DOCUMENTARY IN THE AGE OF NEW MEDIA: THREE CASE STUDIES. Chapter 2, Draft 1

II. DEFINING THE DOCUMENTARY

       “Naming matters. Names come with expectations; if that were not true, then marketers would not use them as marketing tools. The truthfulness,  accuracy, and trustworthiness of documentaries are important to us all  because we value them precisely and uniquely for these qualities. When  documentaries deceive us, they are not just deceiving viewers but members  of the public who might act upon knowledge gleaned from the film. Documentaries are part of the media that helps us understand not only our own world, but our role in it, that shape us as public actors.”

      Patricia Aufderheide, “Documentary Film- A Very Short Introduction”[1]

II.1. What is Documentary?

Before exploring documentary from the contemporary perspective of the digital revolution and new media, let us direct our attention to the traditional forms and aesthetic conventions of the documentary genre itself. As is often the case with revolutions, one of the unfortunate side effects of the digital revolution has been a tendency on the part of some to either deny or ignore the value of past history or traditions. 

In the case of documentary, this is particularly unfortunate, because there is a rich documentary tradition dating back to the end of the 19^th century that is arguably still of great relevance even today.  Finding a definition of documentary from within that tradition that would apply both to analog and digital documentary would help make that case to the new generation of Digital Natives mentioned in Chapter I.

However, there are a few major obstacles.

 Perhaps the chief impediment is that fact that while documentary is a universally recognized cinematic form, an agreement on exactly what is, and what is not, a documentary has proved elusive throughout the course of cinematic scholarship from the early 20th century to the present day.  Indeed, the issue has frequently been the subject of heated controversy.

II.2. Definitions from the Historical Tradition

Unfortunately, there is not a general consensus among cinema historians regarding the etymology of the term documentary . However, most do agree that the early works of the French Lumiere brothers shot in 1896 are documentary in nature‚ 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, though they did produce some obviously staged comic skits.  In the last years of the 19^th century, Lumiere associates traveled around the world, introducing their new camera, the cinematographe, and the film medium to countries like Sweden, Russia, Algeria, Egypt, India, Australia and Japan. Along the way, they shot the first documentary footage of those countries.[2] 

However, while there is little dispute today that the Lumiere brothers were the first documentarians per se, the term documentary did not exist at the time, The film medium was in its infancy, and was still seen by most people as a novelty.  Dutch documentary historian Erik Barnouw states that the earliest recorded use of the term documentary was by a Polish cinematographe operator named  Boleslaw Matuszewski in book published in Paris in 1898 with the title “Une Nouvelle Source de l’Histoire”. According to Barnouw, Matuszewski proposed a “cinematographic museum, or depository ‘for material ‘of a documentary interest…slices of public and national life.”[3]

II.3. John Grierson

Anglophone cinema historians generally attribute the first use of the term documentary to John Grierson, the Scot who created the famous British Empire Marketing Board Film Unit; Grierson reportedly first used the term to describe Robert Flaherty’s Moana (1926) [4]:” Of course, Moana, being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family, has documentary value.”[5]

In the Anglophone world, the discussion of documentary aesthetics began in earnest during the Great Depression, and British documentarians, led by Grierson,  began to express an ambivalence towards the work of  Flaherty, the man they had previously lionized as a pioneer only a few years before. For example, in “Documentary Film” (1935), the first known history of documentary, Grierson protégé Paul Rotha  accused Flaherty of romanticizing the lives of his subjects:” Surely we have the right to believe that the documentary method, the most virile of all kinds of film, should not ignore the vital social issues of this year of grace…”[6]

With the advent of synchronized sound in the early 1930’s, Grierson and his colleagues developed a new style of documentary with a heavy reliance on the unseen omniscient narrator – a technique Grierson called direct address narration. Since Flaherty abhorred narration, this reliance on Direct Address increased the creative schism between the two.

 In 1934, Flaherty’s “Man of Aran” won a first prize at the Venice Film Festival, and was praised by many as Flaherty’s finest work.[7] However, rather than acknowledge his colleague’s achievement, Grierson rather ungraciously sniffed that he hoped that ‘the neo-Rousseauianism implicit in Flaherty’s work dies with his own exceptional self...”[8]

While Flaherty enjoyed some early commercial success, he was never able to articulate his own aesthetic and ideology in words. When he died in 1951, his widow Frances attempted to protect his legacy through the creation of the Flaherty Seminars in 1955, which were held yearly in upstate New York.   However, as embarrassing facts surrounding the shooting of “Nanook of the North” became known, Flaherty’s stature as a documentary pioneer was tarnished. His reputation still has yet to recover from the withering ideological critiques during the post-Colonial era of the 1960s, when his man-versus-nature theme was vigorously denounced as a “romantic fraud”[9] by Third World critics like Fatimah Tobing Rony who described  “Nanook of the North” as,” a cinema of romantic preservationism, dedicated not to anthropological knowledge but to the production of indigenous people as trophies and to the capture of their ways of life in nostalgic fiction.”[10]

Today, one might say the ethnographic documentary owes the biggest debt to the pioneering attempts of Flaherty to document traditional lives of indigenous peoples. However, his well-established penchant for re-enactment, not to mention outright fabrication of non-existent events in the lives of the peoples whose stories he was supposedly documenting, have caused him to be regarded as something less than a role model for aspiring documentarians today.

 

         II.4.1. The Influence of John Grierson

        The importance of John Grierson in the early development of the

        documentary cannot be overstated. Grierson’s international

        eminenence as the first head of the British  Empire Marketing Board,

        and, later, as founder of the National Film Board of Canada, gave him

        an official platform to define documentary in the Anglophone world

        of the 1930’s and early 1940’s.  As his early career shows, [11]the

        young Scot was more of a producer, than a filmmaler, and had a

        remarkable talent both for recruiting cinematic talent as well as

        getting  political and corporate decision makers to support his

       documentary projects.

        II.4.2. The Evolution of Grierson’s Media Philosophy

       When he was only in his twenties, Grierson received a Rockefeller

       grant to study in the United States at the University of Chicago. There

       he was introduced to the political and media theory of American

       philosopher Walter Lippman, who was concerned about the rise of

       right-wing movements in the Western world. For Lippman, the

       best antidote was propaganda to present desirable political views in

       the clearest and simplest terms possible .

      As his own media philosophy evolved, Grierson began to see film as

      the ideal medium for social reform and education. However, he

      somewhat surprisingly rejected Hollywood fiction, though he certainly

      appreciated Hollywood distribution: “In an age when the faiths, the  

      loyalties, and the purposes have been more than usually undermined,

     mental fatigue – or is it spiritual fatigue? – represents a large factor in

     everyday experience. Our cinema magnate does no more than exploit

     the occasion. He also, more or less frankly, is a dope pedlar…”[12]

      Grierson’s expressed views on the power of media to persuade are

      similar to those of Edward Bernays, whose book “Propaganda” was

      influential when Grierson was studying at the University of Chicago;

      Bernays had worked with Lippman on selling World War I to the

      American people, and was working for the Rockefellers in Chicago

      when Grierson studied there.[13] However, Grierson never acknowledged

      any influence from Bernays .

     Be that as it may, it is clear from his own statements that Grierson was

     beginning to see documentary as an educational tool for social change.

     He was not apparently concerned with documentary aesthetics or  

     experiments with form; his  focus was on message, and the key means

     of conveying that message was the spoken word , with the image

     playing a supporting role. In short, this author believes Grierson’s  

     cinematic style might be described as a  didactic functionalism.

    II.4.3. Grierson’s Politics

    Grierson’s political views were, in a word, enigmatic. The 1930’s were

    a time of great political turbulence on both the left and right, but

    Grierson avoided allegiances to either extreme. He himself said he

     always tried to be “ one inch to the left of the party in power…”[14].

    For example, when it came to filming working men and women and

    scenes from the lives of ordinary people in the United Kingdom in the

    early days of the Great Depression, Grierson was clearly way ahead of   

    his time and many  considered him politically progressive. However,

    Canadian Grierson biographer Joyce Nelson, has a different view:

 “…Grierson, at least until the end of World War II, was actually a

   champion of emergent multinational capitalism and that he used the

   medium of film as a public relations vehicle to convey the wisdom and

   the necessity of accepting the new economic order that would come to

   typify the new postwar world. If this thesis is correct, then Grierson,

   long lionized by the postwar Left, must have felt admired for the wrong

   reasons and perhaps undervalued ( and even betrayed) by the very

   interests he had tried to serve..”[15]

.

 A contemporary Canadian cinema scholar, Zoe Druick, seems to agree: “Conversant with ideas in marketing, government and the social sciences, Grierson was clearly influence by ideas about communication and citizenship in the welfare state…In Grierson’s view, propaganda could be used to educate citizens about the objectives of the state and their role within the national project. He seemed little bothered by the contradictions this posed for democracies…”[16]

Seen in this context, Grierson’s sudden fall from grace in the aftermath of World War II as a victim of the Gouzenko Affair must have been a doubly bitter pill for him to swallow. Not only was he not a communist, but he had been a tireless advocate for the multinational corporate state for most of his professional life. Unfortunately for Grierson, in the Cold War politics in North America of the time, guilt by association could suffice to ruin a life and a career.

 II.4.4. The Gouzenko Scandal

For many other Canadian civil servants, Grierson had always been an outsider; aside from the fact that he was obviously not a Canadian, they resented his success in creating the Canadian Film Board, and his close relationship to Prime Minister William McKenzie King. When Grierson’s secretary Rose Linton and Grierson himself were mentioned by name in incriminating documents given to the Canadian authorities by defecting Soviet Embassy cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko on September 6, 1945, his political enemies saw their opportunity to attack him.[17]

Among other things, they accused Grierson of having produced several pro-Soviet propaganda films made during the War, conveniently overlooking the fact that the films were made when the USSR was an important ally in the Allied war effort.

During the war, Grierson had the Canadian Film Board churning out films like The World in Action series to both promote the war effort as well as preach “ utopian brotherhood” and a glowing vision of the United Nations in the future, with distribution in 5,000 American theatres and 900 Canadian theatres.

It seems Grierson had counted on his role as chief propagandist for the war effort rolling over into peacetime, and that he would be able to continue making the same kind of films in the same quantities. This was a major miscalculation; the rationale for the war effort had effectively vanished on April 8, 1945, with VE Day, when peace broke out. The political fall out from his pro-Soviet films was already serious, as was the furious British reaction to Balkan Powder Keg, a documentary about the liberation of Greece from the Axis.  To make things even worse for Grierson, he had enjoyed complete editorial control of these films, without any guidance from the Canadian Ministry of External Affairs. As a result, he could personally be blamed for any content deemed politically inappropriate.[18]

The Gouzenko investigation removed all doubts; the documents handed over by Gouzenko seemed to indicate there was an active Soviet espionage ring in Canada seeking military and atomic secrets, and a notebook belonging to the Soviet assistant military attaché had this damning item:
“…Research Council-report on the organization and work. Freda to the Professor through Grierson…”[19]

When Canadian investigators  discovered that Freda was, in fact, Grierson’s secretary Frida Linton, and  learned that the FBI had been keeping a file on Grierson since 1942, Grierson was doomed .[20]. His fate was sealed when his old friend and associate Ivor Montagu was arrested by British authorities as a Soviet spy in 1946.

II.4.5. The Grierson Legacy

While the outcome of the Gouzenko investigation was inconclusive regarding Grierson, he was implicated by name and publically interrogated. [21]

As a result, he lost his position as Commissioner of the Canadian Film Board he had created from scratch over the previous 6 years. This was only the beginning of his fall from grace.

Thanks to the Cold War politics of J. Edgar Hoover, Grierson’s grand plans for a post World War II career in the United States as either UN Under Secretary General for Public Information, head of CBS Television News, or head of a new US State Department Film Unit. vanished when he suddenly lost his America visa.[22] In a few weeks, John Grierson had become a Cold War political pariah. 

 Based upon his testimony in the Kellock-Teschereau hearings, Grierson seemed unaware of the dire nature of his situation, and that  his former patron, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, considered him a “communist sympathizer “. [23]

In short, in the prime of his professional life at age 48, Grierson was exiled to a post in Paris as Director of Public Information for UNESCO, where he exported his ideas on documentary to former British colonies India and Australia, and the developing world.[24] His legacy has survived through through his films .[25]

II.5.1.  Dziga Vertov

Ironically, the stature of Grierson and Flaherty’s contemporary Dziga Vertov and his colleagues in the Soviet documentary movement has fared better in recent years, thanks to the discovery of previously inaccessible films and written materials after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Indeed, when it comes to Western recognition of the historical and artistic importance of Dziga Vertov, his work, and his theories, there appears to be a major re-evaluation in progress.

In his lifetime, Vertov was overlooked by most Western film historians, who chose instead to focus on the films and writings of Sergei Eisenstein. The fact that Eisentstein enjoyed the approval of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, while Vertov did not, may have been a factor.

In Russia, Vertov had made many enemies in the 1920’s with his sweeping denunciations of dramatic cinema as a “bourgeois art form”, and when his patron Lenin died in 1924, his enemies saw a chance for revenge. Vertov and his films were subjected to withering ideological attacks by the communist party hierarchy.[26] As a result, during the 1930’s, Eisenstein’s films and writings were accessible in the West, while Vertov’s generally were not.

The Soviet authorities’ preference for Eisenstein had a definite impact. For example, although John Grierson seemingly shared Vertov’s social engagement, he  refused to  acknowledge any cinematic debt to Vertov and his Kino Eye Manifesto. According to Russian cinema historian Jay Leyda, Grierson acknowledged only the famous Soviet feature director Sergei Eisenstein as an inspiration:” John Grierson’s work on the American version of “Potemkin” lends veracity to the story that the British documentary film movement was born from the last reel of “Potemkin”.[27]

 British film critic Ivor Montagu, a Grierson crony, handled the import of “The Man With the Movie Camera”, which was not shown in England until 1931.[28] We now know that the film was not popular in the ruling Stalinist circles; we also now know that that Montagu was, in fact, a Soviet spy during this period, so there are grounds for questioning Montagu’s real agenda .[29]

After the first screenings in Paris and Stuttgart in 1929, Vertov’s film had received enthusiastic responses from prominent European intellectuals, including German cinema historian Siegfried Kracauer, who wrote,” Now a new Russian film has arrived in Berlin that proves that the Russians have not remained stuck at the level they have already reached…If Vertov’s film is more than simply an isolated case, then it must be regarded as symptomatic of the inroads universal human categories have made in Russia’s rigid political thinking. “[30]

In contrast, when “The Man With the Movie Camera” was finally shown in England in 1931, Montagu compared it unfavorably to the work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, and criticized it for being stylistically derivative of “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” (1927). [31] Grierson’s own evaluation of the film in print was not flattering: “The Man With The Movie Camera,” he wrote,” is in consequence not a film at all; it is a snapshot album. There is no story, no dramatic structure, and no special revelation of the Moscow it has chosen as a subject. It just dithers about on the surface of life picking up shots here and there, and everywhere, slinging them together as the Dadaists used to sling together their verses, with an emphasis on the particular which is out of relation to rational existence.”[32]

 Grierson was thus able to summarily dismiss Vertov’s aesthetic and ideological significance, as well as the relevance of Kino Eye for the fledgling British documentary movement. As British cinema historian Jeremy Hicks noted recently,” For Grierson, Vertov’s film is all record, and no art. Therefore, in his terms, it is not documentary.”[33]

Whatever Grierson’s motives for his brusque rejection of a documentary now widely recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema, it is safe to say that this rejection served his interests in his own self-promotion as the founder of the documentary film genre. Indeed, his harsh treatment of Vertov’s work was reminiscent of his equally brutal denunciation of his former hero Robert Flaherty.

II.5.2.  Vertov’s Contribution to the Development of Documentary

As mentioned before, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent end of the Cold War, we now finally have access to more of the films and the original writings of Vertov and his contemporaries. 

These films, along with his theoretical and practical writings provide proof that Vertov was developing a documentary aesthetic and style in the Soviet Union at least a decade before Grierson. Furthermore, the Vertov documentary aesthetic and style have both withstood the test of time far better than either that of Flaherty or Grierson.

A brief look at Vertov’s professional career and achievements might be useful. In 1918, a young man, then known as Denis Abel Kaufman, joined the newsreel department of the Moscow Cinema Committee, and, in an overt homage to the Futurist group led by the famous Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, he immediately changed his name to Dziga Vertov, meaning “ spinning gypsy.” He initially worked as an editor, churning out newsreels on the war between the Whites and the Reds, and developing his skills and style.

In 1919, he met Elizaveta Svilova, a colleague who became both his wife and his life-long creative collaborator as editor. In 1922, his brother Dennis joined him and became first cameraman. Inspired by the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, Vertov developed his first original programs in 1922, the weekly Kino Pravda. What distinguishes the Kino Pravda from previous newsreels was the use of editorial themes rather the mere recording of events, and the use of creative editing to express those themes. [34] Artistic or poetic expression to convey political messages was accepted as the norm in writing and painting at the time, and Vertov extended this approach to film, even using Constructivist fonts for his intertitles.[35]During this period, he also wrote two of his most well-known manifestos on the cinema: “We: Variant of a Manifesto” , and “Cine-Eyes: A Revolution”.[36]

These manifestos reveal an awareness of the need to unite Constructivist theory with the rapidly developing practice of film montage to convey a message and a story.  Vertov and his wife Elizaveta were soon arguably the world’s first documentary editors. In the process, Vertov was quickly learning what worked and what did not. For example, he soon understood that politically stage-managed events were not cinematically interesting. In his instructions to his cameramen, he wrote,” Temporarily avoid photographing parades and funerals (we’ve had enough of them and they’re boring) and recordings of meetings with an endless succession of orators ( cannot be conveyed on the screen)[37]”While most contemporary documentarians would agree with Vertov’s opinion on the soporific quality of filmed parades, Vertov’s dislike for artifice went much further; he regularly denounced all dramatic film as “theatrical” and therefore “ bourgeois” – and, therefore, by implication, counter-revolutionary.

 In the Soviet Union of the 1920’s calling or even implying that someone was a counter-revolutionary was a serious charge; by doing so, Vertov made many enemies among his colleagues, including most notably, Sergei Eisenstein. This alienation of colleagues was to cost Vertov dearly.

Be that as it may, Vertov’s theoretical documentary concept of Kino- Eye (Cinema-Eye) has been adopted by subsequent generations of socially engaged documentarians inspired by statements like this one, delivered at a Vertov lecture in Paris in 1929: ‘The history of Cinema Eye has been a relentless struggle to modify the course of world cinema, to achieve in cinema a new emphasis on the unplayed film over the played film, to substitute the document for the mise--scene, to break out of the proscenium of the theater and to enter the arena of life itself.”[38]

Today, there can be little doubt that, in terms of camerawork, editing and his pioneering concept of visual literacy, Vertov was decades ahead of both Flaherty and Grierson.  His body of work, ranging from silent features like “One Sixth of the World” (1926), “The Eleventh Year “(1928), [39]and the previously mentioned “The Man With the Movie Camera” (1929), are all widely recognized today as examples of cinema craft and artistry.

Dziga Vertov also succeeded in making a more seamless transition to sound than  his peers. His sound features “Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbas” (1931) and “Three Songs of Lenin “( 1934)  are also appreciated today for their creative use of music, location recorded sound and interviews at a time when many others were content to merely record a talking head.

[40]Ironically, it was Vertov’s very dedication to the development of the documentary language and form that got him into ideological trouble as Stalinization of the Soviet arts scene ushered in an aesthetically regressive period under Stalin in the late 1920’s.For Russian Futurists like Vertov, Mayakovsky, and author Yevgeny Zamyatin, inability to change led to biological entropy, which, in turn, eventually to the death of the biological system. This Futurist philosophy helped make them enthusiastic supporters of the Communist Party and the Russian Revolution in its early stages.

However, after Lenin’s death in 1924, however, the same worship of change set them on a collision course with Stalin and his supporters, since Stalin’s priority was consolidation of power with an absolute minimum of change – in short, the very state of cultural entropy the Futurists abhorred. Like Lenin, Stalin took a great interest in the Soviet film industry. However, it was soon clear though his recorded comments that, unlike Lenin,  he did not like documentary. There were several reasons .

First of all, Stalin wanted to create a cult of personality around himself; unstaged documentary portrayals of him might be far too revealing . As a result, Stalin decided that he should only be portrayed by suitably attractive actors in a well scripted fiction films.

There was also the cost factor; documentary productions had an unavoidably high shooting ratio, often of 20:1 or more, and were therefore expensive to produce. To make matters even worse, quality film stock was hard to find in the Soviet Union. A well -scripted fiction film, on the other hand, might have a shooting ratio of as low as 2:1.

Under Stalin’s strict guidance, the Soviet communist party finally reached the conclusion that the only value of any film was its ideological content and all other aesthetic considerations were, at best, secondary, if not completely irrelevant.   All documentary production was to be terminated.

In this context, it is somewhat ironic that the Soviets’ bitter ideological rivals, the National Socialists of Germany, reached very similar conclusions regarding their own propaganda efforts. While Leni Riefenstalhl’s controversial films “Triumph of The Will” (1934) and “Olympiad “(1938) achieved international acclaim for their extraordinary cinematic quality, the Nazi leadership ultimately decided to focus on commercial entertainment cinema as their primary vehicle for propaganda. In Germany, with the domestic Agfa factory producing quality film stock, it appears that cost was not an issue; it seems that both Hitler and Goebbels, like Stalin, were also big fans of Hollywood, and they all seemed to agree that the ideal vehicle for propaganda and communicating political messages to the general population was the fiction entertainment film, rather than documentary.

In retrospect, both the Soviets and Nazis were correct in this sense :today, most media professionals would  agree that the political message in a well crafted  Hollywood film like “ Casablanca” is  more effectively delivered than any documentary could hope to do.

Accordingly, in the Soviet Union, by 1931, documentarians like Vertov began to be  referred to by the pejorative term documentalists , and that communist party ideologues called for the complete destruction of documentalism, which was  accused of being “Formalist” and “Trotskyist” – both potentially fatal epithets . Undaunted, Vertov made a brave defense of his documentary aesthetics in his essay “On Documentary and Documentalists” (1931):

“Question: What is the difference between newsreel, Cine-Eye, documentary and unplayed film?

Answer: There is no difference. These are different definitions of one and the same branch of cinema production: it is ‘newsreel’, which points to its continuous link with the accumulation of the current material of newsreel; it is Cine-Eye, which points to the recording of this newsreel material armed with the cine-camera, the Cine-Eye; it is documentary, which points to it being genuine, to the authenticity of the accumulated material; it is unplayed, which points to actors being unnecessary, to acting being unnecessary in the production of this kind of film.”[41]

Vertov’s last major work was “Three Songs of Lenin” (1934), ostensibly an homage to the legacy of Lenin using 3 different musical movements;  while the subject of Lenin doubtless provided ideological camouflage, Vertov  managed to make the first song  a very powerful statement celebrating the demise of chador, or the veil, in the new Soviet republics to the South, which were predominantly Muslim.

Apparently the film was not well received by the party hierarchy; Stalin himself objected to the portrayal of Lenin for some vague ideological discrepancy, and few dared question Stalin’s authority on ideological matters. In retrospect, it seems likely that Stalin’s real objection was that there was way too much Lenin in the film, and not enough Stalin.

There was now blood in the water, and all of Vertov’s many old ideological and aesthetic enemies saw their opportunity to get their revenge on their former critic, and  even former colleagues and supports like   Sergei Eisenstein joined the party chorus to denounce Vertov for having “ formalist and documentalist tendencies”.  The greatest Soviet documentarian was forced to return to where he began - producing pedestrian newsreels until his death in 1954.[42]

II.5.3. The Vertov Legacy

The Vertov legacy in documentary has been extensive, and is still growing today.  For example, Vertov was the direct progenitor of the cinema verite movement in the 1960s that used new light-weight cameras and equipment to show the world in ways it had never been shown before, and the name cinema verite itself is a direct translation of Kino Pravda.   The influential French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard was also a great admirer of Vertov for his ability to fuse political statement with artistic creativity, and started La Groupe Dziga Vertov in 1968 with several collegaues to make political films following the example set by Vertov with Kino Pravda almost half a century earlier.

His appeal is not limited to the French nouvelle vague and practitioners of cinema verite. Anyone seriously interested in the potential of cinema and cinematic language has found useful ideas and observations in Vertov’s works and writings.

Vertov’s Futurist faith in technology also resonates today. In addition to dynamic change, the Futurists adored modern technology, and Vertov worshipped the film camera and explored its potential in ways few have ever done. He took his camera on trains, boats, cars and trains, and even underneath trains. He showed intimate moments of daily life in public places with hidden cameras, experimented with pixilation and reverse motion, and even had reflexive shots of his camera operator in action. [43]

His documentary feature, “The Man With The Movie Camera” is still admired as a creative masterpiece, and, most recently, was voted 8^th best film of all time in the 2012  Sight and Sound  poll.[44] This poll included all film genres – fiction, as well as documentary.

In the 21^st century, cinema historians are rediscovering the works and writings of Vertov; after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s many of his films have become available to see on YouTube and elsewhere in the Western world, and English translations of his writings are also now available to the general public.[45]

New media scholars like  Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky of Masschusetts Institute of Technoiogy have named Vertov as the inspiration for their recent experiments in Database Cinema, an accolade Vertov would have doubtless appreciated.[46]  

Manovich even opens his book “The Language of New Media” with s prologue dedicated to Vertov:”The avant-garde masterpiece “Man with a Movie Camera” completed by Russian director Dziga Vertov in 1929, will serve as our guide to the language of new media. This prologue consists of a number of stills from the film... The prologue thus acts as a visual index to some of the book’s major ideas.”[47]

II.6. Post- Modern Views of Documentary:

This rediscovery of Vertov and his ideas on documentary by a new generation of digital film and media scholars comes after the debate on the true nature of documentary has been dominated  in recent years by a generation of  Post- Modern   academicians .

 Best known is perhaps University of Indiana Professor Bill Nichols. Nichols posits that there are three ‘commonsense assumptions’ in all documentaries:

1.    Documentaries are about reality; they’re about something that actually happened.

2.    Documentaries are about real people.

3.    Documentaries stories about what happens in the real world.[48]

While Nichols’s “ commonsense assumptions” are reasonable enough, one of the problems in his assumptions is that the definition of reality itself has been a classic conundrum for philosophers since ancient times,   Scientific discoveries in the 20^th centuries constantly forced us to radically re-assess our perceptions of reality. We are now limited to defining our reality as the currently accepted scientific definition of that reality, fully aware that the definition will soon be subject to modification.

 In the the world of cinema, the issue of what constitutes accurate or acceptable portrayal of reality has been a hot potato since newsreels recreated historical events for the camera in the earliest days of the cinema. In  1898, travel was expensive and time-consuming, so staging the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor in some bathtub in New York made perfect sense, at least from a producer’s point of view. At that time, there were no ethical standards for documentary, since the medium had yet to be defined.

Today, of course, if a news correspondent is reporting from Baghdad, he or she has to physically be in Baghdad, and not in, say, New York or London with a digital green screen backdrop. Similarly, if a Richard Attenborough BBC special on wildlife intersperses, without a disclaimer, images of animals shot in zoos with the same animals in the wild, there is a major scandal, and the BBC has to promise to identify all faked scenes on air, and, to never to do it again.[49]

 However, contemporary educational channels like The History Channel  ( and others)  are now full of dramatic re-enactments of historical events, and few object. It would appear, then, that some re-enactment is tolerable, as long as it is acknowledged, and not deceptive.  Nichols addresses this issue when he elaborates on his first assumption:” Documentary films speak about actual situations or events and honor known facts; they do no introduce new, unverifiable ones. They speak directly about the historical world, rather than the allegorical one.”[50] 

It might appear that Nichols accepts the re-staging of events, as long as they honor “known facts”, but then, in his clarification of his second assumption, he writes,” Documentaries are about real people who do not play or perform roles.”[51]

Here, it would appear he has ruled out re-enactment, but again, he employs subjective terms such as “real”, not to mention “play or perform roles” .He then  observes that Robert Flaherty’s legendary “Nanook of the North “(1922) ‘can be said to be one gigantic reenactment, yet it retains significant documentary qualities.”[52]

According to Nichols’ own stated criteria, it might seem that “Nanook of the North” would not qualify as a documentary. Perhaps Nichols is showing due deference to an iconic figure in American documentary history in his treatment of Flaherty, but he appears to be employing inconsistent criteria. As noted , terms like “real” are highly subjective..

A classic cinematic response comes from the late great Italian director Federico Fellini when he was castigated by ideologues for apparently abandoning the Neorealist ethic in films like “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8 ½ “(1963):’ Realism is a bad word. In a certain sense, everything is realistic. I see no dividing line between imagination and reality. I see a great deal of reality in imagination.”[53]

So where does this leave documentary? In academic circles in Western Europe and the United States, the post-modern critique of photography and other depictions of reality have generated considerable debate. In “Collecting Visible Evidence”, for example, Jane M. Gaines summarized the evolution of this post-modern position when she wrote that there is no “real” world to depict, and that the only reality that we can be sure exists are the images that the artist has created. Hence, for Gaines, “true” documentary becomes impossible .[54]

However, for the broadcaster, the documentarian, and the media consumer, there is another, even larger context to consider: our collective consciousness and our collective understanding of that reality.Patricia Aufderheide, former Board Member of the Independent Television Service in the United States and Founder-Director of the Center for Social Media of American University in Washington, D.C., offers another perspective : “Reality is not what is out there, but what we know, understand and share with each other of what is out there. Media affect the most important real estate of all, that which is inside your head. Documentary is an important reality-shaping communication because of its claims to truth.”[55]

In other words, the relationship between the reality being represented in a work of art, such as a documentary, should not be conflated with the internal realities in the minds of the viewers consuming that documentary. They are separate, and distinct realities, although they are not mutually exclusive.

II.7. Towards an Operational Definition of Documentary

 Perhaps it is now time, with the sudden introduction of New Media, to explore the legacy of Dziga Vertov and the Cine-Eye aesthetic and see if it can provide criteria for creating an operational definition for documentary.  

The reasoning behind this stems from necessity, since defining documentary according to content, as many have done, is simply intellectually and logically impossible; as we have already seen, since  such a definition is based on completely subjective variables. .

 For example, British post-modern documentary theorist Stella Bruzzi caps an intellectual broadside against fellow documentary theorists Linda Williams , Erik Barnouw, Michael Renov and Brian Winston with the following assertion :”all documentaries are inherently doomed to failure…Too often in the past documentary was seen to have failed (or to be in imminent danger of failing) because it could not be decontaminated of its representational quality.”[56]

There are some fundamental flaws in Bruzzi’s  argument.

First of all, she is unable to quote any documentarian saying that it is his or her creative goal to objectively represent reality, and therefore can present no empirical support for her thesis.  The reason for this is simple: there are no documentarians of note who have ever said such a thing.

Secondly, Bruzzi also asserts in this context that it is impossible for a documentarian to record a subject without the subject being unaware of the process. This statement is demonstrably untrue, and is even contradicted by the writings and work of Vertov, who frequently employed hidden camera techniques to catch his subjects “off guard. ”

In his Cine Eyes Field Manual, Vertov writes, ”Filming unawares – an old military rule; gauging, speed, attack”… Vertov then goes on to list 8 different ways in which the subject can be filmed unawares.[57]

A more contemporary example of a documentarian using a hidden camera can be also found in Danish Mads Brugger’s lively documentary The Ambassador (2012),[58] in which the director manages to purchase a position as an ambassador from Liberia to the Central African Republic to see if he can buy conflict diamonds. Much of the action involves interaction between the fake ambassador and local dignitaries – all recorded with hidden camera.

In other words, Bruzzi has based her argument on a demonstrably false premise. As has been shown, the issue of documentary’s representation of reality has been an intellectual challenge to a generation of academic documentary theorists, who, in the words of historical documentary researcher Dirk Eitzen, have,” tended to devote their energies to showing how documentaries are constructed or artificial or ‘fictive’.” [59]

 Eitzen echoes the views of Patricia Aufderheide when he suggests that these documentary theorists might be better served if they considered the social impact on audiences of widely seen and well made historical documentaries such as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985)[60] and Ken Burns’ Civil War (1990).[61] : “Philosophically speaking, reality and our representations of it are truly ‘incommensurate’. Practically speaking, however, documentarians do have the power to really put us in touch with our reality – just as “really”, that is, as our senses put us in touch with reality. We can never know reality, it is true, but we can very definitely know certain things about it. Evolution has guaranteed this.”[62]

 With the rapid growth of digital technology in documentary, notions of what is and what is not acceptable representation are changing as well. Therefore, it would perhaps be more practical to avoid altogether such highly charged issues such as what constitutes representation and what is the nature of reality when seeking a workable definition of documentary.  

If we are going to provide a clear and concise definition of what is, and what is not, documentary, we need to focus on how documentaries are made, rather than what they might or might not depict.

 In his seminal work on documentary production, “ Directing the Documentary”, Michael Rabiger observes that the debate regarding the identity of documentary has largely faded away among established filmmakers:” Except for women’s and gay political issues, academics have largely taken over the arguments. Little about the original debates has ever been settled, and the documentary remains a minefield of temptations and possibilities, just as in the early days... Documentary is a branch of the expressive arts, not a science.”[63]

 Jack C. Ellis and Betsy MacLane, authors of “ A New History of Documentary Film”, offer a similar response to documentary theorists like Bruzzi : “ However useful they may be for viewers seeking a deep understanding of the films, the writings of film theorists are not very much a part of the world of documentary making and watching.”[64]

A simpler methodology for defining documentary is offered by American media theorist James Monaco; according to Monaco, cinematic styles concentrating on what is in front of the camera can be defined as realist; those cinematic styles with a focus on what goes on behind the camera he defines as expressionist.[65]

 In Monaco’s terms, Vertov’s documentary style would be both realist and expressionist, since , while he films people and objects from the real world exclusively, he often manipulates his  visual images in the camera and on the editing table.

Likewise, any filmmaker with scientific training is well aware of the humbling implications of Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which, as Dr. Rudolf Carnap explains, has forced us to accept that we live in an indeterminate world, where there is never 100% certainty.

Documentarians cannot capture “ objective truths” any more successfully than any other artists in their respective media; all the documentarian can do is to try to create personal truths following the cinematic conventions of the documentary genre.

Likewise, there are also phenomena which we scientifically know to exist, but which are too small or complex to measure accurately.[66] Scientific phenomena that cannot be defined by their intrinsic essence, are sometimes defined according to how they are measured, in what are called correspondent or operational definitions.[67]

The British documentary theorist Dai Vaughan offers this version of the summarized the essence of Vertov’s Theory as follows: “The cine-camera is endowed with all the potentialities of human sight – and more. It can peep with unblinking gaze into every corner of life, observing, selecting and capturing the myriad details of appearance and transaction  which constitute the reality of our epoch. The camera should, therefore, be used to record not the simulated emotions of paid actors in locales created by the plasterer and the set-decorator, but the authentic and unrehearsed behavior of real people in the streets and houses in which we live. All artifice should be eliminated, except in the unavoidable process of editing.”[68]

Let us now consider a possible operational definition of documentary based on what we shall call The Dziga Vertov Documentary Canon:

1)   Documentary is an expressive cinematic art form which can contain images of anyone or anything, and looks at the universe with a critical and creative eye.

2)   Documentary cannot contain any staged or dramatically re-created visual material. If there is such material, it must be used overtly. Authenticity cannot be suggested when there is none,

In reality, few documentarians are absolute purists on this second point. As documentarians and all practitioners of cinematic craft know well, there are few absolutes in cinema; rather, one creates creative goals and then strives to achieve them as best one can. Fidelity alone to a given set of rules does not determine an artistic products success or failure. Indeed, the so-called failure may be far more interesting than the supposed success. Vertov himself admits he violated his own “rules” on more then one occasion.

Accordingly, this definition should be seen more as providing stylistic guidelines rather than laws etched in stone – along the lines of the Danish Dogme-95 Manifesto, which created an aesthetic without being doctrinaire.[69] What makes Vertov particularly intriguing as a paradigm for the creation of an operational definition of documentary is the dialectic between his theory and his practice – the interplay between his writings and his extensive body of work. His observations on documentary technique are very detailed, and appear to be refreshingly honest. 

For example, he himself confesses to some staging and manipulation in his work for practical production purposes, noting that the goal should be to keep such staging or manipulation to an absolute minimum.  However, as a documentary producer, Vertov was well aware that, when one has a job to do, one cannot always be an absolutist; unlike a critic, sometimes it is necessary for a film producer to compromise to get the job done.

II.8. Testing The Operational Definition of Documentary

For testing purposes, now let us see how our operational definition would apply to the four categories of documentary as defined by Bill Nichols in his essay, The Voice of Documentary, in which Nichols identifies four major narrative styles of documentary:

1).  The direct address style of the Griersonian tradition  

 2). Cinema verite

3). A variation of cinema verite featuring a character or narrator speaking directly to the camera, sometimes in an interview

 4). A self-reflexive style featuring a mix of interview and comments, including observations from the documentarian.[70]

Now let us see how our operational definition would apply to these four styles:

1)   The Direct Address Style of the Griersonian Tradition: While there are always exceptions, a documentary shot in the Griersonian tradition would avoid employing dramatically re-enacted or re-staged material, if at all possible. In a visual sense, then, the Griersonian style would fit the operational definition of documentary as defined.  A successful documentary in this style requires an extremely well written   poetic narration and an excellent professional voice; “The Night Mail” (1936 directed by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, with a narration written by W.H.Auden, is a classic example of a successful Grierson production. The narration is suggestive, rather than dominant, and the story is told visually.[71]In the hands of more pedestrian talents, however, the Direct Address can   become essentially radio with pictures, with the previously disparaged institutional Voice of God didactically blaring out the company line over some generic images, with a few V.I.P. talking heads of the bosses to give them their 15 minutes of fame. In short, the Direct Address style can easily become documentary straight out of some authoritarian Orwellian nightmare.

In this context, it is worth noting that Vertov himself did his best to avoid relying on titles to tell the story in his silent films. In his sound films, Vertov also attempted to employ sound as a creative medium in its own right;  while the second-person address to Lenin in “Three Songs of Lenin” might be considered a variation on Direct Address, even in this overt propaganda film, Vertov carefully avoids the omniscient third person Voice of God narration.

Today, it is safe to say that, by condescendingly treating the audience as mental incompetents incapable of reaching their own conclusions, the Voice of God narration has fallen into disfavor with more sophisticated audiences around the world.  As Michael Renov writes: ”As described by countless critics, the voice-over has, in recent decades, been deplored as dictatorial, the Voice of God; it imposes an omniscience bespeaking a position of absolute knowledge.”[72]

2)   The Cinema Verite Style: According to Aufderheide, the roots of the cinema verite movement lay in an anti-authoritarian reaction to World War II, and one of the first indications was Britain’s Free Cinema movement in the 1950’s. [73]Led by Lindsay Anderson , Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz, Free Cinema reacted against Griersonian didacticism by showing daily lives of ordinary citizens without editorializing .[74] A few years later, thanks in large part to the development of lightweight 16 mm cameras in World War II, and the crystal synch cordless sound system created by Ricky Leacock and his colleagues in the early 1960’s in the United States, cinema verite (also known as ‘direct cinema’) enjoyed a vogue in the United States and France. The new equipment granted cinematic access to new facets of human existence, and purists insisted that this depiction appear as unadulterated as possible. As a result, cinema verite purists decreed that all sound had to be recorded live, and any uses of narration or music that had not been recorded live were considered violations of the cinema verite code.

Since the very name cinema verite is an homage by the French documentarian Jean Rouch to the Kino Eye of Dziga Vertov, it seems safe to say that the Cinema Verite Style would fall within the realms of our operational definition. Leacock’s own definition of his cinema verite style supports that conclusion:

“What is it we filmmakers are doing, then? The closest I can come to an accurate definition is that the finished film- photographed and edited by the same filmmaker- is an aspect of the filmmaker’s perception of what happened. This is assuming that he does no directing. No interference.”[75]

It is important to note that some fundamental contradictions in cinema verite theory became apparent as the movement grew in popularity. In the early 1960’s, there were two stylistic branches:  the  American branch, known as Direct Cinema, led by Ricky Leacock and John Drew, were staunch advocates of a  very non-obstrusive, Fly-on-The-Wall  approach, while the French, led by Jean Rouch and Claude Morin, opted for a  reflexive  style, in which the filmmaker could be a visible participant.

 There was also the issue, raised by Jean Luc Godard, of open advocacy as opposed to apparent neutrality. Some post-modern academics enterered the fray, accusing the proponents of Direct Cinema made impossible claims of objectivity.  In turn , American documentarian Fred Wiseman dismissed this post -modern charge as  : “  a lot of horseshit...My films are totally subjective. The objective-subjective argument is from my point of view, at least in film terms, a lot of nonsense. The films are my response to a certain experience.”[76]

Regardless, the goal of making a fly-on-the-wall recording pure human behavior was ultimately proven to be an impossible ideal by such productions as “An American Family” (1973), a 12 part documentary series about the Loud family by Alan and Susan Raymond, produced by the American Public Broadcasting Service.

The production and subsequent broadcasting of the series had a devastating effect on the Loud family, apparently causing them to do many things they would not have done without the cameras present. This should not have been a complete surprise; common sense would indicate that the constant presence of even a minimal two or three person cinema verite crew with cameras, sound equipment and lights, would have some effect on the behavior of those being filmed.

However, when it became known to the public that the producer was having an affair with Mrs. Loud, even the defenders of the series conceded defeat. The controversy surrounding “An American Family”[77], and the subsequent revelations of how family members had been manipulated behind the scenes, effectively ended the debate; today, cinema verite and direct cinema  are now generally recognized more as a style of shooting, rather than an aesthetic ideal.

3).  A variation of cinema verite featuring a character or narrator

      speaking  directly to the camera, sometimes in an interview: As

      Nichols notes, this style is the conventional style employed in many

      contemporary television documentaries today; it is also essentially the

      same style employed by Vertov  in “Three Songs of Lenin”,[78] so this

      style would also fall well within our operational definition of

      documentary in the Vertov tradition. Vertov employs all of these

      narrative techniques in the film, and has an interview with a

       factory worker that is extraordinarily modern, in that some mistakes

       and  awkward   moments have been retained, thus adding an air of

       authenticity to what would otherwise appear to be a staged and   

       rehearsed interview.  

                      

4).  A self-reflexive style featuring a mix of interview and comments, including  observations  from the documentarian: As previously noted,

 “ Man with s Movie Camera” has many self-reflexive elements,

 including shots of the editor waking up and getting dressed, as well as shots of the man with the camera at work,  setting up shots and moving to get better angles. As a result, this style would also fall well within our operational definition.

III.9. Borderline Forms

Over the past decade, some documentaries, such as those of the afore-mentioned Michael Moore, have enjoyed commercial success in the United States, and the term documentary has lost its pejorative edge for many commercial producers. Unfortunately, this change of attitude has not led to increased funding for documentary production; rather, it has led to an increase in the production of commercial productions with a documentary veneer, such as mockumentaries, docudramas, historical dramas, reality-based television, docusoaps and other spin-offs . Some critics feel these genres employ features of documentary, without actually being documentary, hence frequently causing confusion. 

They include:

Mockumentary:  This term is now commonly used to denote a fiction film shot in documentary style; it was invented by director Rob Reiner as a tongue-in-cheek description of his 1984 comedy about an aging rock band on a comeback tour titled, “This is Spinal Tap”.[79] However, “This is Spinal Tap” was hardly the first film to employ this stylistic device; as noted in Wikipedia, mockumentaries “ may be either comedic or dramatic in form, although comedic mockumentaries are more common. A dramatic mockumentary (sometimes referred to as docufiction) should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events.”[80]

There have been other examples of mockumentaries which led the audience to believe they were documentaries exploring the intimate secrets of real people, only to reveal at the end that, in fact, the stories were fictitious. Essentially, the goal was to deceive the audience for dramatic effect. While this is certainly a valid dramatic technique, two films aroused some controversy because they succeeded so well in their deception – Mitchell Block’s “ No Lies”, about a woman who tells the story of her rape, and Jim McBride’s “ David Holtzman’s Diary” ( 1968).[81]

Perhaps the two most famous examples of what might be called dramatic mockumentary were the Italian director Gillo Pontocorvo’s “Battle of Algiers (1966), an extraordinary film about the Algerian war for independence from the French, and Peter Watkins’ The War Game” (1965),[82] an equally extraordinary television drama about the effects of a thermonuclear war on the ground in England.  Both of these films employed a cinema verite style to throw the spectator into the middle of the intense action, and both films received many awards. Both films also received the ultimate approval for cinematic subversion – being banned for two decades – “Battle of Algiers “in France , and “The War Game” in England.[83]

In all cases, however, mockumentaries, no matter how excellent they may be in cinematic terms, are not documentaries.  Rather, they are fiction cinema using documentary conventions for dramatic effect.

The same might be said of the next category – Docudrama:

Docudrama: Nichols notes that while docudramas “draw much of their plot structure and characters from actual events”, they are “generally considered fundamentally fictions..”[84]

 This term was created to describe a television drama based on a true story, but adapted for the television screen. Hollywood has always taken such great liberties with historical figures and events. Television viewers, on the other hand, have been a bit more demanding when it came to depiction of real people and events. The term docudrama grants the commercial television producers a legal exemption from demands for accurate portrayals. The producer purchases the rights to the story, and then makes whatever changes deemed necessary.

Such is the nature of commercial television, and no professional in broadcasting would confuse a documentary with a docudrama. Unfortunately, as both Stalin and Hitler knew, spectators frequently fail to make this distinction, since people tend to believe what they see, even if they know it to be fictitious. Hence the need for government or non-profit television stations which can broadcast documentaries, which at least have some pretense of accuracy and veracity.

As mentioned before, the issue of re-enactment in documentary has always been a bone of contention. Purists might argue, that re-enactment does not belong in documentaries. However, others might be of the opinion that a certain amount of re-enactment is permissible, as long as it is overt, and cannot be assumed as being deceptive. Errol Morris ‘excellent documentary about a man wrongly convicted of murder in Texas, “The Thin Blue Line” (1988), is a good example of the second case.  Morris combines interviews with some clearly staged visual re-enactment of events, but he manages to do so in a restrained, neutral fashion that merely illustrates the testimony of the person being interviewed, rather than attempting to re-create the event itself.

The characters are played by actors, but could just as well be played by animated faceless robots. The images are the kind one might expect to see in a courtroom, carefully designed not to prejudice the jury – or the spectator - in one way or another.  [85] Simultaneously, these images allow Morris to visually punctuate his many talking head interviews and dramatize them with the help of music from Phillip Glass. Therefore, “The Thin Blue Line” would fall well within our parameters for documentary.[86] However, docudramas would not.

Historical Drama:  While there is general agreement that the term historical drama refers to fictitious events set in a historical context, there are some variations on this genre  which fall between the lines.  For example, what is one to make of the many historical documentaries done by the BBC and others that now show re-enactments of historical events and characters?

By Vertov’s expressed standards, these films would not be documentaries if they have theatrically re-created events with actors playing the roles of historical figures; they may be excellent docudramas, but they are not documentaries.

 The issue is a fundamental issue of directorial control: as soon as you have theatrical re-enactments you are exerting dramatic control over the material  which will affect the viewer’s perceptions both consciously and subconsciously. If you show the face of, say, the leader of the Visigoths as he prepares to sack Rome, you are leaving documentary, and entering the realm of historical drama. Some historical television documentaries, like Simon Schama’s productions on BBC, carefully observe this distinction by limiting their images to showing an on-camera presenter, often speaking in present time from the historical location, which is also shown in present time. Among other things, historical interpretation is a highly complex art, requiring extensive research, not to mention funding for scenography and locations that are usually far beyond the means of a producer of historical documentary.

This challenge has inspired some creative solutions. For example, rather than do an inferior re-creation on a tight budget, some directors, like the American Ken Burns, in his highly successful series on the American Civil War titled “The Civil War” (1990) have carefully limited themselves to use of  authentic historical images as well as contemporary texts such as letters read by actors, and have managed to produce powerful historical documentaries while remaining faithful to traditional documentary conventions.[87]On subsequent productions like “Baseball” (1994) and “Jazz” (2001), among others, Burns demonstrated that it is possible to respect traditional documentary technique and tell engaging stories about historical processes and events, provided one possesses the aesthetic discipline and professional integrity required.

Burns has won two Academy Awards for his work, and enjoyed commercial as well as artistic success; today his productions are used as educational tools in many American schools, and his work has spawned a generation of imitators. [88] Therefore, historical documentaries would fall within the realms of our definition, while historical dramas or historical fiction would not.

Reality Based Television: Sometimes referred to as reality television, or infotainment, reality based television refers to genre of television programs in which real people are put in comic or dramatic situations designed to evoke an entertaining response for spectators. Examples from the early history of television include television game shows and talk shows. After strikes in the 1980’s by The Writers Guild and The Screen Actors’s Guild, Hollywood television producers sought new ways to produce entertaining television programming material without paying for talent and scripts.  The first successful reality-based programs in the United States had a law and order theme, such as “Cops”, produced by John Langely and Malcom Barbour, which was first broadcast in 1989.

The concept of “Cops” was simple enough: a camera crew would be embedded with a police unit, and would then follow them on their patrol as the police answered calls and made arrests.  Heavy emphasis was placed on authenticity in the opening disclaimer, read by actor Burt Lancaster: “Cops is about real people and real criminals. It was filmed entirely on location with the men and women in work in law enforcement.”[89]

Shot entirely in cinema verite style, “Cops” proved to be a wildly successful program around the world. In 2012, the 850^th    episode was broadcast by Fox Television, the producer, in the United States.  Over the years, however, there have been questions about documentary ethics involved, and in May, 2013, Fox Television announced it was discontinuing the series.[90]

Similar ethical issues arise with the so-called docusoap, a term used to denote the next generation of reality-based programming typified by the “Survivor” series.   “Survivor” was first broadcast in the United States in 1992; the program creates a highly charged but very artificial situation by throwing a group of carefully selected contestants into an exotic location where they had to pass a series of grueling physical tests to compete for a cash prize.

Personal conflicts between contestants are encouraged, and carefully recorded; the ideal result was a Darwinian snake pit from which contestants would be evicted, one by one, until finally only one survivor remained and was crowned the winner of the substantial cash prize. - hence the title. Today, versions of “Survivor”are produced in many countries around the world.[91]

Since “Survivor “and its various and sundry spin-offs are fundamentally television game shows, they cannot be considered documentary, even if the programs may contain documentary elements. Indeed, the producers of “Survivor” have never pretended the program is documentary. The entire situation is contrived, and the participants are heavily manipulated. Were it not for the need for commercial television programming, the situation being depicted would never exist at all. Therefore, what is being documented is a fiction, with the only caveat being that the contest is supposed to be rigged, like other game shows.

While it might seem self-evident that game shows cannot be considered documentary, Stella Bruzzi makes a fanciful case that docusoaps are part of something she calls new observational television, or factual entertainment. She writes, ”As in the case with cinema verite and direct cinema in the 1960’s, the evolution and current extension of the parameters of observational film and television is in large part due to specific technological advances.” [92]

While it is certainly true that technological innovations have greatly facilitated the production of docusoaps and other examples of reality-based programming, one can also say with certainty that the rapid evolution of digital technology has greatly facilitated all manner of creative endeavours, and not just docusoaps.

The technology does not just generate the product; rather, producers use the new technology to create new products to satisfy specific needs.

As was the case with reality-based programs like “Cops”, the docusoap format was created specifically to enable producers avoid paying television actors and screenwriters the fees they were owed according to union contracts.

In addition, most docusoaps are never shot on location or in real-life situations; instead, they depict the actions of individuals thrown together in a completely contrived situation. In this situation, individuals are frequently manipulated ( and allegedly even sometimes scripted) off-camera, and are encouraged to create drama for the camera.

All of these features might make for titillating television entertainment, but they are all fundamental violations of the ground rules for documentary.  Hence docusoaps, along with reality based television  and infotainment, although all contain some documentary elements, fall outside the parameters of our operational definition of documentary.

As Rabiger has noted so eloquently,” the public has an insatiable appetite for “infotainment” shows based on police recordings, accidents, and bizarre events captured in home movie clips. By no stretch of the imagination are they documentary, even though they do document how people react in trying situations. They do, however, use documentary observation and provide work for documentary crews. Perhaps they help us, in a roundabout way, to define what documentary is not.”[93]

Political and Propaganda Documentaries: The issue of what is, and what is not, propaganda has also long been a bone of contention in the world of cinema. One fundamental issue is that the very word propaganda resonates quite differently depending upon who is using it.

Patricia Aufderheide defines propaganda documentaries as being made with the goal of convincing viewers of an organization’s point of view or cause,  noting that they are “an important source of funding and training for documentarians worldwide and sometimes an important influence on public opinion.”[94]

Dziga Vertov, for example, was proud to be making propaganda documentaries in the service of the communist party and the Soviet revolution. As previously noted, his problems arose when his ostensible clients in the party decided he was not making the kind of propaganda they wanted.

Ultimately, Vertov proved unwilling to sacrifice his belief in the validity of his documentary canon to make the kind of films they wanted, so his ideological and aesthetic adversaries succeeded in shutting him down. Before that, however, Vertov managed to make a number of documentaries that are still respected today for their cinematic value, unlike the pedestrian exercises in social realism produced by his rivals.

A far more controversial historical example is presented by Leni Riefenstahl's “Triumph of the Will” (1935), a stunning film about a Nazi party congress in Nuremberg which, politics aside, has long been recognized as a masterpiece of technical perfection, and which was also banned for years because it was considered to be so inflammatory.

 As shown in Ray Muller’s fascinating documentary biography “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl” (1993) Riefenstahl insisted that she was just a artist providing a visual record of the event. Indeed, she refused to ever admit she was even a member of the Nazi party, even though it is clear she never could have made the film without Hitler’s enthusiastic support.

When an incredulous Muller points out she had enjoyed extraordinary access to Hitler, and that the entire event appears meticulously staged and choreographed, she remains adamant that the film was just a work for hire .Her denials are contradicted by the film itself; every camera angle and camera movement is impeccable, and orchestrated . Nothing seems to have been left to chance. 

Muller’s close inspection of the production reveals that a good deal was, in fact, staged for the camera. Indeed, a strong case could be made that the entire rally at Nuremberg was staged for Riefenstahl' s benefit, since Muller reveals that she had shot the entire event the year before in the much less well-known “The Victory of the Faith”(1933), which Muller implies was something of a dress rehearsal.[95]

What with all this staging, and a dress rehearsal the year before, “The Triumph of the Will” is arguably not a documentary. Rather, one might more correctly term it an industrial; indeed, with 30 cameras and a crew of 172, one might even call it one the most extravagant political commercials ever made. [96] 

Ironically, the extraordinary production value and aesthetic perfection of the film appears to have made it a somewhat unsuccessful propaganda vehicle in Germany. In spite of a massive release, the film was not generally popular; it seems  Vertov was correct when he told his cameramen to avoid staged events like processions and parades because they are boring. [97]Regardless, in what has proved to be the ultimate irony, the material in the film proved to be very useful for anyone making an anti-Nazi propaganda film, and was used extensively for that purpose.[98]

On the other hand, Riefenstahl’s magnificent “Olympia “(1936), about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, was a worldwide hit, and is arguably a documentary. While the technical perfection of the mise-en-scene and the camerawork are exquisite, there is much more drama, since the film shows real sporting events, with real competition, and no staging or rehearsals.[99] Riefenstahl herself defies easy categorization. Even though she had a well-documented close relationship with Hitler and the Nazi ideology, and was sent abroad as a glamorous international star to be used as propaganda tool, she stubbornly refused to ever admit she was a Nazi or intended to make propaganda films. Unrepentant to the end, as well as artistically active and proficient, Leni Riefenstahl remains something of an enigma[100]

Some critics like Susan Sontag, have noted Riefenstahl’s seemingly persistent obsession with strong male bodies in her films, as well as in her later photographic books on the people of Nubia in the Sudan, but it is worth noting that Riefenstahl became the first foreigner to ever be awarded honorary Sudanese citizenship for her efforts to document their people. Even today, her aesthetics are still influential, as can be seen in contemporary commercials for Calvin Klein.

For students of documentary and cinema, Riefenstahl and her work raise many difficult questions; at the very least, they provide important case studies for anyone seeking to understand the nature of cinematic propaganda, not to mention the role of the artist in the creation of such propaganda.

A more recent interesting twist on propaganda documentaries is provided by French director Barbet Schroder’s “General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait“(1974). Hired to make what was supposed to be a propaganda film in the Riefenstahl tradition about the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, Schroeder and his cameraman Nestor Alemendros instead covered all of the awkward moments in the events clumsily staged by their client, who appears to occasionally suspect that they are not shooting exactly what he had intended to orchestrate.

As the title indicates, Schroeder does not pretend that these events in the film were not staged; quite to to the contrary, he reflexively relates Amin’s stated intentions. However, Schroeder bravely and cleverly manages to reveal all the intended manipulation, making a fool of Amin in the process.

When the film was praised in Paris as a brilliant comic expose of an African dictator, Amin was furious. He proceeded to kidnap all the French citizens in Kampala and lock them up in a local hotel. He then gave them Schroeder’s telephone number and, as the spectator is informed in a postscript to the film, insisted that two cuts be made in the most embarrassing material.  Schroeder made the cuts, and the Frenchmen were freed. By any standard, “General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait “is an excellent documentary.[101]

II.10. Conclusion

Documentarians chose the documentary genre as a mode of expression because they believe they have something to say, and they consciously chose the documentary form. When documentarians make that choice, they are also aware that they are making a compact with the audience that they will respect and observe the conventions of documentary that are currently the norm.

Out of necessity, therefore, digital documentarians must adhere to the same basic aesthetic conventions as their predecessors who made documentary films. While the technology has changed, the basic documentary conventions remain – at least, for the time being.

 These conventions are grounded in documentary tradition, practice and theory, and therefore any definition of documentary must have its roots in that tradition and theory to be viable.

The choice of Vertov was not based on sentimentality; Vertov is anything but sentimental, nor is his thinking anachronistic. Indeed, there are some documentary historians, like Jeremy Hicks, as well as media scholars like the afore-mentioned Lev Msnovich. who feel that Vertov has particular relevance for Digital Documentary and New Media.

 In the words of  Jeremy Hicks:

“Digital imagery seems to herald a new scepticism towards documentary as an objective register, further weakening the Griersonian realist tradition. Vertov’s explicitly partisan exhortation, as well as his skepticism towards the image and the recording process, echo central themes of the digital age. Indeed, it has been argued that his search for non-narrative solutions to the organization of material anticipates those of the database. Yet, for all his relevance to these themes, Vertov’s revelation of the persuasive power of images was ultimately rooted in record.”[102]

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[1]  Patricia Aufderheide ( Documentary Film- A Very Short Introduction )Oxford University Press, 2007, p.4

[2]Erik Barnouw ( Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film) Second Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, 1993. p. 27

[3] Barnouw (ibid), p.28

[4] Link to “ Moana”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0FNCp6aRM

[5] Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A, MacLane (A New History of Documentary Film) Continuum, 2005. P.3

[6]  Barnouw ( ibid)  p.99

[7] Link to “Man of Aran”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXYC5Sv_fOQ

[8] Aufderheide ( ibid), p35

[9] Aufderheide ( ibid),p.32

[10] Jane M.Gaines ( Collecting Visible Evidence) University of Minnesota Press, 1999. p.6

[11] Barnouw ( ibid),p99

[12] Joyce Nelson, (The Colonized Eye- Rethinking the Grierson Legend)Between The Lines, Toronto, 1988.

[13] Edward Bernays ( Propaganda) Ig Publishing, New York, 2005. Original copyright Edward Bernays, 1928.

[14] Gary Evans ( John Grierson and the National Film Board- The Politics of Wartime Propaganda) University of Toronto Press, 1984. p.214

[15] Nelson,( ibid.) p13

[16] Zoe Druick ( Projecting Canada – Government Policy and Documentary Film at the Canadian Film Board) McGill Queens Univerity Press,  Toronto, 2007. p.72

[17] Evans, op.cit, p. 240

[18] Evans, ibid, p.230

[19] Evans, ibid, p.254

[20] For PDF files with Grierson’s full testimony before the Keelock-Tschereau Commission please see Robert Bothwell & J.L. Granatstein, eds., The Gouzenko Transcripts: The Evidence Presented to the Kellock-Taschereau Royal

Commission

[21] For full transcript of Grierson’s testimony, please see in notes: Robert Bothwell & J.L. Granatstein, eds., The Gouzenko Transcripts: The Evidence Presented to the Kellock-Taschereau RoyalCommission

[22] Evans, ibid, p..266

[23] Evans, ibid. p. 266

[24] Nelson, ibid., p.156

[25] The author visited India in 1980,and learned from Grierson’s associate James Beveridge that both the production and distribution of the Films Division was closely modeled on Grierson’s Canadian Film Board.

[26] Interestingly, Vertov himself was apparently not a member of the party.

[27] Jay Leyda( Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film) Third Edition, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.195

[28] Jeremy Hicks (Dziga Vertov – Defining Documentary Film) I.B. Taurus, 2007. pp.123-124

[29] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Montagu

[30] Yuri Tsivian, (Lines of Resistance- Dziga Vertov and the Twenties)2004, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, pp358-359

[31]  A link to “The Man with the Movie Camera”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

[32] John Grierson, The Clarion, Vol. 3, no. 2, February 1931. From Tsivian ( ibid), p. 374

[33] Hicks ( ibid),p.124

[34] Links to episodes 1-5 of “Kino Pravda”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c

[35] Hicks ( ibid) p.14

[36] Hicks ( ibid) p.14

[37] Dziga Vertov (On the Significance of Non-Acted Cinema) 1923, in Kino-Eye, p. 51; from Hicks ( ibid) p.15

[38] Barnouw (ibid) p. 61

[39] Link to “The Eleventh Year”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csHcuiuTv8

[40] Link to “Enthusiam- Sounds of Donbas”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLZzk6pp0M

[41] Dziga Vertov (RGALI 2091/2/174), from Hicks, ( ibid),p.84

[42] Barnouw (ibid) p.65

[43] Link to “Kino Pravda, Parts 1-5”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c

[44] Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dziga_vertov)

[45] Link to “The Man With the Movie Camera”: http://www.youtubeP.com/watch?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

[46] Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky(Soft Cinema- Navigating the Database)The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005

[47]  Manovich, (ibid), p, xiv

[48]  Bill Nichols (Introduction to Documentary) Second Edition, Indiana University Press 2010, pp,7-10

[49] www.dailymail.co.uk/newsarticle-2254131/BBC-faces -backlash-live-wildlife

[50] Bill Nichols ( ibid)p.8

[51] Bll Nichols (ibid) p.8

[52] Bill Nichols (ibid) p.13

[53] Federico Fellini ( Fellini  on Fellini) Delacorte Press, 1976, p.152

[54] Gaines ( ibid) p.2

[55] Aufderheide, (ibid.)p.5

[56] Stella Bruzzi ( New Documentary) Second Edition. Routledge, 2006, p. 6

[57] Hicks Iibid)p. 24

[58] Link to trailer for “The Ambassador”: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+ambassador+trailer&sm=1

[59] Dirk Eitzen (Against the Ivory Tower – An Apologia for ‘Popular’ Historical Documentaries) in Rosenthal and Corner( ibid), p. 417

[60] Link to Part 1 of “ Shoah”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XNIrrJe_7g

[61] Link to Part 1 of “ The Civil War”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN2huQB-DmE

[62] Eitzen (ibid.) P. 415

[63]  Rabiger (ibid).p 9

[64] Jack C. Ellis and Betsy  A. MacLane (  “ A New History of Documentary Film”) Continuum Press, 2006. P. 335

[65] James Monaco (How To Read a Film) Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2009,p.318

[66] Rudolf Carnap (The Philosophical Foundations of Physics) Basic Books, 1966, p.283

[67] Carnap (ibid.)p.232

[68] From Dai Vaughan’s summary of Dziga Vertov’s Kino Eye Manifesto in Lewis Jacobs ( The Documentary Tradition) Second Edition, WW Norton, 1979, p.53

[69] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme

[70] Bill Nichols ( The Voice of Documentary) Film Quarterly 36, No. 3(Spring, 1983) University of California Press; from Rosenthal and Corner(ibid) p.17-18

[71] Link to “The Night Mail”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0

[72] Michael Renov ( The Subject of Documentary) University  of Minnesota Press, 2004 p.xxi Curiously, Renov then goes on to state that some contemporary documentarians use their own voices to provide reflexive commentary on the action, as if they were variations on the same narrative technique. They are not. One is omniscient, the other subjective .

[73]  Lindsay Anderson on Free Cinema: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX33mYO4K1w

[74] Aufderheide (ibid). p.44

[75] Lewis Jacobs ( The Documentary Tradition ,Second Edition) WW. Norton, 1975. P.404

[76] Brian Winston ( The Documentary Film as Scientific Inscription) in Theorizing Documentary, Michael Renov, Editor. Routledge, 1993.pp 46-49

[77] Link to an episode from “An American Family”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNL26zQv7w

[78] Link to “Three Songs of Lenin”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWK5iRp0BE

[79] Link to trailer for “This is Spinal Tap”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDnjHSI8BRs

[80] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockumentary

[81] Link to “ David Holtzman’s Diary” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5E9GEY05ZM

[82] Link to “The War Game”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dox_cmm4feE

[83]  Link to “Battle of Algiers – Part 1”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-Ilve1ZYc

[84] Bill Nichols ( Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition) Indiana University Press, 2010.  P. 145

[85] Jon Else, Director of the University of Calfornia School of Journalism and Documentary, feels the determining factor should be if the re-enactment is  not overt, but deceptive.( The Documentary Filmmakers’ Handbook) Edited by Genevieve Jolliffe and Andrew ZinnesFirst Edition, Continuum, 2006.p.19

[86] Link to the complete “The Thin Blue Line”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUJfrW1hNBk

[87] Link to the Gettysburg Address Sequence from “The Civil War”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCXUbQ4JjXI

[88] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns

[89] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cops_(TV_series)

[90] Link to an episode of ‘ COPS”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1L1APOGhLI

[91] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docu-soap#Documentary-style

[92] Bruzzi (ibid)p 121

[93] Rabiger( ibid) p.40

[94] Aufderheide ( ibid) p. 65

[95] Link to “The Horrible Wonderful World of Leni Riefenstahl”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDS_1DKOEQ

[96] Ray Muller, (The Horrible Wonderful World of Leni Riefenstahl) (1993)

[97] Link to “Triumph of the Will”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8

[98] William K. Everson (The Triumph of the Will)Infinity, September 1964, from Jacobs (ibid)p.138-139

[99]  Link to “Olympia”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnGqMoNXRI

[100] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl

[101] Link to “ General Idi Amin Dada”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJoKP5TqR78

[102] Hicks ( ibid). p136