I . History of Documentary Film
A. Pre-1900-Early film was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those made by Aguste and Louis Luimire, were a minute or less in length, due to technological limitations.
B. 1900–1920- were very popular in the early part of the 20th century. They were often referred to by distributors as "scenics." Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time.An important early film to move beyond the concept of the scenic was (1914), which embraced in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of.
1) Romanticism- in 1922, documentary film embraced Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic films during this time period, often showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then.
2)The city symphony- The continental, or realist, tradition focused on humans within human-made environments, and included the so-called "city symphony" films.These films tend to feature people as products of their environment.
3) Kino-Pravda- was central to the newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the camera with its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion could render reality more accurately than the human eye, and made a film philosophy out of it.
4) Newsreel tradition- The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; newsreels were also sometimes staged but were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.
D. 1920s–1940s-The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most notorious propaganda is film which chronicled the 1934 and was commissioned by hitler. Leftist filmmakers the Belgian coal mining region. directed a documentary. In Canada the , set up by John Grierson, was created for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of naziGermany.
E. 1950s–1970s-Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded.The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions
1) Cinéma-vérité- (or the closely related direct cinima ) was dependent on some technical advances in order to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound.
2) Political weapons- In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in latin America, but also in a changing society. La Hora de los hornos influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. Among the many political documentaries early 1970s; "Chile: A Special Report," a public television's first in depth expository look of the September 1973 overthrow of the legitimate Salvador Allende, Chilean government by the Pinochet armed forces, who ruled by terror.
3) Modern documentaries- The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as the late Marlon Riggs Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.
4) Documentaries without words-Films in the documentary form without words have been made. From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to the images, but no spoken content. Koyaanisqasi (part of the Qatsi trilogy) consists primarily of slow motion and time laps photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the united states. Baraka tries to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies.
