TED'S DIGITAL JUNGLE -TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF DOCUMENTARY FILM

    TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF DOCUMENTARY FILM
 

While documentary film is a universally recognized cinematic form, an agreement on exactly what is, and what is not , a documentary film has been elusive throughout the course of cinematic scholarship from the early 20^th century to the present day. Indeed, the definition has often been the subject of heated controversy, and remains so today.

For example, the noted American cinematic scholar Bill Nichols posits that documentary film is a representation of reality`‚ as the title of his major work on documentaries ( REPRESENTING REALITY) would indicate.

However, one of the problems inherent in Mr. Nichols' definition is that the definition of reality itself has been a classic conundrum for philosophers since ancient times, and has yet to be resolved. And in the cinematic world, the issue of accurate portrayal of reality has been a political hot potato since the days of Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein.

Perhaps the great Federico Fellini had the answer when he was castigated by ideologues for having abandoned the principles of Neorealism in films like  LA STRADA and LA DOLCE VITA ( not to mention 8 1/2 !) . Mr. Fellini  simply said he was showing other realities in these films, and
they were real enough to him ‚ e basta`!

Finis origine pendet, as the Romans used to say ; the end depends upon the beginning . Most film historians would categorize the early works of the  French Lumiere Brothers as  documentary‚ since they were motion picture images of daily life at the time  - workers leaving a factory, a train arriving at a station, soldiers on military drills ; there has never been any suggestion that the Lumiere Brothers staged any of these events for the camera. ( for the purpose of this discussion, we shall ignore the few comic skits they did which were obviously directed)

In short, there appears to be a critical consensus that the Lumiere Brothers 'work was puredocumentary, and that the Lumiere Brothers were the first documentary filmmakers.

The American critic James Monaco went a step further, using  the Lumiere Brothers'films as an example of Cinematic Realism, contrasting their films with the films of their French contemporary Georges Melies, whose work he defined as Expressionist.

According to Monaco, Cinematic Realism meant that all creative expression was in front of the camera, and that camerawork was as unobtrusive as possible, with the absence of special effects or the kind of cinematic trickery Melies was famous for.

Cinematic Expressionism, therefore, gave free license to image manipulation behind the camera.

Monaco  then proposed that all subsequent cinematic work would fall into one of these two stylistic categories. However intriguing, this Theory  does not resolve the issue of a definition of documentary, since it is entirely possible to conceive of a documentary that is realist in subject but expressionist in execution!

Writing as a filmmaker myself, I would suggest that an operational definition of documentary film is more useful than any definition based on content . In other words, the key is the process rather than the end product.

Accordingly, I would like to propose the following, with apologies to my friends at DOGME:

1)  A DOCUMENTARY CANNOT CONTAIN STAGED OR RE-CREATED MATERIAL:

This means, for example, that all those wonderful historical documentaries done by the BBC et al, are not documentaries if they have actors playing the roles of historical figures; they may be excellent /docudramas, /but they are not documentaries.

This is critical, since any clever filmmaker can easily re-create an event which completely misrepresents what actually happened. A mountain-climbing film  a friend once did for National Geographic comes to mind; in the film , the heroic mountain climber proved incapable of conquering the intended peak in the Himalayas, so a more attainable summit in Scotland was found which he could then annoint with the
American flag while beating his chest and proclaiming his victory over mother nature.

Similarly, an otherwise excellent film like Errol Morris 'THE THIN BLUE
LINE is also not a documentary, since it employs the device of re-created events. This unfortunately puts it in the category of TV shows like COPS -  or what a friend of mine from Miramax once described to me as reality-based programming.

I prefer the term /reality-based programming to describe all the reality-based shows that are so popular on television, like SURVIVOR, etc, since they are all unabashedly staged, for maximum impact, to the term docu-soaps,which I find a bit misleading.

Now I know some documentary historians are going to come at me with the example of the legendary Robert Flaherty, who is alleged to have staged scenes in NANOOK OF THE NORTH; if this is  indeed true, then I would be the first to admit that Flaherty crossed the line.

But since he poor man was trying to make a pioneering film in the Arctic with the most ancient equipment imaginable, so I would grant him a lot more poetic licence than I would to some contemporary shooting in Sony HD with the latest in Arctic gear, etc!

And, as Ingmar Bergman once said, paraphrasing T.S. Eliot: The great artist does not borrow ‚he steals!

A more controversial  historical example is presented by  Leni Riefenstahl's TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, which, politics aside, is a masterpiece of technical perfection. However, close inspection of the production reveals a good deal was, in fact, staged for the camera; indeed, a case could be made that the entire rally at Nuremberg was staged for Ms. Riefenstahl' s benefit, which would make the film a huge industrial, if not one of the biggest commercials ever made.

And since we now know that she shot the whole event the year before in a dress rehearsal, I certainly would not call it a documentary.

( in l fairness to Ms. Riefenstahl, however,  I think her magnificent film on the Berlin Olympics certainly passes the test, and is an extraordinary documentary. One can hardly blame her for having so many cameras and such a crew of masterful cameramen and technicians!)

2) CINEMA VERITE IS AN IMPOSSIBLE IDEAL:

Since I cut my cinematic teeth working as an assistant cameraman with some of the great practitioners of cinema verite  in New York City , I find this a bit difficult to write, but the bottom line is the presence of cameras affects behaviour in human beings around the world.

And not just in humans ; we did a program on gorillas in Virunga Park  in the  DRC Congo a few years ago, and my cameramen told me that he thought the gorillas were actually posing for the camera! Skeptics should check out Barbet Schroder's KOKO THE TALKING GORILLA  these animals are not as dumb as some people think

New camera technology is, of course, making the cameras smaller and quieter all the time; the new Canon is truly amazing in this regard ‚ and what can one say about the I-Phone 4S ??

 We have come a long way since the 16 mm Eclairs ,Arriflexes, Auricons and Nagras that I started with 40 years ago. Obviously, we are lot more invisible than we used to be ‚ but unless we are working with hidden surveillance cameras, our own presence is still
 a huge factor, and we can never be “flies on the wall.”

Nontheless, I still love watching documentaries, and I love making them.




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