Cinéma Vérité /Direct Cinema

1. Cinéma Vérité /Direct Cinema Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (Peter Wintonik, National Film Board of Canada,1999) 103 min.

2. Week 10 Study Questions: November 22Bruzzi, 67 – 74; Lioult, “Framing the Unexpected” www.ejumpcut.org Lioult • How does Lioult convince you that there is a problem with the staged-unstaged • dichotomy that has historically defined documentary practice? • 2. How can a documentary scene be understood as both spontaneous and arranged? • 3. Why does Lioult need to add the category “framing the unexpected” to • Ponech’s Type I “flexible” plans and Type II “more restrictive” plans as • strategies for documentary practice? 1. According to Bruzzi, Nichols’s position on observational cinema is that it comes at the expense of loss of voice? If Nichols has seen “voice” “style plus,” what is at stake here? What else is lost? List. 2. Consider the 4 different direct quotes Bruzzi attributes to U.S. direct cinema makers about their documentary practice. How have these statements been construed? What are other possibilities for interpreting these statements? 3. What are 3 practical aspects of basic film and/or video making that make the ideal of pure cinema impossible for makers to sustain? 4. How would direct cinema makers (for instance, the Maysles in Salesman) defend the manipulation of events to suggest a story? 5. Bruzzi says that observational cinema has been mis-defined, mostly by observational filmmakers. What new definition does she offer? Does this definition apply to all documentary films? Bruzzi

3. Primary (Richard Leacock and Robert Drew [Drew Associates], 1969) Don’t Look Back, 1967 ( D.A. Pennebaker, 1967) Salesman (Albert and David Maysles, 1969) I. American direct cinema:the models Problem: discrepancies: Stated ideals vs. cinema practice D.A. Pennebaker: “It is possible to go to a situation and simply film what You see there, what happens there, what goes on….And what’s a film? It is just a window someone peeps through”

4. 2. American direct cinema = observational cinema 1. lightweight equipment 2. follow, do not lead the action 3. shoot/edit in chronological order 4. events must be revealed untouched 5. all music must have diegetic source; no non-diegetic music can be used 6. no juxtapositions/no Kuleshov effect 7. the story must be “found” in the material The Kuleshov Effect A) 3rd meaning produced from juxtaposition of 2 shots CU Mozzhukhin + shot of cherry trees = CU Mozzhukhin + shot of bowl of soup = CU Mozzhukhin + shot of baby in casket =

5. Marion Crane stopped by cop “shower sequence” The Modified Kuleshov Effect A) Shot/Reverse Shot • With absence of • establishing shot, viewer • infers shots in same space establishing shots Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

6. documentary strives to give us unmanipulated reality 3. direct cinema A. the paradox : totally unmanipulated or untouched reality is ultimately impossible B. the problem:the hierarchy of direct cinema style (documentary codes) • pure = no narration, no interviews, no non-diegetic music less pure = non-diegetic music, interviews, voice-over narration • least pure = self-reflexive camera, • sound recording

7. 4. French Cinéma Vérité =new cinema truth Chronicle of a Summer/ Chronique d’un été(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960) • The truth in lies: anticipates faux documentary Rouch: film technique as “lying intermediary”; more real than the truth. (“telling the truth by lying”) 2. characters: the truth of their lies and fictions produces of a new reality that would not have existed 3. cutting style: shots give impression that there is no space between the beginning of the end of one shot and start of another. 4. documentary of encounter: characters & camera

8. Chronicle of a Summer/ Chronique d’un été(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960) Characters: Marceline Jean-Pierre (philosophy student) Marilou – Italian living in Paris Angelo – Renault worker Landry – African Jean Rouch – filmmaker Edgar Morin - filmmaker/sociologist Post-WW II – Nagra tape recorder + 16mm Bolex camera = Cinéma Vérité camera as confessional accelerator: subjects must be provoked

9. Chronicle of a Summer/Chronique d’un été, Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1960

10. 5. The legacy of direct cinema Frederick Wiseman:Basic Training, 1970; Primate, 1974; The Store, 1983; Zoo; Hospital; Welfare Michael Moore:Roger and Me, 1989; Bowling for Columbine Fahrenheit 911 (2003); Sicko (2006), Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) Nick Broomfield: Soldier Girls (1981); Chicken Ranch (1983) Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, 1995), Ghosts (2007) Other directors/films: Harlan County, U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976) Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1985) Cannibal Tours (Dennis O’Rourke, 1987) Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, 1988) Truth or Dare (Alex Keshishian, 1991) The War Room (D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, 1993) Hoop Dreams (Steve James, Frederick Marx, Peter Gilbert, 1994) Common features: - interest in the quotidian (ordinariness) - people as subjects - following vs. leading subjects

11. Cinéma Vérité (France) camera provokes subject new reality produced in the making of the film Direct Cinema (U.S.) passive camera: no provocation reality pre-exists & must be respected 6. The false comparison: Jean Rouch: No difference between either: presence of the camera alone (automatically) provokes Look For: Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (Peter Wintonik, National Film Board of Canada,1999) 103 min.

12. “ER: The Live Episode”

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