American Documentary Film - Introduction

American
Documentary Film
An Introductory Lecture
Main Issues
 Defining the documentary
 Tracing the roots of contemporary American

documentary film, as well as its main
purpose, subjects, and sub-genres.
Defining the Documentary
 “documentary”<“to document” (Lat. docere “to teach”)
 The documentary: one of 3 main cinematographic modes. The
other two:
 Fiction film
 Experimental film
 The documentary genre is defined by the tension between its
purpose to convey the sense of reality/a real issue and the fact
that, in order for that reality to be conveyed convincingly, artifice
needs to be used.
 Other bones of contention:
 the traditional understanding of documentary as more “truthful” than
other cinematographic genres;
 the illusion of objectivity and honesty;
 the heightened emotional involvement of the audience (because of
higher “real event” stakes).
The Roots of Documentary Film in
America
 Thomas Edison, inventor of  Kinetoscope (1892) – coin
the Kinetograph & operated
Kinetoscope (before
Lumiere brothers’
Cinematographe [portable
movie camera+projector],
1895)
 Edison archive at the
Library of Congress, 1891-
1918, 371 films:
http://www.loc.gov/collection
s/edison-company-motion-pi
ctures-and-sound-recording
s/?fa=online-format%3Avide
o
The Beginnings
 1st feature length

documentary: Nanook of the
North (dir. Robert J.
Flaherty, 1922)
 Docudrama
 salvage anthropology (Inuit,

Port Harrison, Northern
Quebec)
-----------------
 Watch: Nanook listens to a
phonograph:
http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=UqEIJM5TghY
Documentary Subgenres. The
Propaganda Documentary
 Sponsored by governments in order to argue in
favor of a specific issue
 Didactic, appeals to emotions, lectures to the
presumably uninformed audience

 See Triumph of the Will (dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)
vs. Why We Fight (dir. Frank Capra, 1942-1945)

----------------------------------
 Watch excerpt from Triumph of the Will [Nazi Party
Congress in Nurenberg, 1935]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXquCazess
Documentary Subgenres. The
Public Affairs Documentary
 Mid 1950s - mid 1980s
 Investigative, background footage, representative individuals and
issues, overhead narration
 Main networks: CBS (See It Now, 1951-1958), NBC (White
Paper), ABC (Close-Up!)
 Nowadays: 60 Minutes (CBS) the Frontline series (PBS),
Dateline (NBC)
--------------------------------------
 Watch:
 Ed Murrow on Senator McCarthy (See It Now, 1954 => Good Night and
Good Luck (dir. George Clooney, 2005): http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=anNEJJYLU8M
 Frontline (PBS, Feb. 2015). “The Vaccine War”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPOrnU3ImxI
Documentary Subgenres.
Advocacy Documentaries
 Generally not sponsored by governments
 Made by activists and advocacy groups in order to raise awareness
about certain political and social problems
 E.g. The Spanish Earth, sponsored by Hollywood backers (dir. Joris
Ivens; written by John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway;
voiceover narration: Orson Welles, 1937)
 Today:
 radical activist documentaries (Hoop Dreams, dir. Steve James,
1994; The New Americans, produced by Gordon Quinn and Steven
James, 2002); KONY 2012, dir. Jason Russell, 2012)
 Independent activist documentaries: Super Size Me (dir. Morgan
Spurlock, 2004); Sicko (dir. Michael Moore, 2007)
-----------------------------------
Watch: trailer, Sicko:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UReMPrjMT9E
Documentary Subgenres. The Historical Documentary. Related
genres: the biographical documentary and the autobiographical
documentary. The Mockumentary.
 Reliance on photography, archival footage, period music and costume,

witnesses, historians, experts, reenactment
 Revisionist historical documentaries: The Civil War (dir. Ken Burns, 1990);
Standard Operating Procedure (dir. Errol Morris, 2008);The Invisible War
(dir. Kirby Dick, 2012); Redacted (Brian De Palma, 2007); We Were Here
(dir. Ed Wolf and Paul Boneberg, 2011);The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua
Oppenheimer, 2012)
 Biographies: PBS’s American Masters Series
 Autobiographies: Tarnation (dir. Jonathan Caouette, 2003),The Imposter
(dir. Bart Layton, 2012), Stories We Tell (dir. Sarah Polley, 2012)
 Mockumentaries: Zelig (dir. Woody Allen, 1983);This Is Spinal Tap (dir. Rob
Reiner, 1984); What We Do in the Shadows (Dir. Jemaine Clement & Taika
Waititi, 2014)
-------------------------------------
Watch: trailer, The Act of Killing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD5oMxbMcHM
Stories We Tell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytq4VZ2Nyxg
What We Do in the Shadows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Cv568AzZ-i8
Ethnographic Documentaries
 About “other” cultures, initially outside the United States, but
more recently also about marginal (and little-known) communities
inside the US
 Preferably made by a trained ethnographer with the specific
techniques of the field
 National Geographic Taboo series (2003-)
 Related: documentaries about various US subcultures: Paris Is

Burning (dir. Jenny Livingston, 1990); Jesus Camp (dir. Heidi
Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2006); Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in
the House of God (dir. Alex Gibney, 2012)
--------------------------------------
Watch: trailer, Jesus Camp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6RNfL6IVWCE
Nature Documentaries
 About the environment and people’s relationship
with it; not necessarily ideologically neutral
(conservationist)
 Scientific and entertaining (IMAX, 3D technology);
spectacle of beauty and danger
 E.g. Grizzly Man (dir. Werner Herzog, 2005); An
Inconvenient Truth (dir. Davis Guggenheim, 2006 –
voiceover Al Gore)
-------------------------
Watch: trailer, Grizzly Man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWycuaWJFCM
Sources and Recommended
Bibliography
 Aufderheide, Patricia. Documentary Film. A
Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007. Print.
 Ellis, Jack and Betsy A. McLane. A New
History of Documentary Film. New York and
London: Continuum, 2006. Print.
 Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The
Transformation of American Remembrance in
the Age of Mass Culture. New York:
Columbia UP, 2004. Print.

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American

 Defining the documentary

 Tracing the roots of contemporary American

 1st feature length

 salvage anthropology (Inuit,

presumably uninformed audience

vs. Why We Fight (dir. Frank Capra, 1942-1945)

Congress in Nurenberg, 1935]:

 Reliance on photography, archival footage, period music and costume,

 Related: documentaries about various US subcultures: Paris Is

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