Narrative - Seminole Cinema: SEHS Film



IB Film 1: Week 23.1Documentary Film Post 1939A few Documentaries to viewHere are several examples of popular cocumentaries over the years.?Watch -?OlympiaWatch -?Hoop DreamsWatch -?Supersize MeIncludes the?booming tones of actor Lorne Greene. in CanadaPreviously,?you learned about the origins of nonfiction / documentary films and the contributions of pioneers like Robert Flaherty and John Grierson.Now we take a look at what happened to documentary film through, and beyond, WWII.In 1939, John Grierson was commissioned to visit Canada and establish the National Film Board (NFB). The NFB was the Canadian government's attempt to accomplish two?things.Train Canadian filmmakers to create Canadian films about Canada (most of Canada's filmic identity was a result of American producers making 'Mountie'?movies or sweeping nature documentaries that made Canada look almost completely uninhabited).Make the Canadian stories available to all the far-flung reaches of the country, as only a truly 'national'?film company could achieve that.One of the great ironies here was some of the so-called 'Mountie'?movies, films about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were not even filmed in Canada. There were many movies shot in the California hills by directors who could only hope there was some resemblance to Alberta or Saskatchewan.Grierson brought his new style of documentary to Canada and began to train a crew of bright young filmmakers.The first big job the NFB faced was to document the war effort.?Canada Carries On?and?Churchill's Island?were NFB films mostly consisting of re-edited footage, some appropriated from Germany, that had rousing testaments to the courage and will of the soldiers and civilians.In 1936 Riefenstahl directed another hugely scaled documentary?Olympia -?about the Olympic games in Berlin. Both films feature footage from dozens of cameras, careful orchestration, sweeping crowd shots, and masterful editing. The films are both documents and propaganda.?Triumph of the Will?was famously re-edited and used as anti-Nazi propaganda by the National Film Board.Leni RiefenstahlAnother important documentary filmmaker of this era was Leni Riefenstahl.Riefenstahl was a German actress and aspiring filmmaker who came to the attention of prominent members of the Third Reich (including Adolph Hitler) leading up to World War II.Riefenstahl was asked by Hitler to film the 1934 Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg and the result was the epic documentary?Triumph of the Will.Cinema VeriteCinema verite (also known as direct cinema) is a term used to describe documentaries that are completely unscripted.As you have come to understand, many documentaries were carefully planned and filmed, sometimes with multiple takes of action or even re-enactments.Cinema verite was a reaction to this scripted style. Proponents of direct cinema took advantage of new, lighter, and technically superior film and sound equipment to redefine what was meant by reality in film.This style of documentary moved away from the re-creation of events, somber voiced narrators, or any kind of commentary that might indicate a bias.The images and sounds were supposed to speak for themselves, in other words, the actuality was everything.It is an interesting paradox in documentary filmmaking that the camera is not supposed to influence, or at least is not supposed to seem like it is influencing, the events being covered.While this might be truer in cinema verite than in say, Flaherty's documentaries, some critics would argue that the camera always influences what it watches.Modern DocumentariesBy now you have probably realised that there are many different ways filmmakers 'document'?reality.Let's look at some examples of current trends in documentary filmmaking.One way to look at modern documentary is to divide them into narrative and non-narrative.NarrativeThese films?have a story and will often feature characters who have a goal to achieve. Think of?Lost in La Mancha?(2002),?the story of director Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make a film based on Don Quixote.Or?Hoop Dreams, which follows inner-city boys trying to develop careers playing professional basketball.Non-NarrativeThese films might be informational, promotional, scientific, or educational.The films might be presenting an argument or trying to sell mon elements of documentary film include:they are almost always filmed on locationthey feature real people and eventsand are editedThis is important to note because it points out an important fact about documentaries - they cannot truly represent real things.So what seems to be real is actually mediated reality. The shot framing, length of shots decided in editing, and left-out footage is deliberate.It could be argued that every documentary film is, at least in some ways, biased. ................
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