Conveys information in a simple fashion

Rhetorical Form – An argument to convince the spectator of a point.

CATEGORICAL FORM

Related to the way in which we use categories or groupings to organise our knowledge of the world. Documentary filmmakers often use categories to provide a basis for organising a film’s form or structure. For example a categorical film often begins by identifying its subject.

In categorical form, patterns of development will usually be simple.

The film might move from small to large, local to national, personal to public.

Categorical Form

Because of its simple structure a film that moves linearly from one example to another within a categroy risks boring the spectator. The filmmaker therefore needs to introduce variation to make us adjust our expectations.

Variations in structure- from the macro to micro and back.

Variations in aesthetic technique;1. Using Abstract or experimental techniques.2. Using sound or music to increase tension or

emotion or contrapuntally perhaps for comic or intellectual effect

Artists Documentary

The relationship between artist and subject can be freed in artists' documentary work. Coming from different practices of portraiture and still life painting, the artist can observe the given world subjectively, there is no disguise of neutrality - what you are seeing often is the way an individual artist sees and wants to reflect the world.

Crucially, the artist can represent the world as he or she sees it, away from the constraints of storytelling and independent of the political agendas of broadcasters and commissioners.

Once again this boundary-pushing is what allows what Margaret Tait describes as empathy to be freed from its usual constraints and to be transferred to the new viewer.

ISLAND RACE - William Raban1996 28mins Colour 16mm/Digibeta

Filmed on the streets of the East End of London between spring 1994 and summer 1995, Island Race contrasts ordinary, everyday events with actions by right wing extremists, counter anti-racist demonstrations, the funeral of a gangland leader, and jingoistic street parties celebrating Victory in Europe Day.

Using just picture and sound, with no added commentary, the audience is given the space to draw their own conclusions about the film's portrayal of English national identity in the late 1990s. (WR)

http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/william_raban/island_race.html

London Dir Patrick Keiller 1994 Patrick Keiller's extraordinary portrait of London re-imagines the city through the

explorations of an unseen 'researcher' Robinson and his similarly unseen companion, the film's narrator (voiced by Paul Scofield).

'The film attempted to combine two strands of critical thinking. On one hand, there was the 'urban' literature of Poe, Baudelaire, Louis Aragon, Walter Benjamin and so on, in the context of which London appeared to be a city where certain kinds of urban experience characteristic of European cities were difficult to find. On the other were the various 'declinist' scenarios of English capitalism, in particular the idea that England was a backward, failing economy because it had never had a successful bourgeois revolution.

'Alongside these predictable concerns, however, was the awareness that Baudelaire was just as fed up with the quartier latin as Robinson claimed to be with London. His problem was not really London, but 'The Great Malady, Horror of Home'. Perhaps this feeling of restlessness, that seemed to be so characteristic of London, was not really such a problem after all. Perhaps it was something to be valued. London might be uncomfortable to live in, but it avoided the more stupefying aspects of dwelling that a less spatially impoverished, more 'architectural' city might encourage. Perhaps London was even, despite its obvious anachronisms, rather modern. Even someone as narrow-minded as Robinson could hardly fail to notice the increasingly cosmopolitan make-up of its population.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v84byeueCBI

Bibliography/Webography

Taken from Lux Online Theme: Documentary http://www.luxonline.org.uk/themes/documentary.html

Film Art: An Introduction Bordwell and Thompson