EDITING THE DOCUMENTARY

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DOCUMENTARY FILMS / STYLES

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DOCUMENTARY FILMS / STYLES

have a history, like everything else. The following is a chronology of documentary and ethnographic styles. This chronology includes films I especially love, and some I heartily dislike, and accordingly recommend for varying reasons. After the chronology (based on the spectacular work of David MacDougall in his great book entitled TRANSCULTURAL CINEMA), they are listed first in alphabetical order and are then categorized into each of the four major documentary styles-to-date.

 

DOCUMENTARY FILMS / STYLES
Revised 3/27/02

CONTENTS

CHRONOLOGY
I ESPECIALLY RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTARY FILMS
DIRECT ADDRESS DOCUMENTARY VOICE
CINEMA VERITE DOCUMENTARY VOICE
DIRECT ADDRESS TO VIEWER DOCUMENTARY VOICE
SELF-REFLEXIVE DOCUMENTARY VOICE / CINEMATIC ESSAY
TYPES OF DOCUMENTARY NARRATION

CHRONOLOGY

1851: Still photographs catalogue East Indian human types.

1868-75: Houghton and Tanner publish THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, photos and texts in eight volumes.

1873: Breeks and Marshall publish some of the earliest photographs from the field to be published in an ethnographic book (photos of the Todas--see Everard im Thurn, below in 1887).

1877: Eadweard Muybridge photographs horses.

1883: Etienne Jules Marey experiments with chronophotography--the photography of people in movement.

1983: World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago. Family groups from many cultures are imported. The great anthropologist Franz Boas helps to organize. Early anthropology emphasizes the visual display of objects and people.

1883: Everard im Thurn pubilshes his photographic classic AMONG THE INDIANS OF GUIANA after years of intimate knowledge of them.

1887: Eadweard Muybridge publishes 16 volume series on human and animal locomotion.

1895: Felix-Louis Regnault films a Wolof woman during Paris Exposition Ethnographique de l’Afrique Occidentale--the beginning of the use of the camera for ethnographic research footage.

1898: A.C. Haddon takes Lumiere camera to Torres Staits for the Cambridge Expedition and films fire-making techniques and ritual dances–the beginning of of the use of the camera for ethnographic record footage.

1906:

•W.H.R. Rivers publishes THE TODAS contains 76 still photos (actually taken by Theodor Klein).

•William Alfred Gibson and Millard Johnson, LIVING HAWTHORN (Australian town: mix of setups and observational style, including subjective looks into the camera).

1907: Rudolf Poch makes first ethnographic film for which the accompanying sound has been successfully synched.

1911: Seligmann publishes THE VEDDAS containing 119 still photos.

1914: Edward Curtis films IN THE LAND OF THE WAR CANOES (a narrative dramatization using Kwakiutl actors and originally entitled IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS (Jim Jarmusch reportedly based his set for DEAD MAN upon the village in this film).

1917: Missionary film, THE TRANSFORMED ISLE, filmed in the South Pacific Solomon Island between 1907-1915. It suggests an indigenous POV.

1922: Robert Flaherty, NANOOK OF THE NORTH. Third person narration with subjective tone, and focussing on an indigenous person as the film's hero. This film is an early example of cultural relativism and the collaboration between informant and filmmaker.

1925: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, GRASS

1926: Robert Flaherty, MOANA (Flaherty projected rushes every evening, building on the suggestions coming from his subjects). Film built on collaboration.

1927: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, CHANG (pseudo epic which translated native dialogue in orientalist fashion.

1928: Dziga Vertov, THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA. Makes explicit the various kinds of filmic manipulation then possible, the subjective inclusion of the filmmaker, and the re-working of previously shown footage.

1929: Jean Epstein, FINNIS TERRAE. Fictionalized documentary on islands off Brittany. Film focuses on actual day-to-day problems, including tensions between characters. This is not the epic, distanced approach of Flaherty in MAN OF ARAN.

1930s: Invention of the sound fllm. Documentary films now become commentary-bound. This developed out of the popularity of the lecture circuit and of the medium of radio. Results: films are based in pedagogical intent and teach the viewer through a distanced, omniscient Voice of God commentary. From this point, there is a notable decline in the use of still photographs in anthropology and in monographs because of shift in interest from objects to structural and psycholanalytical approaches to culture (except in the Third Reich).

(1933: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, KING KONG. The filmic representation and treatment of "natives" perfectly embodies the Western cultural attitudes).

1934:

•Robert Flaherty, MAN OF ARAN (pseudo-doc, idealized, romantic)

•Basil Wright, SONG OF CEYLON (a celebration of the filmmaker’s sensibility in encountering another society. Wright: "It was the only film I’ve made that I really loved, and it was in fact a religious epiphany" MacDougall, p. 113).

1935-51: MARCH OF TIME, series. Approx 200 monthly films of 15-25 minutes. Embodiments of the Voice of God commentary.

1936: Basil Wright, NIGHT MAIL

•1936-38: Bateson and Mead’s work in Bali

1945-50’s: Italian neo-realist film movement becomes the inspiration for documentary and ethnographic films.

1948: Luchino Visconti, LA TERRA TREMA. Example of the interest in the dramatization of a European subculture. This interest came out of the Depresson and WWII).

1950: John Marshall begins to film 2 million feet of 16mm film of the Ju/’hoansi people in the Kalahari using the observational approach. His interest turned from technology to human relationships. (See MacDougall for the story of his informant going into the bush and having a baby while he was filming knot-tying and how that event changed his approach from research to recording).

1951: Jean Rouch, BATAILLE SUR LE GRAND FLUEVE, introduces Damoure Zika whom he follows over a 40+year period to MADAME L’EAU (1992)

1954: Roman Kroiter, PAUL TOMLOWICZ: STREET-RAILWAY SWITCH MAN. Film on the "little man" with his ruminations.

1955: Jean Rouch, LES MAITRES FOUS. Rouch's friends advised him to destroy the footage for this film. Rouch did not--and it has come to be appreciated as the most powerful manifestation on film of the effects of colonization upon a subjected people.

1956: Alain Resnais, NIGHT AND FOG, V6951. Musical score plays "alongside" the content of the picture rather than underscoring it. Mix of B/W and color footage. Distanced, ironic, seminall.

1957: Jean Rouch, MOI UN NOIR, using mix of fiction and reality. His characters adopted the roles of Edward G. Robinson and Eddie Constantine in the back alleys of Treichville, Cote d’Ivoire.

1958: Jean Rouch begins to film LA LYRAMIDE HUMAINE that used role playing ("When people are being recorded, the reactions that they have are always infinitely more sincere than those they have when they are not being recorded" MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema, p. 111)

1960’S:

•the interview emerged out of journalism and TV to become a key element in documentaries.

•development of highly portable synch sound film equipment

1960:

• Godard, A BOUT D’UN SOUFFLE —after which Marchsll and Asch began to edit A JOKING RELATIONSHIP using subtitles in a documentary film for the first time.

• (Antonioni, L’AVENTURA, placed figures within an environment and let them work within it with long camera takes–prefigured by Jean Epstein’s FINNIS TERRAE (1929--see MacDougall).

1961: Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, CHRONIQUE D’UN ETE, first film to be set up and filmed as a text to be read, and the first to use psychodrama in which testimony was an externalization of interior space. Rouch then rejected psycholdrama as too dangerous for the informant. The CRUCIAL documentary film in terms of its influence on those coming after.

1963:

•Robert Gardner, DEAD BIRDS (voice-over commentary)

•Asen Balikci begins Netsilik Eskimo series using observational approach.

1964: Chris Marker, LA JETEE

1966: Timothy Asch and John Marshall, A JOKING RELATIONSHIP (first use of subtitles for indigenous dialogue thereby giving the "natives" a voice).

1967:

•Frederick Wiseman and John Marshall, TITTICUT FOLLIES

•Jean Rouch, JAGUAR, use of "what-if" conversational commentary by the indigenous leads. Contains scene in which the African leads discover their own "primitives".

1969: Maysles brothers, SALESMAN. Built on fiction narrative structures and on Eisenstein’s character types.

1970-?: Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon began major series of "sequence films" on the Yanomamo. See the October 9th issue of THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE for disturbing contemporary follow-up.

1970-73: John Marshall’s series on the Pittsburgh police, THREE DOMESTICS (1970) HENRY IS DRUNK (1972) YOU WASN’T LOITERING (1973)

1972: David and Judith MacDougall, TO LIVE WITH HERDS. Gentle, unfolding,

1975:

•Timothy Asch, THE AX FIGHT. One of the crucial films in the cinematic essay genre.

•Orson Welles, F FOR FAKE. Film about the impossibility of making a documentary--that all docs are "fakes". Finest example of the cinematic essay genre.

1979: Jean Eustache, LES PHOTOS D’ALIX, readdresses the cinema as photography.

1980: John Marshall, N!AI: THE STORY OF A !KUNG WOMAN. A sequence film that uses footage shot over a 28 year period.

1981: Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill, SOLDIER GIRLS. Uses Eisensteins' theory of character types but then reverses those characters: see especially Private Alves and the scene with Sargeant Abing at the end of the film.

1983: Gary Kildea, CELSO AND CORA.

198?: Michael Apted, 28 UP. Sequence film. Uses extensive footage from a 28 year period. Latest version of this epic work: 42 UP (1999).

1992: Andrew Young and Susan Todd, CHILDREN OF FATE. Sequnce film. explores fate of several people filmed by Robert Young and Michael Roemer in CORTILE CASCINO (1961) and includes footage from that earlier film.

 

 

I ESPECIALLY RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTARY FILMS

for varying reasons. Most I adore, some I dislike, heartily. They all can be learned from. A title followed by a catalogue number refers to the Columbia College catalogue. A "PT collection" indicates that it is in my personal collection and is available to screen during class.

28 UP, V7611

AILEEN WUORNOS: THE SELLING OF A SERIAL KILLER

ANDERSON PLATOON, V6938

ASANTE MARKET WOMEN, V11593

ATOMIC CAFE, V6566

AX FIGHT, V7335

BATTLE OF CULLODON, V6349

SADIE BENNING FILMS, PT Collection

BEST BOY

CHICKEN HAWK

CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER, V10082

DAIRY FOR TIMOTHY, V9248

DANNY LYONS FILMS, PT collection

DAY AFTER TRINITY, V7089

DEAR AMERICA, pT collection

DONT’ LOOK BACK, D.A. Pennebaker

DERVISHES OF KURDISTAN, V11592

EDVARD MUNCH, V10861

F FOR FAKE, VD729

FAR FROM POLAND, V7596

FINDING CHRISTA, V9913

FOUR LITTLE GIRLS, V11124

FRED MARX FILMS, PT Collection

GAP TOOTHED WOMEN, V8096

GATES OF HEAVEN

GREY GARDENS

HEARTS AND MINDS, V6947

HEARTS OF DARKNESS

HOOP DREAMS

HOUSING PROBLEMS, V7670

IN THE STREET, V11380

IN THE LAND OF THE WAR CANOES, PT COLLECTION

IN THE YEAR OF THE PIG V7099

INCIDENT AT OGLALA

JAGUAR, V10134

LAST WALTZ

LETTERS FROM VIET NAM

LIFE AND NOTHING MORE

LIGHTNING OVER WATER

LISTEN TO BRITAIN, V9248

LION HUNTERS, V10139

LORANG'S WAY, V11413

MAITRES FOUS, V10158

MANUFACTURING CONSENT, V9806

MEMORANDUM, V7197

MIX UP, PT collection

MODELS, WISEMAN

NEW EARTH, V7670

NAWI, V11414

NIGHT AND FOG, V6951

NIGHT MAIL, V7670

NOTES FOR AN AFRICAN ORESTES

ON THE ROPES, V11576

OUR HITLER, PT collection

PAUL ROBESON: HERE I STAND, V11219

PANAMA DECEPTION, V6304

PERFUMED NIGHTMARE, V11043

PHOTO WALLAHS, V11417

PRIMARY, V0298

RAINBOW BRIDGE

RING OF FIRE

SAD SONG OF YELLOW SKIN, V7766

SAKUDDEI OF INDONESIA, V11597

SANG DES BETES, V9898

SHERMAN'S MARCH

SHOAH

SILVERLAKE LIFE

SOLDIER GIRLS, V7656

SONG OF CEYLON, V7670

STRAVINSKY, V10379

TITTICUT FOLLIES

TONGUES UNTIED, V9262

TOKYO GA, V7278

TO LIVE WITH HERDS, V11414

TRUE STORY OF LILI MARLEEN, V9248

TWO GIRLS GO HUNTING, V11594

TWO PORTRAITS, V7481

UNCOMMON SENSES

UNIVERSAL CITIZEN, V7481

UNIVERSAL HOTEL, V7481

VALENCIA DIARY, V11382

VERNON, FLORIDA, V7580

VIETNAM: YEAR OF THE PIG

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ: LAST ROMANTIC

WAR ROOM

WEDDING CAMELS, V11416

WILD CHILD (false doc–V8511)

WOMEN WHO SMILE, V11595

WORD IS OUT, V9540

 

THE ABOVE FILMS CATALOGUED BY HISTORICAL STYLE

DIRECT ADDRESS DOCUMENTARY VOICE

DAIRY FOR TIMOTHY, V9248

DERVISHES OF KURDISTAN, V11592

HOUSING PROBLEMS, V7670

IN THE LAND OF THE WAR CANOES, PT COLLECTION

LISTEN TO BRITAIN, V9248

MARCH OF TIME SERIES

NEW EARTH, V7670

NIGHT MAIL, V7670

SONG OF CEYLON, V7670

TRUE STORY OF LILI MARLEEN, V9248

 

CINEMA VERITE DOCUMENTARY VOICE

AN AMERICAN FAMILY

ANDERSON PLATOON, V6938

BACKBREAKING LEAF

BATTLE OF CHILE

BRIG, V7700

CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER, V10082

HOOP DREAMS

JAGUAR, V10134

LE JOLI MAI

LION HUNTERS, V10139

LONELY BOY

MAITRES FOUS, V10158

NAWI, V11415

PHOTO WALLAHS, V11417

PRIMARY, F0298

SALESMAN, V7451

SOLDIER GIRLS, V7656

THE CHAIR

TITTICUT FOLLIES, V11008

VALENCIA DIARY, V11382

 

DIRECT ADDRESS TO VIEWER DOCUMENTARY VOICE

28 UP, V7611

ASANTE MARKET WOMEN, V11593

ATOMIC café, V6566

DAY AFTER TRINITY, V7089

FOUR LITTLE GIRLS, V11124

GREY GARDENS

HARLAN COUNTY, USA

HEARTS AND MINDS

HEARTS OF DARKNESS*

IN THE YEAR OF THE PIG V7099

LAST WALTZ

LORANG'S WAY, V11413

ON THE ROPES, V11576

PANAMA DECEPTION, V6304

PAUL ROBESON: HERE I STAND, V11219

POINT OF ORDER, V7483, OR V9799

ROSIE THE RIVETTER

SAD SONG OF YELLOW SKIN

SAKUDDEI OF INDONESIA, V11597

SHOAH

STRAVINSKY, V10379

TO LIVE WITH HERDS, V11414

TWO GIRLS GO HUNTING, V11594

VERNON, FLORIDA, V7580

VIETNAM: YEAR OF THE PIG

WAR ROOM

WEDDING CAMELS, V11416

WOBBLIES, V6663

WOMEN WHO SMILE, V11595

WORD IS OUT, V9540

 

SELF-REFLEXIVE DOCUMENTARY VOICE / CINEMATIC ESSAY

AX FIGHT, V7335

BATTLE OF CULLODON, V6349

DEAR AMERICA, PTcollection

EDVARD MUNCH, V10861

F FOR FAKE, VD729

FAST, CHEAP, OUT OF CONTROL

FINDING CHRISTA, V9913

IN THE STREET, V11380

LIGHTNING OVER WATER, V7671

MIX UP, PT collection

NOTES FOR AN AFRICAN ORESTES

OUR HITLER, PT collection

SHERMAN'S MARCH, V7629

TOKYO GA, V7278

TONGUES UNTIED, V9262

TURKANA TRILOGY

A WIFE AMONG WIVES

LORANG’S WAY

WEDDING CAMELS

TWO PORTRAITS, V7481

UNCOMMON SENSES

UNIVERSAL CITIZEN, V7481

UNIVERSAL HOTEL, V7481

WILD CHILD (false doc–V8511)

 

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARY NARRATION

BATTLE OF COLLODON, V6349

CIVIL WAR, V7982

DIARY FOR TIMOTHY

F FOR FAKE, VD729

LAND WITHOUT BREAD V7011

NIGHT AND FOG, V6951

NIGHT MAIL, V7670

ROGER AND ME V8227

SONG OF CEYLON, V7670

TOYKO GA, V7278

TWO PORTRAITS, V7481

UNIVERSAL HOTEL, V7481