The diversity and variety of the documentary (The history of documentary cinema: a quick survey)

1. Dr. Linda C.H. LAI SM4134 The diversity and variety of the documentary(The history of documentary cinema:a quick survey)

2. Part I

3. Precursors? Documentary/ethnographic impulse in Early Cinema • Actualities in early cinema (pre 1905-6) • Travel films (Travelogues) • http://www.youtube.com/user/travelfilmarchive • http://www.travelfilmarchive.com • Edward Curtis’s In the Land of the Headhunters (1914) • …films whose subjects were non-Western, non-urban, and in pre-modern • societies • Reference: http://www.africanfilmny.org/network/news/T01m1reddy.html • “The Emergence of Ethnographic Film Practice: Past Travels and Future Itineraries” by Prerana • Reddy

4. Early cinema and the ethnographic impulse • Selected works from Animalomania • (title originally the name of a book with illustrations by JJ. Grandville published in 1836)

5. Nanook of the North • (1922) • Robert Flaherty

6. Robert Flaherty…(1920s…) • Documentation + Documentary • Re-staging everyday life episodes + use of film narration • Re-staging the only way to share knowledge • Film as a recording/documenting tool: • Camera position, mise-en-scene, duration of shots, types of shots • Film as a medium of representation of findings: • Organization – the need of a “story”; from summer to winter; long takes; strong sense of • continuity • Further reference: • “How I Filmed Nanook of the North” by Robert Flaherty (1922) at • http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/23_rf1_2.htm

7. Jean Rouch’s works in Africa

8. Berlin, a symphony of a big city (Germany 1927) Walter Ruttmann ...an ordinary day in 1927 Organization – narrative – journey Collecting – categorization – typification Representation

9. Song of Ceylon (1934) Basil Wright

10. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • Production: • GPO Film Unit for Ceylon Tea Marketing Board • …begun as an Empire Marketing Board film

11. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • Background of production: • Producer: John Grierson • Screenplay: John Grierson, Basil Wright …, • based partly on a book about Ceylon written by traveler Robert Knox in 1680 • Music: Walter Leigh • Cast: Lionel Wendt (Narrator) • … …

12. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • Basil Wright was sent to Ceylon to film four one-reel travelogues as publicity for the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board. • When he was actually there, he was driven by his own “inner impulse” which made him shoot other sites and themes. The idea of Song of Ceylon was not in his mind when he was there until after he returned to London to edit the footage. • There was no shooting script, but a screenplay afterwards, also with reference to an existing book. • The editing and sound in the film were done in England. Eight tracks of recorded sound and music and images were combined. • The film’s narration was taken from Robert Knox’s book (1680), which Wright discovered by chance in a store window.

13. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • I. the Buddha • Pilgrims up a mountainside to pray… II. the Virgin Island (10:54) • Daily life of the people… III. the Voices of Commerce (~23:00) • Two systems of labors juxtaposed: sound track of British stock market prices and the arrival and departure times for ships // natives of Ceylon gathering coconuts ad tea leaves by hand IV. the Apparel of the Gods (29:43) • Religious and cultural life of Ceylon as lived before the arrival of the British colonizers The four titles were inserted afterwards.

14. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • The film is often called the world’s finest example of “lyrical documentary.” • Grierson described the theme of the work, “Buddhism and the art of life it has to offer, set upon by a Western metropolitan civilization which, in spite of all our skills, has no art of life to offer.”

15. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • Keywords… • Interpretation / • narrative composition / • sight and sound craftsmanship / • experimentation of sound / • anthropology and power structure

16. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • Bibliography: • http://www.filmreference.com/Film-So-St/Song-of-Ceylon.html Cecil Starr • Screen online: • http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/442428/index.html

17. CASE STUDY:Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) • Comparison: • Laleen Jayamanne • A Song of Ceylon (1985, 51 minutes, color)

18. CASE STUDY:Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon • A Song of Ceylon(Laleen Jayamanne, 1985, Australia, 51 minutes) • Her work is NOT an ethnographic film, but it engages in issues of ethnography and anthropology in general, critically.

19. CASE STUDY:Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon • Jayamanne is a Srilankan working overseas. • The work focuses on gender and the body. • Trinh T. Minh-ha remarks on the work, “The anthropological text is performed both like a musical score and a theatrical ritual… The film engages the viewer in the cinematic body as spectacles…” (in journal Discourse)

20. CASE STUDY:Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon • Jayamanne’s own Song is based on an anthropological text that deals with the experience of “possession” – “of a body being possessed by other bodies, of the voice being multiplied.” • Ethnography of class • Cultural hybridization • Found anthropological text • Daily rituals Bibliography: “Anna Rodrigo Interviews Laleen Jayamanne on A Song of Ceylon” in Toward Cinema and Its Double: cross-cultural. (pp. 65-66)

21. Song of Ceylon and more... • Producers: • Empire Marketing Board (EMB) • a model applied to many British colonies • (Commercial sponsor of film:) • The Ceylon Tea Board

22. South Africa in first half of 20th C... • African Film Productions Ltd. (AFP) • 1stSouth African-based film production company • AFP documentaries were sponsored by government departments • (Propaganda, tourism, educational...)

23. The social-political side of documentary film: Documentary cinema is not just filmmaking. Historically speaking, it has been the location of power control and government public relations. Today... Democratic possibilities of audience input? Notion of archive?

24. Night Mail • (1936) • John Grierson (producer)

25. Night Mail • Documentation + Documentary • John Grierson (Britain, 1930s…) • Grierson founded the GPO’s Film Unit in 1933… • Night Mail (released 1936, dir. Harry Watt, Basil Wright) • = “camera truth” “sound archive” • On the British postal system • Ethnography of technology…ethnography of urban sound • Screen on-line: • http://www.screenonline.org.hk/film/id/530415/index.html

26. Maya Deren

27. Maya Deren • Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti • (put together posthumously in 1977) • (her own documentation in writing published 1953)

28. Visual anthropology: the case of Maya Deren • (Avant-garde filmmaker/experimentation in visual anthropology) • Apparatus: exploring the material possibilities of the camera • Reflexivity • Ritual: union of cultural FORM and CONTENT Moral commitment to aesthetic sensibility

29. Visual anthropology: the case of Maya Deren • Filmmaker’s artistic sensibility • “The problem of the filmmaker then becomes not how to make a thing look like itself, so much as how to make it look like what he wants the audience to feel about it. He must discover how to translate his emotion about something into a visual film expression.” • [Legend of Maya Deren, 1942-47, p. 300]

30. content-as-form + filmmaker’s personal artistic sensibility + • commitment to the morality of form • The activity of documentation involves all of the following three: • Apparatus • Reflexivity • Ritual • Ethnographic filmmaking (Paul Henley, 46)

31. Surrealist documentary • Land without Bread • Luis Buñuel

32. Direct cinema

33. Titicut Follies • Frederick Wiseman: • Release Date: • – 1967 (USA)

34. • Titicut Follies is a black and white 1967 documentary film by Frederick • Wiseman about the treatment of patient at Massachusetts Correctional • Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is taken from a talent • show put on by the hospital's inmates. • • The film’s release was banned (outside the field of education) in the United • States from 1972-1992 by the Massachusetts Surpreme Judicial Court • because it violated the patients’ rights. • • In 1992, it was allowed to be shown on PBS. The Supreme Judicial Court of • Massachusetts has ordered that "A brief explanation shall be included in the • film that changes and improvements have taken place at Massachusetts • Correctional Institution Bridgewater since 1966.”

35. Cinema verite

36. Chronicle of a summer • Chronique d'un ete (Paris 1961). • Jean Rouch…(1940s…) • use of documentary editorial devices + making “documentary fictions” • Play with boundaries of fact Vs fiction, observer Vs the observed…, and • tradition Vs modernity

37. Chris Marker • Sans Soleil

38. Summary • Documentary style • Forgotten Silver

39. Summary • Creative treatment • Aesthetic concern • …always part of documentary filmmaking • Persuasion is a result of the effort to organize information. • (Persuasion is a necessary consequence of the maker’s own interpretation of the material.)

40. Levels of reality and truthfulness… • Verifiable facts – factual accuracy (the 6 Ws) • Atmosphere, emotional intensity • Attitude • Paradigms (event + context) (cultural phenomena…)

41. Objective truth to Multiple truths • • Actuality • • Factual truth • • Truth of the sense • • Truth of abstraction • • Truth of thoughts and attitudes • • Truth of character

42. Documentary impulse and documentary practices pre-exist documentary cinema or the documentary genre.