Documentary Film - A very Short Introduction by Patricia Aufderheide

Documentary sits between fiction and journalism.

Starts with 'Naming', a discussion on definitions of documentary.  Its complicated! The term was first coined by John Grierson, famous for 'Night mail'.  Earliest example possibly 'Nanook of the North' by Robert Flaherty.

Form - what do documentaries look like?  There are some conventions, typically designed to impart the impression of truth and importance of the subject matter.  Examples are 'voice of god' narration, headshots of 'experts', and 'b-roll', stock images from archives, and an analytical argument rather than a story with characters.  Conventions are important, as they help the viewer understand what they are watching.

Artists break conventions and experiment with form eg. Stan Brakage (see 'Moth light').  The economic context also affects conventions.  Documentary makers have three sources of funding - patrons/sponsors, advertisers, and users/audiences.

Ethics also influence the form that documentaries take.  For example, how much simulation of reality is acceptable?  Falsifying reality is not acceptable. 

After Grierson and Flaherty, the other founding figure in documentary filmmaking is Dziga Vertov, best known for his city symphony 'Man with a Movie Camera'.

Cinema verité (Observational cinema, Direct cinema), was a 1960's style of documentary brought about by the wartime development of light weight equipment.  Old equipment demanded lots of planning, scripting, staging, lighting, re-enactment and interviewing.  Filmmakers could now go where the camera had never been before, and also capture synchronised sound, which made narration redundant.  See 'Primary' by Drew and Pennebaker (1960) and 'Salesman' by David and Al Maysles (1969).

Cinema Verité has now been absorbed into the mainstream, and is seen in political advertisements.  It is part of the 'credibility apparatus' of cops shows, docusoaps and reality tv shows.  As Aufderheide says, 'the approach has lost its novelty but not its ability to convince viewers that they are present, watching something unconstructed and incontrovertibly real'.

Part two of the book works its way through the subgenres of documentary;

1. Public affairs
2. Government propaganda
3. Advocacy
4. Historical
5. Ethnographic
6. Nature

The conclusion - to follow.