Syllabus: History of the Documentary

LOCATING TRANSNATIONAL SPACES, CULTURE, THEATRE AND CINEMA

Abstract The documentary film genre has established itself as a credible cinematic form over the years. It has grown to become a useful tool for driving social change, engaging people, mobilising groups as well as pushing for institutional transformations. Even though the documentary film is regarded as a presentation of truth in real life situations and circumstances, the influence of a director, cinematic techniques and technology, have been implicated as agents that may affect the concept of truth in documentaries. If a filmmaker has the liberty to apply creativity in the treatment of real-life conflicts in the documentary film process, the question to answer therefore is, to what extent does the creativity of the director and other influences allow the truth to remain untouched in the documentary film? This article adds to the debate on the issue of fact in documentary films as an art form. It attempts an assessment of some positions for and against the place of truth in the documentary film. It concludes that the documentary film, even though engineered initially to project the fact equally, has become a tool that could be used for purposes that may compromise truth. Key Words: Documentary Film, Truth, Ethics

The Journal of Architecture, 2015

The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2020

This article is a brief discussion of Pooja Rangan’s book Immediations, highlighting her argument for the need to analyze carefully the audiovisual materialities and ideological assumptions of documentary as a medium.

Documentary, Culture and the Mind, 2020

This book present some of my most important articles on documentary film and television between 1994-2020. During this period I developed a theory of documentary genres inspired by cognitive theory, a theory that put the basic narrative, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of media production and media use in focus. However, even though a basic, theoretical dimension runs through all the articles defining the main genres of documentary and the way audiences relate to and interact with this, they also try to illustrate how documentary genres interact with history, society and culture, and how they speak to and influence our individual mind and the collective public debate. Documentary is a very central genre in our highly mediated and global world: the stories they tell, can potentially create mediated cultural encounters between people belonging to different societies and culture. The case studies presented deal with our historical past and heritage, with the global climate change and with war and social crisis.

"SECOND TAKE – Australian Filmmakers Talk” by Burton & Caputo, Allen & Unwin, 1999

The nexus between technological changes and film aesthetics has always been a close one: witness the French new wave of the 1960's when filmmakers like Jean-luc Goddard took to the streets with light hand-held cameras, and the grass roots film movement that sprang-up around Super-8. Documentary is no exception. The lightweight 16mm cameras in the early 1960's produced the 'direct cinema' and cinema-verite' movements which resulted in filmmakers engaging in intimate ways with their subjects. The cost of camera and sound equipment, however, combined with 16 mm film stock and processing, limited filmmaking to a professional elite able to secure the necessary finance. It’s taken thirty years for this situation to change. In 1996 digital video cameras appeared on the domestic market which returned broadcast quality images but were also at an affordable price. The time is now fast approaching when everyone will be able to afford desktop non-linear editing. The question is how’s this going to change the documentary? Will it survive in its present form or will it re-surface in different shapes and styles?

Critical Inquiry, 2001

2012

Like photography, documentaries are a representational medium: They record and occasionally reconstruct the everyday reality viewers typically cannot experience themselves. Because photography is an indexical sign signifying truth, audiences understand the documentary, a moving photograph, to signify truth also. However, they are able to make the distinction between the “everyday reality” presented by documentaries and the fictive “reality” of cinematic films.

1997

Rothman, William. Documentary film classics / William Rothman. p. cm.-(Cambridge studies in film) ISBN 0-521-45067-5 (hbk) ISBN 0-521-45681-9 (pbk) I. Documentary films-History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series PN 1995.9D6R69 1997 070.1'8-dc20 96-14029 CIP A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-521-45067-5 hardback 0-521-45681-9 paperback CHAPTER IV

In the playground of documentary film bear interactions of truth, realism, ideology and representations of history. So where do you draw the line between truthful representation and argumentative construction of history? This essay attempts to decipher the relationship between realism and propaganda, and the filmmaking tools utilized to convince audiences of documentary's authenticity. With a spotlight focus on Vertov's 'Man With A Movie Camera' and Field's 'The Life and Times of Rosie The Riveter' .

Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image, 2023

Frank Ankersmit tells historians of their mission: “You can approximate objectivity only as long as you sincerely despair of approximating it.” It follows that it is incumbent upon anyone who represents the past to enter that struggle. Whether by keyboard or camera, historians who do not probe and question their suppositions may seek to represent the past, but they do not make history. A prime question for historiophoty is to ask what this struggle looks and sounds like projected off the page. This chapter considers the cinepoetics of historical objectivity through a model of moving images that rewinds the clock to the emergence of film on screens and traces a new path for cinema through to a digital reimagining of what Tom Gunning calls the “cinema of attractions.” It explores the documentary methods of narration and reenactment in Sam Green’s Live Documentary practice and analyzes the methods by which filmmakers become cine-historians through articulating the historians’ dilemma by audiovisual means in the creation of moving history of shared experience and public spectacle.