DOCUMENTARIES

1. DOCUMENTARIES

2. What meaning do you find in these words? Represent Re-present • Symbolic • What you stand for • Meaning • Standing for a group of something • Present the same thing but in a different way • Bring something new forth • …But maybe on a familiar subject?

3. What meaning do you find in these words? Fact Art • - Something concrete and well founded • Proven • Proven through scientific method • Non-fiction • Evidence • A quote • Abstract • Painting • Art of a skill, skill based (e.g. art of kung fu) • Creativity • Pretty • Confusing

4. What do they mean when they’re put together? Fact Art • Documentaries • Historical documentation • Museums • Historical buildings • Can art have function?

5. A documentary film is a nonfiction motion picture that’s intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record.

7. We often think about documentaries as focusing on nature or social causes, but that isn’t necessarily always the case.

8. So what’s the difference? Reality TV vs. Documentary

9. When you’re watching a documentary film, what are you expecting? • Truth • Raw material • Reality • New perspectives • Facts • Unknown knowledge • A moral or a story or a point • An interesting subject or person • People in extreme situations • Overall good setting (realistic)

10. John Grierson: pioneering documentary maker and father of British and Canadian documentary film. Some believe that the word documentary came from Scottish documentarian John Grierson. Grierson believed that cinema has the potential for observing life and that it could be exploited in a new art form.

11. He felt that the “original” actor and “original” scene are better guides than fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world and that things filmed raw and unscripted are far more real. It’s life caught unaware. (Like this cat who is completely caught off guard!)

13. American film critic Pare Lorentz defines documentary film as “a factual film which is dramatic”. Others see documentary as a type of non-fiction film that provides an opinion or a specific message, along with the facts. Why is this interesting? Because this suggest that documentaries are not the passive observant lens as we tend to think of them as.

14. Early film (pre-1900) are really clips that show off the new found technology. They tend to be single-shot moments captured on film (train entering a station, a boat document, workers leaving work, etc). These short films were called “actuality” films. The term documentary didn’t get coined until 1926.

15. ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN AT LA CIOTAT – 1895 When the audience first saw this, they were so startled by how real it looks that some of them ducked or ran away when the train pulled into the station.

16. Between July 1898 and 1901, Roman professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films. He used film as a way to document and share ideas about medicine and the human body.

17. 1922 silent documentary film by Robert J Flaherty. The film is about the struggles of an Inuit family in the Canadian Arctic and is considered to be the first feature length documentary. In 1980, it was chosen as the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

18. Clip from Nanook of the North

19. However… Nanook’s name is not actually Nanook. His name is Allakariallak. His “wife” in the film was not actually his wife, but the common-law wife of Flaherty.

20. One comical scene features Nanook “discovering” a gramophone. The audience was meant to laugh at Nanook’s naïve discovery of this technology. In reality, Nanook already knew what a gramophone is.

21. When they tried to build an igloo that would fit the camera, it either collapsed because it was too big, or it was too dark for filming. So interior shots of the igloo was done in a three wall igloo.

22. Nanook was also asked to hunt a walrus with a harpoon even though the Inuit had already begun integrating the use of Western clothing and rifles to hunt.

23. The film is not technically sophisticated; how could it be, with one camera, no lights, freezing cold, and everyone equally at the mercy of nature? But it has an authenticity that prevails over any complaints that some of the sequences were staged. If you stage a walrus hunt, it still involves hunting a walrus, and the walrus hasn't seen the script. What shines through is the humanity and optimism of the Inuit. —Roger Ebert

24. Flaherty defended his film by stating that sometimes a filmmaker have to distort things in order to capture its true spirit. Other filmmakers defended Flaherty by saying that at the time, the only cameras available to him were both large and immobile. This made it impossible to follow Nanook in an unscripted manner or capture interior shots without modifying the environment.

25. But what do you think? Would you accept a film nowadays that was made in the style of Nanook of the North as a documentary?

26. As documentary films evolved, many different styles and types of documentary film making developed. Here are some of them…

27. Observational cinema This is a “fly on the wall” style of documentary. It stresses the depiction of unbiased reality. Therefore there are no scripts, no narrators, minimum voiceovers, and no editing. What you see is suppose to be what you get. This is a very early form of documentary and represents the idea that the film should document without imposing one’s own interpretive frame. 1994 documentary of 2 high school African American boys in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players.

28. Clip from Hoop Dreams

29. Trailer for Armadillo

30. Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer and are often rhetorical in nature. They often try to convince the viewer of a message or an idea. They employ voiceovers, titles, or narrators and use images to advance an argument. Other conventions of an expository documentary include the use of editing for continuity and the use of a variety of footage/material to support an idea.

31. Trailer for Life

32. Trailer for Camp 14: Total Control Zone

33. Participatory documentary is a type of documentary in which the filmmaker is the central character in the film. It is the filmmaker’s interaction with the people they meet, the places they go, and the observations they make that provide the content of the film. Interviews dominate participatory documentaries, but they tend to be informal. Footage, interviews, stills, etc are still used. The filmmaker is not only the focus, but may also participate in the action.

34. Clip from Capitalism: A Love Story

35. Clip from Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

36. Docudrama or documentary drama features dramatized re-enactment of actual events. Docudrama tries to adhere to known historical facts, but unlike observational cinema, it allows itself a greater degree of dramatic license in details and historical gaps. Docudramas focus on the facts of the events as they are known and doesn’t abuse dramatic license. They’re different from historical fiction in that the setting isn’t merely a backdrop for fictional characters.

37. Clip from The Social Network

38. Trailer for United 93

39. So what’s up with all these different types of documentaries? • Reflects how people feel about the purpose of documentaries • Reflects how filmmakers feel about their own role (and the camera’s role) in documentaries • Reflects what we consider “reality” • Reflects the technology available (Nanook vs. Life)

40. As a class we will be watching the documentary Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry. We will be watching it on Netflix, but it is also available to borrow from the Toronto Public Library. You are expected to take notes to strengthen your understanding. There will not be a second showing of the documentary.

41. Anticipation questions & quotations Would you be willing to go to jail for something you believe in? Explain.

42. Anticipation questions & quotations Think about your own life. What mediums do we use to document our own life and experiences?

43. Anticipation questions & quotations What websites are blocked in school? Why are these sites blocked? Do you agree or disagree with the blocking?

44. Anticipation questions & quotations How far should freedom of expression go? Are there any limits?

45. Big ideas to think about as you watch the documentary: • Freedom of expression and speech • The use of media to spread messages and ideas • Collective rights and responsibilities • Government monitoringand censorship • The documentary medium: how are elements organized to create not just a story, but a message