Cinema Verite

This thesis is a historical and filmic analysis of the Black Panther Party, using two documentaries, All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and Beyond (1996) and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015). It is first stated what the documentary film should set out to achieve when framing a political narrative. The films will be looked at separately, in regard to the context of their production and release. Power to the People was a reaction to the Rodney King riots. Vanguard of the Revolution was filmed alongside the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The Black Panther origins as a movement are briefly considered to allow for a base understanding of the party’s precepts and aims. This includes the roles of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and an introduction to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The content analysis begins by looking at the main ideologies of the party and its operations. The empowerment of women but also hyper masculinity within the party is then discussed. This follows on to social and survival programs set up by the party. Primarily using two significant cases, the deaths of Bobby Hutton and Fred Hampton, there is an examination of concerted efforts by police and FBI to mobilise and neutralise the party. Comparisons and contrasts are then made between the style and content of the two films. It will be concluded that the films serve two purposes, to give the positive work of the Black Panthers a legitimate platform, but also to address the criticisms levelled at the party. The overarching conclusion will be that the Black Panthers were involved in a vicious cycle. Once they brought any semblance of solidarity to their communities, the FBI and Police would move against them leading to reactionary violence which caused the party’s eventual disbandment.

American observational documentary pioneer D.A. Pennebaker traces his embrace of film-making as a ‘witnessing process’ that allows him to reach a unique understanding of his subjects in this conversation on several rarely discussed films: the highly formative early shorts Baby (1954) and Daybreak Express
(1953–1957), the Drew Associates oddity David (1961), as well as Wild 90 (1968), Eat the Document (1972) and 1 P.M. (1972) – collaborations with Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan and Jean-Luc Godard, respectively. He addresses the meaning of cinéma vérité, Godard’s ‘reckless’ approach to film-making, and the sadness behind his second, and ultimately abandoned, collaboration with Dylan.

When to use Direct Cinema & Cinema Verite ……………………………………………3 Cinema Verite……………………………………………………………………………….3 Elements of Cinema Verite…………………………………………………………………3 Cinema Verite Productions…………………………………………………..…………….4 Direct Cinema………………………………………………………………………………4 Elements of Direct Cinema………………………………………………………………….5 Direct Cinema Productions………………………………………………………………..5

Popularisé mondialement aux yeux du grand public avec « Le projet Blair Witch », le found
footage s'inscrit comme un format codifié qui a su évoluer avec les avancées dans notre
technologie et notre rapport à l'écran. Alors comment le travail de fin d'études « Tumulus »
peut-il se réapproprier ses conventions tout en développant sa propre personnalité ? Voici la
question à laquelle tentera de répondre ce travail.
Après un travail de recontextualisation par le biais de deux films populaires dans le format,
nous reviendrons sur l'inspiration qu'auront pu avoir le cinéma documentaire et le cinémavérité sur le found footage avant de partir sur trois biais d'analyse. Ceux-ci se situeront dans le
rapport à la caméra, la place du champ et du hors-champ et enfin le montage. Nous
questionnerons rapidement l'avenir du found footage, notamment en parlant de transmédia,
avant de conclure sur les leçons à conserver pour le projet « Tumulus »

Ethnographic documentary is a distinct genre in the field of documentary. It began as a need for filmmakers to invent a new way to reconcile with the real and at the same time as a need for social anthropologists to find a new ethnographic tool.
The definition of the genre dates back to the early 1960s, when about two revolutionary documentaries appeared in the same period, one in America and the other in France. Direct cinema and cinema verité reacted to the film's opaque methodology of approaching the main subject while sharing the logic of a more "direct" and "true" encounter with their issues.
Chronicle of a Summer, Le joli Mai, Don't look back and Salesman, films discussed in this text, are typical examples of these pioneering currents presenting substantial differences in the logic of the approach to the subject, the type of cinematography, and the montage techniques used by their creators.

resenha do texto “Estudo sobre o cinema direto e o cinema verdade: conceitos, contradições e principais influências.” Ana Carolina Alves, Eric Silva Macedo, Erika Wurts, Marilia Assad, Pedro Paulo Garcia, Rafael Moura Vargas. UFRJ: Laguinho, agosto, 2005.

Albert Maysles, who with his brother David pioneered techniques in observational documentary in America in the 1960s, offers thoughtful reflections on a lifetime of filmmaking.  Ethical concerns in documentary are strongly addressed.  He focuses on the philosophy that has guided him as a filmmaker as well as the relationship those principles have to the lightweight camera and sync sound technology that allows him to carry out his practice.  He discusses space and distance not in geographical, but interpersonal, terms and emphasizes the ways in which his empathy and humanity allows him to get truly close to his subjects.  He dispels the notion that a direct cinema filmmaker is like a fly on the wall, stressing that “you have to get in there to get what’s really going on.”  The discussion draws upon specific moments within a range of films – from Jackie Kennedy’s hands in Primary (1960) to his painterly camerawork in Gimme Shelter (1970) to a messy bed in Grey Gardens (1975) – to explore how his camera’s tracing of surfaces can, in fact, reveal subjective interiorities.  He also responds to the critical reception of Grey Gardens and expands on Norman Mailer’s high praise for Salesman (1969).

This paper discusses how, in the first decade of the 21st century, documentary film rose to unprecedented significance in American media, succeeding not only in establishing a commercially viable niche in the filmic landscape but also having discernable impacts on public opinion, public actions and even public policy.This decade was one of unprecedented burgeoning of documentary production and consumption that entailed a great increase in output and some qualitative advances. While televisual documentary came to be associated with certain factory values that reflected the TV industry’s vast need for programming, theatrical documentary came in this period to be seen as a much more individually crafted, courageous, human-scale response against social injustice and the abuse of power. Hence, the era also raised questions about the social role of documentary, including the responsibility of filmmakers to serve the public's informational needs and to honor traditional journalistic goals, such as accuracy.

In American Documentary Film, Jeffrey Geiger examines the role of documentary film in mobilizing, promoting, and even suppressing central myths of U.S. national identity. His brilliant close readings illuminate the relationship between the rhetorical, technical and stylistic elements of specific films and a broader set of contexts and concerns. Rigorous yet accessible, this elegantly-written book will be of great value to the general reader and the specialist alike, and it will transform the way we consider the history, theory, and practice of documentary filmmaking.
(Valerie Smith, Princeton University)

This is nothing less than a tremendous achievement ... and the new benchmark in concise appreciation of American documentary film history.
(Ian Scott, H-net, Humanities and Social Sciences online)

...the richness of Geiger's synthesis will make it an excellent text for courses in the subject and also a resource outside the classroom. The book will be a particularly important acquisition for libraries with limited holdings on documentary film. Highly recommended. All readers.
(Ken Nolley, Choice)

In detailing the myriad ways in which documentaries have reflected and
refracted conceptions of nationhood in the USA ... American Documentary Film offers a valuable model for rethinking documentary and its
potential contribution to debates on American identity and history. (Andrew Utterson, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television)

Simply put, this is one of the definitive texts on the subject, not out of place among the likes of John Grierson, Erik Barnouw, and Bill Nichols. (Douglas MacCleod, Scope)

Dziga Vertov is a filmmaker of a rare breed. Unlike Hollywood’s classic silent film, that romanticizes American history and values, Vertov looks forward and promotes a new, industrial era. Unlike German expressionism, dedicating camerawork to conveying emotion, he conveys motion and speed. Even unlike his Russian contemporaries perfecting montage to carry fiction narrative, Vertov’s kino-eye does not try to fit into a film genre but creates its own. Man with a Movie Camera embodies Vertov’s visions of pure enchantment with the invention of film, while serving to the ideals of the social revolution.

This thesis examines the appropriation of Bob Dylan in a cinematic context. In comparing filmmakers’ use of the performer to Dylan’s own theatrically-released ventures, the thesis postulates a highly coded representational role for Dylan in cinema that often contrasts with the artist’s personal involvement in visual narrative.
Through a preliminary analysis of Dylan’s engagement with cinematic form and content, this thesis proceeds to investigate the performer’s films, and illustrates their structural and thematic relation to his musical work. From this, cinematic uses of the artist’s music by mainstream filmmakers are investigated.
The analysis takes a structuralist and narratological approach, and attempts to discern commonalities in the methodology employed by the artist across disciplines. Attempts are made to link Dylan’s filmmaking and latter-day song composition to theories of Russian montage editing. The resultant investigation suggests the primacy of juxtaposition and contrast to multiple strands of Dylan’s work.
What can be discerned is a methodological consistency on Dylan’s behalf across media. This methodology, and Dylan’s conception of himself in a filmic context, contrasts with that of other filmmakers. Evidence suggests that mainstream filmmaking has imbued representations of the performer with certain political ideologies, societal associations, and attitudinal assumptions. The thesis ultimately infers the existence of a ‘prime’ or ‘original’ meaning for the performer in a cinematic context, against which all other depictions are measured.

Scopul și obiectul de studiu al acestei lucrări este de a contura traiectoria parcursă în realizarea unui film documentar, de la aspectele teoretice generale de definire și clasificare, la cele particulare care țin de alegerea temei și a subiectului și la cele practice rezultate din experiența personală. Obiectivul major este de a plasa filmul documentar „După FEL și CHIP”, între manifestarea artistică cinéma vérité (ca stil de filmare și abordare regizorală) și eseu cinematografic (ca structură și forma finală a montajului).
Puteti vedea filmul aici: http://vod.antropodocs.com/as-you-like-it/

Nel presente scritto propongo, attraverso l’illustrazione di un caso di studio sulla pellicola "Grey Gardens", alcune considerazioni sull’esperienza estetica dello straniamento. Parto dall'originaria concettualizzazione šklovskijana di straniamento per poi vagliare la possibilità di dialogo fra questa e altre nozioni o esperienze letterarie; in particolare il perturbante freudiano e l'attenzione al ruolo dell'emozione all'interno del progetto genealogico foucaultiano. Secondo la metodologia del caso di studio il movimento della riflessione è dunque doppio: da un lato concentrato sull'analisi dell'oggetto prescelto, dall'altro impegnato a verificare, a partire da tale analisi, la possibilità di applicazione ed estrapolazione di nozioni riconducibili a un orizzonte concettuale più ampio e comprensivo.

The article locates Le Joli Mai within the context of cinéma vérité to reconsider its status as documentary with regard to Marker’s historiographic concerns. It does this through analyzing the director’s multivalent aesthetics that is formulated by his unorthodox focus on the hand and cinephiliac references throughout this filmic document of May 1962.

A través de la película "Moi, un noir" (1958)se hace una descripción del cine de etno-ficción, que podríamos considerar como una variante de Jean Rouch dentro del cinema verité. No hay una distancia crítica entre Rouch y sus personajes, él forma parte del conjunto, comparte el espacio y la historia con los protagonistas.  Rouch se sumerge en las historias y queda afectado por ellas, a diferencia de otros cineastas que pretenden ser ajenos totalmente a las escenas.
El importante lugar que ocupa la improvisación en la obra de Rouch y que podemos ver en la película se debe a su voluntad expresa de construir a partir del testimonio espontáneo de los protagonistas.

Critical urban theory (CUT) provides intellectual support for a politics of the right to the city. However, CUT has rarely engaged with the rich scholarship on sexuality and the urban, much of which directly addresses questions of social justice. CUT has most often treated sexuality as an attribute, rather than a diffuse discourse of subject‐producing power intimately connected with race, class and gender. This article highlights two strands in contemporary queer studies––queer subjectless critique and queer temporality––that can enrich understandings of the key concepts of alienation, deprivation and resistance in the city. I illustrate the salience of queer thinking for CUT through a close reading of Flag Wars (2003), a documentary film recognized for its engagement with gentrification and the politics of difference in the United States. While the film ostensibly explores the problem of gay gentrification in a working‐class black neighborhood, a queer subjectless approach asks how discourses on sexuality produce residents at risk of displacement as deviant, immoral and queer––regardless of sexual orientation. I argue that recognizing the wide range of ways in which narratives about sexuality can deprive and alienate urban subjects could generate additional alternative bases for solidarity in the struggle for a just city.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo realizar um estudo acerca da noção de “documentário autobiográfico”, tomando como principal objeto a obra do cineasta estadunidense Ross McElwee. A obra do diretor será abordada dentro da perspectiva do cinema autobiográfico desenvolvido no contexto universitário da cidade de Cambridge (EUA). Nascido em 1947 em Charlotte, Carolina do Norte, McElwee iniciou sua carreira cinematográfica na década de 1970, como aluno do departamento do cinema do MIT, o MIT Film Section. Sua carreira inclui títulos importantes para a história do documentário autobiográfico estadunidense, como Sherman’s March (1986), Time Indefinite (1993) e Bright Leaves (2004). McElwee pode ser considerado um dos principais diretores do documentário autobiográfico, e também da cinematografia praticada em Cambridge. O trabalho apresentado divide-se em três partes. A primeira delas busca levantar e responder questões mais gerais sobre o que denominamos "documentário autobiográfico”, a partir de um corpus filmográfico amplo e variado. Na segunda parte, realiza-se um resgate histórico e conceitual do documentário autobiográfico de Cambridge, frisando sua relação com a tradição do cinema direto estadunidense e sua projeção na obra de Ross McElwee. A terceira parte dedica um olhar à noção de autobiografia desenvolvida por McElwee em sua carreira. A obra de Ross McElwee traz em si um movimento de construção autobiográfico contínuo, desenvolvido ao longo de mais de três décadas e sete filmes. Trabalharemos analiticamente este movimento diacrônico, que incide em modo narrativo na obra de McElwee. A cada novo filme é particularizada sua proposta artística, afirmando-se sempre dentro do horizonte de um documentarista-autobiógrafo.

This research aims to study the notion of "autobiographical documentary”, taking as its main object the work of American filmmaker Ross McElwee, seen within the perspective of the autobiographical documentary which was developed in Cambridge (MA) and its universities. Born in 1947 in Charlotte, North Carolina, McElwee began his film career in the 1970s as a student at the MIT Film Section. His career includes important titles for the history of the American autobiographical documentary, such as Sherman's March (1986), Time Indefinite (1993) and Bright Leaves (2004). McElwee can be considered one of the main representatives of the domain of autobiographical documentaries, as well as of the kind of filmmaking which was practiced in Cambridge. This study is presented in three parts. Part one seeks to raise and answer more general questions about the domain of autobiographical documentary, based on a broad and diverse filmographic corpus. In the second part, a historical and conceptual complexion of Cambridge autobiographical documentary takes place, in which its relationship to the tradition of American Cinema-Vérité is emphasized, as well as its projection into the work of Ross McElwee. The third part looks at the notion of autobiography that was developed by Ross McElwee in his career. Ross McElwee’s oeuvre brings in itself a movement of continuous autobiographical construction, developed for more than three decades and in seven films. This diachronic movement will be analytically looked at, which complicates narratively McElwee's work with the release of each new film and particularizes his artistic proposal as a documentarist-autobiographer.

It is a combination of irony and deception that makes Werner Herzog's non-fiction oeuvre so impossible to designate within a specific cinematic space. At best, despite his repeated condemnation of their practise, Herzog's methods could be likened to the interventionist techniques adapted and maintained through the cinéma vérité movement, particularly when considering the imperatives of the kino-eye. However all attempts to categorise his work must relinquish previous mandates for a 'factual' encounter.

Made in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Inti Mabsoota? is an experimental pedagogical video project that draws upon the emerging mobile esthetics of cell phone filmmaking and public encounters with revolutionary spontaneity. Inspired by the landmark cinéma-vérité film, Chronique d’un été (1960), in which participants ask people on the streets of Paris if they are happy, several of my students at the American University in Cairo became mobile film units, asking people the same innocuous question, “Inta mabsoot?/Inti mabsoota?”—Are you happy? Are you content? This seemingly benign exercise belies a variety of conceptual and methodological frictions, which offered productive pedagogical possibilities. Drawing upon the emergent revolutionary visual culture, this student project complicated both the reductive assessments of the “Arab Spring” as a manifestation of digital democracy and the heavy-handed way that western journalism has tended to address the “Arab Street” as a volatile mob. Using an embodied visual approach allowed students to apprehend modes of lived experience that might not register as political in more normative models, but which nonetheless form the basis of how people live and experience political life. Highlighting the non-representational aspects of the encounter also foregrounds the corporeal and visceral dimensions of the students’ experience. Accordingly, the critical video methods employed elucidate the kinds of affective knowledge produced for those on screen, behind the camera, and viewing from a distance.

Το εθνογραφικό ξεκίνησε ως μία ανάγκη των κινηματογραφιστών να εφεύρουν έναν νέο τρόπο να συνδιαλλαγούν με την πραγματικότητα και, παράλληλα, ως μία ανάγκη των κοινωνικών ανθρωπολόγων να βρουν ένα νέο εθνογραφικό εργαλείο.
Ο ορισμός του είδους έρχεται στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1960, όταν την ίδια περίπου περίοδο εμφανίζονται δύο  επαναστατικά ρεύματα, το ένα στη Γαλλία και το άλλο στην Αμερική. Το Cinema Verité και το Direct Cinema αντέδρασαν από κοινού στη «μη διαφανή» μεθοδολογία κατασκευής των ταινιών κινηματογράφου, ενώ, παράλληλα, μοιράστηκαν τη λογική μιας πιο «άμεσης» και πιο «αληθινής» συνάντησης με τα θέματά τους.
Οι ταινίες Chronicle of a Summer, The lovely month of May, Don’t look back και Salesman, που αναλύονται στο παρόν κείμενο αποτελούν χαρακτηριστικά παραδείγματα των δύο προς ανάλυση ρευμάτων που παρά τις εμφανείς ομοιότητές τους, παρουσιάζουν ουσιαστικές διαφορές σχετικά με την προσέγγισή του θέματος, το είδος της κινηματογράφησης και τις μονταζιακές τεχνικές που χρησιμοποίησαν οι δημιουργοί τους.

Part of a special issue "Developments in Japanese Documentary Film" edited by Marcos Centeno and Michael Raine.

This paper focuses on two discrete bodies of work, Hani Susumu's films of the late 1950s and Tsuchimoto Noriaki's Minamata documentaries of the early 1970s, to trace the emergence of the cinéma vérité mode of participant-observer, small-crew documentary in Japan and to suggest how it shapes the work of later social documentarists. It argues that Hani Susumu's emphasis on duration and receptivity in the practice of filmmaking, along with his pragmatic understanding of the power of the cinematic image, establish a fundamentally different theoretical basis and set of questions for social documentary than the emphasis on mobility and access, and the attendant question of truth that tend to afflict the discourse of cinéma vérité in the U.S. and France. Tsuchimoto Noriaki critically adopts and develops Hani's theoretical and methodological framework in his emphasis on long-running involvement with the subjects of his films and his practical conviction that the image is not single-authored, self-sufficient, or meaningful in and of itself, but emerges from collaboration and must be embedded in a responsive social practice in order to meaningfully reach an audience. Hani and Tsuchimoto both believe that it is possible for filmmakers and the film itself to be fundamentally processual and intersubjective: grounded in actual collaboration, but also underwritten by a belief that intersubjective processes are more basic to human being than "the individual," let alone "the author." This paper explores the implications for representation and ethics of this basic difference in vérité theory and practice in Japan.

Conférence prononcée au séminaire de Francis Wolff, « les lundis de la philosophie », ENS/Ulm, Paris, le 20 mars 2017.
Le but de cette conférence est de relativiser la définition ordinaire et traditionnelle de la vérité comme correspondance à une res, à une chose extérieure et en soi. Il s’agira de démontrer comment la norme du vrai n’est pas nécessairement soumission à un réel antécédent et indépendant mais peut également se concevoir comme réalisation d’un universel non donné. Nous comprendrons, ce faisant, comment la visée de l’universel n’est pas condamnée à n’être que la poursuite d’un idéal jamais atteint et dépasserons ainsi la figure de la conscience malheureuse, traditionnel symbole de la finitude humaine.
Pour ce faire, nous partirons d’une expérience de pensée, qui consistera à créer un monde qui serait la configuration idéale en laquelle s’appliquerait la définition traditionnelle de la vérité. Ce qui nous permettra de faire surgir tous les paradoxes de cette définition. Cette étape nous conduira ensuite à étudier l’hypothèse vérité = universalité, en prenant soin de dépasser les différents écueils possiblement liés à la notion d’universel (comment y accéder ? Est-ce une totalité ordonnée ou un domaine illimité ? Comment rompre le lien trop courant entre universalité et nécessité ?, etc.). Nous pourrons alors penser au-delà de la finitude, en liant la vérité à l’infini, l’erreur au fini, et montrerons ainsi comment l’universel est le lieu même de l’hospitalité.
Mot clés : vérité, réalité, universalité, idéal, fini/ infini.

Buscaremos estabelecer uma breve genealogia do desenvolvimento da escrita autobiográfica aplicada ao cinema de não ficção, principalmente no que diz respeito ao grupo sediado em Cambridge (EUA). A partir do final dos anos 1960, um grupo de cineastas, alunos e professores que transitava entre a Universidade de Harvard e o MIT desenvolveu uma série de filmes que visava pensar a maneira através da qual aspectos autobiográficos poderiam ser construídos em narrativas documentárias, envoltos pela virada epistemológica advinda do Cinema Direto. Discutiremos mais de perto o caso do diário filmado de Ed Pincus, Diaries 1971-1976 (1982), e os filmes autobiográficos de Ross McElwee, tratando-os como dois dos principais representantes do pensamento de Cambridge em relação à autobiografia fílmica

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the autobiographical documentaries My Survival as an Aboriginal (1978) and My life as I live it (1993), by Essie Coffey. We aim to localize Coffey’s work historiographically and theoretically in relation to American, European, Australian and Latin American documentary traditions, pointing out aspects of racial and gender identity and class alterity. Our analysis of these films indicates innovative methodological and thematic intersections between autobiographical narratives and social and race issues as well as highlighting the potential autobiographical narratives have to update both personal issues and issues of collectivity.

This is an analysis of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary film Don't Look Back (1967), which shows Bob Dylan's tour of Britain in 1965. The article places the film in the context of Direct Cinema film-making, and assesses how Dylan's role as a performer affects the documentary's claims to present an authentic picture of Dylan. This idea is complicated by Dylan's own play with the concept of authenticity in popular music performance, and the myths built around Dylan's persona.

Este texto tem como objetivo explorar aspectos da noção de autobiografia na obra do documentarista estadunidense Ross McElwee.
Nascido em 1947, McElwee começou a filmar na década de 1970 e continua em atividade. Sua obra particulariza-se dado o afinco com o qual o diretor se debruçou em um processo autobiográfico continuado, perpassando mais de três décadas e o desenvolvimento de sete longas-metragens até o momento. Analisaremos a maneira através da qual a metodologia e a estilística empregada por McElwee em seus filmes contribuem para a escrita autobiográfica do diretor. Seus filmes inserem-se no contexto ideológico do MIT Film Section da década de 1970, onde cineastas como Ed Pincus e Richard Leacock meditavam
acerca das possibilidades introduzidas pelo Cinema Direto em relação à
autobiografia fílmica. Esta herança é sentida nos documentários de McElwee, onde o tête-à-tête proveniente do encontro do cineasta com as pessoas que fazem parte de seu universo individual inspira uma modalidade específica de encenação que une a ideia de autobiografia à ética metodológica do Cinema Direto.

L’année 1962, considéré comme l’année numéro 1 du Cinema Novo brésilien, marque également le moment d’une première action de l’UNESCO au Brésil dans le cadre du projet de démocratisation du cinéma dans les pays en voie de développement. Par le biais de la « Mission Sucksdorff », des équipements légers sont introduits au pays et commencent à être utilisés par des cinéastes de Rio de Janeiro et de São Paulo. Actuellement, ce type d’équipement est en plein essor, en constituant l’outil principal des « coletivos de cinema », des groupes composés dans sa plupart par des habitants de la périphérie des grandes villes du pays qui se réunissent pour discuter et faire du cinéma. En analysant donc les films Garricha, joie du peuple (1963), de Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, et Fora de Campo (2009), de Adirley Queirós et Thiago Mendonça, cette communication se propose d’interroger dans quelle mesure l’équipement léger fut un outil de libération pour le cinéma brésilien – comme le rêvaient les cinemanovistas et comme le défendait l’UNESCO – ou, constitua-t-il tout simplement, un nouveau dispositif de contrôle de l’industrie cinématographique nationale et international ?

From the encyclopedic obsessions of early cinema to Soviet kino-pravda, from cinéma-vérité to direct cinema and the Sensory Ethnography Lab, the ‘documentary mode’ defines itself by continuously re-relating a true original (reality) to its more or less defective copy (film). Even in their most self-conscious, refined or analytical variants, documentaries seem to remain faithful to an overall Platonic notion of mimesis. At the same time, reality itself undergoes a fundamental re-structuring – not only into ‘post-factual’ arbitrariness, but into promising plural, decentered, relational, multilayered, multi-species lifeworlds.

Against this background, the talk sets out to indicate some of the numerous positions that contemporary documentary might acquire between, or beyond, representing the real and reality’s spectacular flight from the grasp of the human. Drawing on philosophical models like the Leibnizian proposition of ‘possible worlds’ or Spinoza’s concept of ‘affection’, one might thus be able to sketch out documentary practices, consider formal approaches, take into account media technologies that do not so much aim at reproducing a fact as they become part of an event. Such an attempt also has political implications inasmuch as it undermines the authority of ‘realism’ (which is never objective but inevitably tailored to specific concepts of governance).

As Armas e o Povo é um documentário de realização coletiva produzido
pelo Sindicato de Trabalhadores da Produção do Cinema e Televisão durante as manifestações da Revolução dos Cravos em abril de 1974. Aos diversos cineastas portugueses que saíram às ruas para filmar, juntou-se o brasileiro Glauber Rocha, recém desembarcado em Lisboa para viver os primeiros dias da Revolução. A participação do realizador brasileiro é de destaque: entre todos,  ele é o único a aparecer em cena no filme.

Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo estudar mais a fundo este capítulo dentro
da filmografia de Glauber Rocha, que é a sua participação em As Armas e o
Povo. Para isso, em um primeiro momento vamos falar um pouco sobre o filme, trazendo mais detalhes sobre a sua produção e montagem. Depois, vamos explicar como se deu a chegada de Glauber Rocha em Portugal e como surgiu a ideia de ele participar do filme, para então partirmos para análise da sua participação e atuação no documentário.

Translated in English as "Love Meetings," Pier Paolo Pasolini’s "Comizi d’amore" (1964) should have been better translated literally: “Debates About Love.” The feature-length documentary often referred to as an Italian example of cinéma-vérité, sees Pasolini
traveling through Italy, from north to south, from beaches to cities to rural villages, interviewing people of different ages, social classes, and cultural backgrounds, on sex-related topics like virginity, prostitution, homosexuality, and sex education. What emerges is a “debated” and contradictory portrait of a country showing emancipated points of view on one side, and conservative and ignorant assumptions and beliefs on the other.