Documentary film

In the field Cinema tographic, the documentary film is a kind which is fixed for theoretical goal to produce the representation of a reality, without intervening on its unfolding, a reality which of it is thus independent. He is thus opposed to the Fiction, which is authorized to even create reality as it represents by the means, generally, of a narration which acts to produce the illusion of it. The fiction, to produce this Effet of reality thus rests, inter alia things, on a history or a Scénario and a Mise in scene. By analogy with the Literature, the documentary one would be with the fiction what the Essai is with the Romance .

History

Origins

The cinema of before 1900 was dominated by the " actualités" : the first Film S were by definition of documentary courts, of the moments of the everyday life captured on film, like a train entering in station or of the workers leaving a factory (see in particular the Exit of the Lumière factory in Lyon, 1895). The technical constraints made that each film did not exceed the minute. But the idea of " scene documentaire" is attested as of 1906, and that of " film documentaire" substantivized in " documentaire" as of 1915.

Generally, this French anteriority is still sensitive, in the the Thirties, several German texts and American of the time quoting the French word rather than its local equivalent. Very few stories were still told at that time by the means of the new medium, mainly because of the technical limitations. The tradition of the topicality is an important tradition for the documentary one; these stories were sometimes settings in scene of events having taken place really (as for example for the scenes of battle, where the cameraman arrived after the engagements).

In the photographic terminology , the term Documentaire appears as of the end of the the Twenties. Its first occurrence as definition of a kind is difficult to locate, but the legend - also born at the end of the Thirties - wants that the term initially appeared in 1926, in an article of John Grierson on film of Robert Flaherty, Moana .

Since 1934, when he wants to carry out films for really making discover with the general public the feeling of the skier and the mountaineer who he is, the future Master of the Cinéma of mountain Marcel Ichac thus buys one of his cameras to the chips. Marcel Ichac is thus one of the first to use a mobile camera, which it hangs in particular to skis in the film " 36 chandelles" (1936).

Decline and renewal

When Robert Flaherty turned Nanouk the Eskimo in 1922, the documentary film wanted to be fictionalized; Flaherty made play its protagonists by making pretense document. It prohibited with the hunters Morse S to use rifle S, they had to make use of harpoons which they did not use for a long time any more, endangering blow. In addition, the scene of hunting for the seal is a pure fiction. Indeed, Nanouk draws on a cord at the end of which, there is a seal already died. This small scene and many other elements, shows us the limit of the collecting of reality wanted by the documentary spirit. Such handling, carried out without warning the public, was regarded thereafter as dishonest persons.

During the Years 1930, the documentarist and critical John Grierson argued in his test First Principles off Documentary that the film Moana of Robert Flaherty had a documentary value , enumerating a certain number of clean principles according to him with documentary film. According to him, the potential of the cinema to observe the life could be exploited in a new form of art, the original actor and the original scene being better guides that their fictional counterparts to interpret the modern world; the rough material being essentially also " more réel" that the played scene. From this point of view, the sights of Grierson were not very far from those of Dziga Vertov, which worked for the current events Soviet S ( Kino-Pravda , literally “ movies-truth ”) and expressed its contempt for the " fiction bourgeoise". The definition of Grierson of documentary as “creative treatment of the topicality” had some success although the setting in scene a posteriori poses certain ethical problems as regards rewriting of the history. One can however note that Grierson, in addition to his work of documentarist also set up one of the institutions of the kind, the National office of the film of the Canada.

After having known years of disaffection before and in the immediate future post-war period, the kind accepted a renewal of recognition with Le Monde of silence of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle, crowned Palme of gold to Cannes in 1956. The technical evolution and the critical boiling of the post-war period allowed between the Années 1950 and the Années 1960 to leave the documentary subject the movie studios: Raquetteurs, documentary Québécois turned in 1958 is an good example of this new distance per immersion in the filmed subject.

" Cinema of the réel" , " Fictions of the réel" , " Cinema-vérité" , " Cinema-direct" : the documentary one of creation is crossed by research in cinematographic writings. The end of the XXe century sees emerging works of Depardon, Kramer, Rouch, Van Der Keuken, Varda, Wiseman.

The documentary one knows a renewal of recognition in France since the end of the Années 1990, appearing in good place of the weekly exits, going until exceptional popular successes with Être and to have Nicolas Philibert. The animalist kind was renewed under the impulse of Jacques Perrin ( Microcosmos , migrating People ). It was illustrated with the international level in 2004 with the film the Walk of the emperor (a true cinematographic adventure of Bonnepioche Productions).

On the televisual level, the Arte chain (in France, under the impulse of Thierry Garrel) had the appearance of a pioneer from the constancy of his programming and the atypical audacities of the creation which she proposes to the public.

At the beginning of XXIe century, the documentary one of creation, in France, is in particular marked by works of Jean-Michel Carré, Yves Billon, Richard Copans, Luc Moullet, Didier Mauro, Yves Jeanneau.

With the the United States, Michael Moore is the only one to be a business success, with its films Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine , even if recently the film Super Size Me of Morgan Spurlock knew a certain multitude.

The question of objectivity

The practice reveals that the limit between objectivity and point of view of the scenario writer is particularly thin: documentary always answers a step of its author, and thus proposes a particular vision. This vision results mainly from choice, that it is on the level of the covered subject, the means, the approach or, especially, of the Montage. Documentary is thus a true work of creation, which could not claim with objectivity, contrary to that of which he sees himself often implicitly invested.

In the history of the cinema, the documentary one often served a cause or a Propagande: Ground without bread of Shine Buñuel, the general Line of Sergueï Eisenstein, the Triumph of the will of Leni Riefenstahl show the width and the impact which the kind can take. Why We Fight , of Frank Capra, was a series of current events ordered by the US government to convince the public which it was well time to make the war. This militant step can however lead the documentarist to influence what he wants to film, thus adopting an attitude of director to the most traditional direction of the term. Thus one cannot separate the evolution from documentary between 1935 and 1950 from the history from propaganda, the Why we fight of the USA, and the foundation of the ONF by Canada and Grierson being a direct response by these States to the Triomphe of the will and to Joseph Goebbels.

More in North, since 1958, within ONF under the control of scenario writers like Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault, Gilles Groulx and Arthur Lamothe, a revolution takes place with Raquetteurs. The Article on the direct Cinéma gives an account of the technical and ideological boiling of this period, golden age made of technical innovations, engagement social, political, and of ethical questionings on the capacity of the cinema to give an account of reality.

Elsewhere also, in the Years 1960 and 1970, the documentary installation of face questions of his active report/ratio to reality and probability. He was in particular often regarded as political weapon against the Capitalisme and the Néocolonialisme, in particular in Latin America: will hora It of los hornos ( the Hour of the blazing infernos , 1968), of Octavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanas, which influenced a whole generation scenario writers.

After the particularly critical glance posed on the institutions and our companies between years 1960 and 70, an new approach is born between the Années 1980 and the Années 1990, girls of marketing, the public relations and kneaded politically correct . The documentary one is then presented itself in the form of a fiction, echoing the war of the speeches which characterizes our contemporary companies. One of the principal French directors on the matter, Agnes Varda, entitled even one of its films Documenteur (1981), thus underlining ambiguity or the illusion which the attitude could maintain at the spectator, also giving its name to this new hybrid kind, between documentary and fiction; one uses also the documentary term of Faux.

A documentary film line thus developed on a subjective-critical mode, very far away from the claims with " to make state of the réel". These films function with the way in which literary tests or Pamphlet S can be caught some in the world without the least preoccupation with an impartiality. This attitude is already visible in the critical cinema of Guy Debord of which all work not aimed at observing the reality of our company, but to change it by establishing it like lunatic.

Distance to the subject

The catch " on the vif"

The Soviet documentarist Dziga Vertov proposed to film the life " such as it était" , i.e. as it is surprised or causes it.

Different Réalisateur S took various positions as for the degree of participation. Kopple and Pennebaker chose the non-participation with the action. Rouch, Pierre Perrault and Kroitor, on the contrary, were often directly implied or caused even the filmed action.

The films Harlan County, the U.S.A. (by Barbara Kopple), Don' T Look Back (Gift Alan Pennebaker), Lonely Servant boy (Wolf Koenig and Romance Kroitor) and Chronique of a summer (Jean Rouch) are often regarded as typical of the cinéma-vérité or direct Cinéma. There remains always a certain incomprehension between the cinéma-vérité (in the Jean Rouch) and direct Cinéma North-American, which counts Michel Brault, Richard Leacock or Frederick Wiseman among its pioneers.

Compilation

The creation of films of compilation is not a particularly recent development in the documentary field. Among his pioneers one finds in particular Esfir Schub and his Chute of the house of Romanov (1927). Among the more recent examples, one also notes Point off Order (1964) of Emile de Antonio on hearings of the commission McCarthy and The Atomic Café , entirely built starting from films d'" information" produced by various American government agencies on the harmlessness of the Radiation S Nuclear S (one explained to the soldiers that they would be protected if they closed the eyes and stops at the time of the explosion). The Last Cigarette alternates as for him testimonys of the executives of the companies of Tabac in front of the American Congrès and the old women Publicité S proclaiming the alleged advantages of the Tabagisme.

The reconstitution

Certain scenes, not filmed at the time of the facts, are sometimes reconstituted with the protagonists or actors. These scenes are known as illustrations, and can be made accompany by charts, plan, Voice-over… When the document gathers such scenes so much that it resembles a Film, one speaks about Docu-fiction, so much the risk of nonresemblance is tall.

Anecdote

They are the technicians of Disney who built a s3eance table covered with snow to create the impression of Lemming S migrating like the insane ones and who finally throw themselves in the sea. Documentary the White Wilderness gained a Oscar of the cinema in 1958, and this falsification influences still today the popular image of the lemmings (which move indeed masses some but do not make a Suicide).

See too

Institutions

Other bonds

External bonds

Articles

  • Inventory of fixtures of the documentary kind
  • the Poetic documentary one like forms knowledge
  • In connection with the assembly in documentary film - a short history
  • Article on the documentary cinema and the cinema of fiction

Festivals

  • International festival of Documentary Fim Océanien (Tahiti - January)
  • International Documentary Filmfestival off Amsterdam (Amsterdam - November)
  • Punto Festival of Vista (Pamplona, Spain - February-March)
  • Cinema of Reality (Paris - March)
  • Visions of Reality (Nyon - April)
  • International festival of Documentary (Marseilles - July) the
  • General states of the Documentary film (Lussas - August)
  • Meetings of the Documentary Cinema (Puppet - October)
  • Yamagata Documentary Film Festival - (Yamagata - October)
  • Documentary Stopovers (La Rochelle - November)
  • International meetings of Documentary of Montreal (Montreal - November)
  • Documentary Screens (Arcueil - November)
  • Interviews (Belfort - November)
  • the Month of the documentary film (France - November)
  • Doc. in Courts (Lyon - December)

Institutions

  • ACID - the Agency of the Independent Cinema for its Diffusion
  • ADDOC - the Association of the scenario writers documentarists - association
    • Video
  • Beautiful days - association
  • BiFi - Library of Film - database
  • BPI - Public library of Information - database
  • CNC - Images of the culture - Documentary database
  • CNRS Images
  • on Big screen - association
  • Documentaires.org
  • EXPRMNTL.net - general encyclopedia of audio-visual art
  • Forum of the images - database
  • GNCR - National Grouping of the Cinemas of Research
  • Images in Libraries
  • the House of Doc' - resource center on the documentary cinema
  • Net 4 image - association
  • Observatory of Documentary the
  • Periphery (Cinematographic Center of Creation) - association
  • Vidéadoc - association
  • Doculink - a free community of more than 950 documentarists
  • Documentary and Ethnographic Film - has off Bibliography Books and Articles in the CPU Berkeley Libraries
  • Documentary Box - a newspaper dedicated to the topicality of documentary the
  • Documentary Films
  • DocuSeek - has search site for independent documentary, social exit, and educational videos available in the U.S. and Canada
  • International Documentary Association
  • ildocumentario - Site on the documentary cinema
  • the Digital Family collective of realizer and associative publisher

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