DOCUMENTARY IN THE AGE OF NEW MEDIA: CHAPTER 2 TWEAKED

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…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, in 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 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.

    One major 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

     There does not appear to be a 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  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]   So, 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.

     The respected American documentary historian Erik Barnouw asserts 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]

     Be that as may, Barnouw and most other documentary historians agree that there are three documentarians whose work  laid the foundations for the development of documentary in the early 20 th century: the American Robert Flaherty and his ethnographic film depicting  Inuit Life in Canada Nanook of the North ( 1922); the Scot John Grierson and his educational documentary films on British life, such as The Night Mail (1936); finally, the Russian Dziga Vertov and his innovative films on life in the Soviet Union, including A Man with a Movie Camera (1929)’[4]A brief examination of their work and careers might be a useful way to determine the nature of their legacies and the relevance of their ideas today.

II.2.1. Robert Flaherty

     Many Anglophone cinema historians attribute the first use of the term documentary to John Grierson, the Scottish documentary producer who created the famous British Empire Marketing Board Film Unit. Grierson reportedly first used the term to describe American Robert Flaherty’s Moana (1926) [5]:” Of course, Moana, being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family, has documentary value…”[6]

    Thanks to Moana and his earlier film Nanook of the North (1922), Flaherty is widely recognized as the first documentarian. However, while these first films initially met with both commercial and critical success in the United States, they subsequently became the subject of controversy. During the Great Depression. British documentarians, led by Grierson, began to express an ambivalence towards the work of Flaherty, the man they had previously lionized as a pioneer. 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…”[7]

     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 – with the notable exception of Grierson.[8]  Rather than acknowledge his colleague’s achievement, Grierson ungraciously sniffed that he hoped that ‘the neo-Rousseauianism implicit in Flaherty’s work dies with his own exceptional self...”[9]

II.2.2. The Legacy of Robert Flaherty

     Flaherty 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, which were held yearly in upstate New York.  However, as embarrassing facts behind the shooting of Nanook of the North became public knowledge, Flaherty’s stature as a documentary pioneer was tarnished; staging and re-enactment  had been considered a violation of basis documentary ethics ever since the Soviet documentarian Dziga Vertov had declared them to be taboo in his Kino Eye manifesto in the 1920’s.[10] What was left of Flaherty’s reputation was subsequently devastated by the withering ideological critiques during the post-Colonial era of the 1960s; his man-versus-nature theme was vigorously denounced as a “romantic fraud”[11] 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…”[12]

     Such ideological issues, along with Flaherty’s well-documented penchant for re-enactment and outright fabrication of 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. Still, Flaherty has defenders like American documentary film historian Betsy McLane who say that any inaccuracies in his portrayals of indigenous peoples are of minor import, since his “intentions were good.”  Conveniently overlooking the fact that Nanook of the North was financed by Reveillon Freres,[13] a Canadian fur trapping company, McLane does not consider the possibility that Flaherty’s well documented misrepresentation of his subjects’ lives suited his sponsor’s intentions.[14]

     Today, most documentarians would agree that covertly recreating the daily realities of their subjects is a fundamental violation of basic documentary ethics.     If a documentarian invents a new reality for his subjects, and changes their attire and living conditions, most documentarians today would agree he or she is no longer making a documentary.

       As for Flaherty’s intentions, he himself writes that he did not want to show the impact of the modern European world on Eskimo life, preferring to preserve images of Eskimo life as he imagined it for posterity. Unfortunately, by the time Flaherty was making Nanook, the modern world was already having a major impact on Eskimo life. For example, the introduction of firearms had led to the end of the traditional Eskimo walrus hunt with harpoons because hunting with firearms was safer and more efficient. With disregard both for historical fact as well as the safety of his Eskimo talent, Flaherty managed to persuade Nanook and his friends to resurrect the traditional walrus hunt for his camera. While there is no record of any loss of Eskimo life in this scene, Flaherty’s fabrication of the walrus hunt raises ethical issues as well questions of historical authenticity.

     Therefore, in contemporary terms, one might say that the cinematic legacy of Robert Flaherty, thanks to his pioneering efforts to document the lives of indigenous peoples, would be the ethnographic documentary, though with reservations like those of Brian Winston, who was quoted as  wondering how much better the history of documentary would have been “if an anthropologist like Franz Boas – and not a self-styled artist-explorer in a colonial mode like Flaherty had created the paradigm…”[15]

 

         II.3.1.  John Grierson

                 The role of John Grierson in the development of documentary remains significant

          to this day. His prominence as head of the Film Unit of the British Empire Marketing

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

          powerful institutional platforms to define both the aesthetics and ideology of

          documentary in the pre-television era of the 1930’s and early 1940’s.

               In this context, it is worth noting that Grierson’s professional role was primarily that

          of a producer rather than that of a filmmaker. Aside from being a keen judge and

          manager of cinematic talent, Grierson had an extraordinary ability to convince powerful

          decision makers to support and finance his documentary projects. [16]Grierson also

          understood the importance of film distribution in an era when film was the dominant

          communications medium and managed to get Hollywood studios to pay to show his

          documentaries in their movie theatres during World War II.

        II.3.2. Grierson’s Media Philosophy

            Born in 1898 in Kilmadock, Scotland, Grierson grew up in a family of middle class

educators; his father was a schoolmaster, and his mother a teacher. He served in the British Navy during World War I and was demobilized in 1918 with a British War Medal and a Victory Medal. After the war, Grierson studied at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1923  with a Master of Arts Degree in English and Moral Philosophy.After he graduated, Grierson was the recipient of a Rockefeller Research Fellowship to study what was then called the  psychology of propaganda at the University of Chicago under the tutelage of Walter Lippman, author of Public Opinion [17](1922), and already a major force in American media and politics.

  

                During World War I, Lippman had worked with Edward Bernays, to sell the war to

       the American people. According to Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies at

       New York University, the term propaganda was virtually unknown prior to World War I,

       when both sides began to employ the term to disparage what they saw as lies being

       disseminated about them by the enemy.[18]  After the war, the winners were able to describe

       their own efforts as Public Information, while labelling the enemy’s efforts as   

       propaganda, and, as a result, the term propaganda acquired an almost exclusively

       negative connotation in the Western world.  In an effort to rehabilitate what he

       saw as a neutral technical term, Bernays wrote his 1928 book Propaganda, but when  

       he later began to create strategic communications plans for the Rockefellers and other

       corporate clients, even Bernays began eschew the term propaganda, and instead

       created the euphemism engineering consent. Ultimately, Bernays became popularly

       known in corporate circles as the father of public relations.[19]

            Under Lippman’s tutelage, Grierson’s media philosophy evolved. While

       Lippman primarily worked in print, Grierson soon began to see film as the ideal medium

       for propaganda. It is worth noting that in his private writing on the American motion

       picture industry, Grierson expressed ambivalence. While he  appreciated the power of the

       Hollywood industry, he seemed to abhor Hollywood product: “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 (sic)…”[20]

           Regardless, Grierson clearly saw the importance of the Hollywood film distribution

      system, and his ambivalence did not prevent the precocious Grierson from visiting

      Hollywood when he became head of the National Film Board of Canada to convince

      studio moguls to show his documentaries before the regular features, and to even

      ultimately pay the Canadians for the privilege. When America joined the Allied War Effort

      after December, 1941, Grierson was able to enlist Hollywood support for his war efforts.[21]     

           While Grierson was beginning to see documentary as a powerful educational tool for

      what Lippman called manufacturing consent, he seemed less concerned with documentary

      aesthetics. His focus was on message, and the key means of conveying that message for

      Grierson was the spoken word, with the image playing a supporting role. The question of

       how to generate audience interest seemed to be an issue of lesser importance.

             In this context, it is worth noting that Grierson’s own political views were enigmatic. 

      The 1930’s were a time of great political turbulence, and, as a government civil servant,

      Grierson carefully avoided allegiances to any extreme. As he himself famously said, he

      always tried to be “one inch to the left of the party in power…”[22].When it came to filming

      the lives of ordinary people in the United Kingdom in the early days of the Great Depression,

      Grierson was ahead of his time, and some even 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…”[23]

.

      Contemporary Canadian cinema scholar, Zoe Druick, seems to agree with Nelson: “Conversant with ideas in marketing, government and the social sciences, Grierson was clearly influenced 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…”[24]

     In short, these two Canadian scholars conclude that Grierson’s primary role as a documentarian was that of a professional using the film medium to create support both for government policies and the status quo, as well as the Allied War effort in World War II. 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.

     Seen in this context, Grierson’s sudden fall from grace in the aftermath of World War II must have been a bitter pill for him to swallow. Not only was there no evidence that he had ever been a communist, but Grierson had, in fact, always been a tireless advocate for the multinational corporate state.

II.3.3. The Gouzhenko Scandal

      Unfortunately for Grierson, in the Cold War politics of North America, guilt by association could suffice to ruin a life and a career. For many Canadian civil servants, Grierson had always been an outsider, and some of his Canadian colleagues resented his spectacular success 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  Gouzhenko on September 6, 1945, his political enemies pounced, and accused Grierson of producing pro-Soviet propaganda films during the War, conveniently overlooking the fact that the films were made when the USSR was a critical ally in the Allied war effort. [25]

     It seems Grierson had counted on his role as a chief propagandist for the war effort rolling over into peacetime. This was a major miscalculation; the rationale for the war effort had ended when peace broke out on April 8, 1945, VE Day The retroactive political fallout from his pro-Soviet films was serious. Grierson had enjoyed extraordinary creative freedom, with complete editorial control of these films without any guidance from the Canadian Ministry of External Affairs. This freedom came at a price; Grierson could be held personally responsible and ultimately blamed for any content deemed politically inappropriate.[26]

     To make matters worse, the documents handed over by Gouzhenko suggested  there was an active Soviet espionage ring in Canada seeking military and atomic secrets, and included this damning item: “…Research Council-report on the organization and work. Freda to the Professor through Grierson…”

     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 himself since 1942, Grierson was politically doomed. [27] His fate was sealed when his old friend Ivor Montagu was arrested by British authorities as a Soviet spy in 1946.

II.3.4. The Grierson Legacy

     While the outcome of the Gouzhenko investigation was officially inconclusive , Grierson was still publicly interrogated and humiliated. [28]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. Thanks to American F.B.I Director, J. Edgar Hoover, Grierson’s ambitious plans for a post-war career in the United States as either UN Under Secretary General for Public Information, or Chief of CBS Television News, evaporated when he suddenly lost his America visa.[29] Based upon his testimony in the Kellock-Teschereau hearings, Grierson seemed naively unaware of the dire nature of his situation, and did not realize that his former patron, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, reportedly now even considered him a “communist sympathizer.”[30]

     In a few short weeks, at age 48, John Grierson had become a Cold War political pariah, and he was effectively exiled to a post in Paris as Director of Public Information for UNESCO, where he tried to export his ideas on documentary to former British colonies like India, Australia and other Commonwealth countries .[31] While Grierson was never able to regain the institutional power and prestige he had enjoyed at the Empire Marketing Board and The Canadian Film Board,  his considerable legacy in documentary has survived around the world through the many films he produced and his writings.[32] However, rather than being the father of documentary, as some have called him, I believe it would more accurate to describe John Grierson as the father of   institutional  documentary.

II.4.1.  Dziga Vertov

     Thanks to the discovery of previously inaccessible films and written materials after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a major re-evaluation of the historical and artistic importance of Dziga Vertov, his work, and his theories.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, was certainly a factor.  Vertov had made many enemies in the 1920’s with his sweeping denunciations of fiction cinema as a “bourgeois art form”.  When his patron Lenin died in 1924, his enemies saw a chance for revenge, and Vertov and his films were subjected to withering ideological attacks by the communist party hierarchy.[33] 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 views on the social important of documentary.  he curiously 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”.[34]

      British film critic Ivor Montagu, a Grierson crony, handled the import of The Man With a Movie Camera, which was not shown in England until 1931.[35] 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 agenda .[36]

     For example. after the first screenings in Paris and Stuttgart in 1929, Vertov’s film 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. “[37]

     In contrast, when The Man With a Movie Camera was finally shown in England in 1931, Montagu criticized it for being stylistically derivative of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927). [38] Grierson’s evaluation of the film was more damning. The Man With a 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.”[39]

      Grierson was thus able to 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.”[40]

      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.4.2.  Vertov’s Media Philosophy

     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 . In 1922, his brother Dennis joined him and became his 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. [41]

     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.[42]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.[43]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 Elizaveta Svilova were arguably the world’s first documentary editors. In the process, Vertov quickly learned 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.[44]”

     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 categorically denounced all dramatic film as theatrical and 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 making such charges, Vertov made many enemies among his cinematic colleagues, including most notably, Sergei Eisenstein. This alienation of his colleagues was to cost Vertov dearly.

     Nonetheless, Vertov’s theoretical documentary concept of Kino- Eye (Cinema-Eye) was adopted by many subsequent generations of socially engaged documentarians - perhaps most notably by the Cinema Verite movement in France and the United States in the 1960’s.The Kino Eye philosophy was summed up in a 1929 lecture delivered in Paris  by Vertov himself: ‘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.”[45]

     Today, there can be little doubt that, in terms of camerawork, editing and his pioneering concept of visual literacy, Vertov was far 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), [46]and the previously mentioned The Man With the Movie Camera (1929), are all widely recognized today as examples of cinema craft and artistry. 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 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.[47]

     Ironically, it was this dedication to the development of a new cinematic language that got Vertov into trouble as the Stalinization of the Soviet arts scene ushered in an aesthetically regressive period in the late 1920’s. For Soviet Constructivists and Futurists like Vertov, Mayakovsky, author Yevgeny Zamyatin, and other artists, artistic stasis led to biological entropy, which, in turn, led eventually to the death of the biological system in question. While this Futurist philosophy had made them enthusiastic supporters of the Communist Party and the Russian Revolution in its early stages, after Lenin’s death in 1924, this same worship of change set them on a collision course with Stalin and his supporters.

      Stalin’s goal was the polar opposite of the Futurist goals: consolidation of power with an absolute minimum of change – in short, the very state of cultural entropy the Futurists hated. Like Lenin, Stalin took a great interest in the Soviet film industry. However, it was soon clear 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, and Stalin had both bad skin and an arm deformed from an old injury. As a result, Stalin preferred to keep his appearances on camera to a minimum; instead, he should only be heroically portrayed by suitably attractive actors in well scripted fiction films in  the classic Hollywood style.

       There was also the cost factor; documentary film 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 4:1. Ultimately, under Stalin’s strict guidance, the Soviet communist party finally reached the conclusion that the value of any film was its ideological content and aesthetic considerations were, at best, secondary.  All documentary production was to be terminated. [48]

     In this context, it is interesting to note that the Soviets’ bitter ideological rivals, the National Socialists of Germany, reached similar conclusions regarding their own propaganda efforts. While Leni Riefenstahl’s films Triumph of The Will (1934) and Olympiad (1938) achieved international acclaim for extraordinary cinematic quality, it seems that both Hitler and Goebbels, like Stalin,  were  big fans of Hollywood, and the Nazi leadership agreed that the ideal vehicle for propaganda and communicating political messages to the general population was the fiction entertainment film, rather than the documentary.  In retrospect, both the Soviets and Nazis were correct in one sense; today, most media professionals would agree that the political content in a well-crafted Hollywood film like  Casablanca is  more effectively delivered than that delivered by any documentary. When a film aggressively advocates a given position, the viewer instinctively raises defense mechanisms. For that reason, the most effective propaganda is often the film which does not appear to be propaganda at all.

     Accordingly, in the Soviet Union, by 1931, documentarians like Vertov began to be referred to by the pejorative term documentalists , and communist party hacks called for the complete destruction of documentalism, which was  accused of being Formalist and Trotskyist – both potentially fatal epithets at the time. 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.”[49]

     Vertov’s last major work was Three Songs of Lenin (1934), ostensibly an homage to the legacy of the founder of the Soviet Union using 3 different musical movements. While the subject of Lenin doubtless provided ideological camouflage, Vertov manages to make the first song a powerful statement celebrating the demise of chador, or the veil, in the predominantly Muslim new Soviet republics to the South. The film was praised by experts on Soviet film like Jay Leyda, and was popular abroad. [50]However, the film was not well received by the all-important communist party hierarchy; apparently Stalin himself objected to the portrayal of Lenin, and few dared question Stalin’s authority on ideological matters. [51]

     There was now blood in the water, and Vertov’s ideological and aesthetic enemies saw their opportunity to get their revenge on their former critic, and even former supporters like Sergei Eisenstein joined the chorus to denounce Vertov for having “formalist and documentalist tendencies.” Ultimately, the greatest Soviet documentarian was forced to return to where he began his career - producing pedestrian propaganda newsreels in relative obscurity until his death in 1954. Given the ideological climate of the times, one might say Vertov was lucky to survive with his life.[52]

II.4.3. The Vertov Legacy

     The Vertov legacy in documentary is extensive, and is still growing today.   In the 1960’s, for example, Vertov was recognized as the inspiration 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; the name cinema verite itself is a direct translation of Kino Pravda.  The  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 colleagues to make political films following the example set by Vertov with Kino Pravda almost half a century earlier. However, his appeal is not limited to the French nouvelle vague and practitioners of cinema verite.

      Anyone 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. [53]

    

     Vertov’s contribution to documentary aesthetics is also significant, His documentary feature, The Man with a 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.[54] 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 were found, and are now available to see on YouTube and elsewhere in the Western world.  English translations of his writings are also now available to the general public.[55]

     New Media scholars like Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky of Massachusetts Institute of Technology have named Vertov as the inspiration for their recent experiments in Database Cinema. Manovich even opens his book “The Language of New Media” with a 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.”[56]

II.5.    Some Important Documentarians from the 1930’s and 1940’s

    The 1930’s were a time of great economic and political turbulence, and, like Vertov and Grierson, many organizations employed the film medium to make political statements in the form of Newsreel, which[57] played an important role disseminating propaganda for both sides in World War I. The advent of synchronized sound and the proliferation of motion picture theatres made film the dominant medium for communications in the 1930’s and synchronized sound systems became the standard in the Western world. In much of the Western world, cinemas projected Newsreels with what John Grierson called Direct Address voice-overs to show highlights of current events before the feature entertainment. [58] The Direct Address Newsreel was essentially radio with pictures, with an institutional Voice of God didactically blaring out the company line over some generic images, which were sometimes staged or even recycled from fiction entertainment films. [59]  [60]

     Today, it is safe to say that the Direct Address narration has fallen into disfavor with audiences around the world.  In the words of American cinema scholar Michael Renov,”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.”[61]

    There were several filmmakers who made documentaries during the 1930’s and 1940’s distinctly different from these pedestrian newsreels. While some of these filmmakers, like Luis Bunuel and John Huston, are better known for their dramatic films, their documentary films were of importance to the development of the documentary genre.

II.5.1. Luis Bunuel

    The first was the Spanish director Luis Bunuel. After making the surrealist classics Un Chien Andalou (1929) and  L’Age D’Or ( 1930), with Salvador Dali in France,  Bunuel returned to his native Spain to make a documentary about a remote and impoverished region called Las Hurdes (1933). Bunuel said the film was inspired by an ethnographic study of the region, but unlike the ethnographic documentarian Robert Flaherty, Bunuel never allowed his camera to flinch when confronted with human misery or physical hardship.  

    In his autobiography, My Last Sigh, Bunuel said he had originally intended the film as a critique of Spain’s then Republican government, but, when he decided to join that government to help fight the invading forces of General Francisco Franco, he changed the title to Las Hurdes, Terra sin Pan, and transformed the film into an expose of the social conditions the Republican government planned to improve. [62] Las Hurdes was Bunuel’s only known venture into documentary; after making the film, he devoted himself to the Republican cause against Franco.

       When World War II broke out, he moved his family to the United States to help make propaganda films for the Allied war effort.  When his old friend Salvador Dali denounced him as a communist. Bunuel was forced to move to Mexico, where he managed to resurrect his career with a series of feature films that ultimately made him one of the icons of world cinema.[63]

      Today, Las Hurdes remains a powerful documentary of human beings living life on the edge; the style of the film is observational, in the ethnographic tradition of Flaherty. Unlike Flaherty, however, Bunuel refuses to whitewash any social conditions, and instead delivers a withering series of harsh facts with a highly effective narration in a dry, deadpan style rather than a didactic or theatrical style. Perhaps even more significant, Bunuel manages to treat his subjects with respect, and the self-financed Las Hurdes has accordingly served as an inspiration for future generations of socially conscious filmmakers as the first example of what might be called the Independent Ethnographic documentary – a documentary using an ethnographic approach to make a political statement.[64]

     Some 20 years after making Las Hurdes, Bunuel described his cinematic philosophy in an address to university students in Mexico City:“ Do not think…that I am for a cinema exclusively dedicated to the expression of the fantastic and the mysterious, for a cinema that flees from or despises daily reality and aspires only to plunge us into the unconscious world of dreams. A few moments ago I indicated all too briefly the capital importance I attach to the film that deals with the fundamental problems of modern man, and so I must emphasize here I do not consider man in isolation, not as a single case, but in the context of other men.”[65]

II.5.2. Joris Ivens

     In 1929, the Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens made a 10-minute short titled Rain. It was not his first film, but  today Rain is considered one of the first examples of the poetic documentary – a documentary without expository narrative, but built on a visual theme and impressions.[66] In Ivens’ own words: “When Rain was finished and shown in Paris, the French critics called it  cine-poeme, and its structure is actually more than of a poem than the prose of The Bridge. Its object was to show the changing face of Amsterdam during a shower…”[67]

  Subsequently. Ivens became more distinctly political after being invited by Soviet filmmaker Vyacheslav Pudovlin   to make a documentary about the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the Soviet Union. The resulting film, Song of Heros ( 1932), featured a sound track by the German composer Hanns Eisler, and was an unabashed propaganda film for Stalin’s Five Year Plan.[68]On his return, Ivens teamed with Belgian documentarian Henri Storck to make an expose of the lives of Belgian coal miners titled Borinage (1934)[69]. Filmed undercover, this documentary was banned in both Holland and Belgium; however, thanks to the non-commercial distribution network created by local CineClubs, Borinage was still seen widely.[70],

    In 1935, Ivens moved to the United States to work for Pare Lorentz’ US Film Service, to make documentaries to promote US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s programs of reform called The New Deal. However, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Ivens teamed with Ernest Hemingway and others to make an anti-fascist propaganda film that was screened for President Roosevelt at the White House in 1937.  This Spanish Earth  featured a narration by Hemingway, and a musical score by Virgil Thompson and Marc Blitzstein, and funding  came from American cultural notables from New York and Hollywood, including Franchot Tone, Frederic March. Lilian Hellman, and others in a group known as The Contemporary Historians. The Roosevelts reportedly liked the film, and Ivens became something of an American celebrity.[71]

     Ivens’ next project, The 400 Million,(1939) took him to China to make a film about the Chinese resistance to the Japanese invaders. Financing was again provided by a group of Hollywood backers, led by actress Luise Rainer, and Frederic March was the narrator. However, the film ran into a political minefield when the Guomindang government of Chiang Kai-Chek felt the film presented too favorable an image of the communist forces of Mao Zedong, and censored it heavily during production in China.[72] Madame Chiang had powerful friends in the United States, and the resulting film was not the film Ivens wanted to make. In the words of documentary historian Erik Barnouw: “As an explanation of the upheavals in China, the film had limited value. As testimony on the horrors of modern war, it provided unforgettable moments...”[73]

     After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American Director Frank Capra, newly appointed head of the American Why We Fight series to promote the American war effort, enlisted Ivens to produce an anti-Japanese film titled Know Your Enemy- Japan, and Ivens ran into another political minefield. Know Your Enemy – Japan was completed in 1944, but was never distributed. According to Ivens, the Americans could not decide on whether or not to depict Japanese Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal, and ultimately Cold War politics made them decide not to distribute the film at all.[74]

     Ivens then returned to Europe to make a film for the Dutch government about the upcoming but contentious independence of their colony of Indonesia. When it became clear to the Dutch that Ivens was working on a pro-Indonesian version of the film called Indonesia Calling, they were furious, and called Ivens a traitor. Ivens then released his film in a short version.[75], and smuggled it to the Indonesians fighting for their independence.  Subsequently, Ivens continued to focus on Asian political subjects, and teamed up with French colleagues to make The 17^th Parallel (1967) about North Vietnam at war, and The People and Their Guns (1970), about the secret American war in Laos.[76][77]With a long career dedicated to making films to promote left-wing causes like social justice and international liberation struggles, Ivens might be described as both an institutional and an independent documentarian. His production strategy of using his work for governments and corporations to finance his independent work has become standard practice for many documentarians today.

    

II.5.3. Leni Riefenstahl

       German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s controversial Triumph of the Will (1935) lies at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from Joris Ivens’s and Luis Bunuel’s films. Ostensibly the documentation of a Nazi party congress in Nuremberg, the film was widely praised as a masterpiece of technical perfection when initially released in the 1930’s, and then banned for years in some countries after the end of World War II because it was considered so inflammatory.

        Unlike Ivens and Bunuel, Riefenstahl was never forthcoming about her intentions with the film. For example, in Ray Muller’s fascinating documentary biography The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) Riefenstahl stubbornly insists that she was just an artist providing a visual record of the event.  When an incredulous Muller points out she had enjoyed extraordinary access to Hitler, and that the entire event appears meticulously staged just for her. Riefenstahl remains adamant that the film was just a work for hire. [78]  However, the film itself contradicts her many denials. For example, the opening credits read: “Produced by Order of the Fuhrer/Directed by Leni Riefenstahl…”[79]

        In terms of cinematic style, it is also worth noting that the film has no narration or voice-over; the only speakers are Hitler and other Nazi leaders speaking on camera. Otherwise, the film consists of images cut to music with sound effects. While Riefenstahl reportedly considered any commentator as “an enemy of film,”[80]American critic Susan Sontag argued that the film “has no commentary because it doesn’t need one, for Triumph of The Will represents an already achieved and radical transformation of realty: history become theater…”[81]

     Today, a study of the film reveals that every camera angle and camera movement is impeccable, just as every person shown is a perfect physical specimen. Indeed, a strong case could be made that the entire rally at Nuremberg was staged by Albert Speer for Riefenstahl, since Muller reveals that she had shot the same event the year before in the less well-known The Victory of the Faith(1933).[82] What with all this staging, The Triumph of the Will   is arguably not even a documentary at all; rather, with 30 cameras and a crew of 172, one might say it is  one of the most extravagant political commercials ever made. In spite of a massive release and overwhelmingly positive reviews, the film was apparently not that popular in Germany. [83] In what 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.[84] On the other hand, Riefenstahl’s magnificent Olympia (1936), about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, was a worldwide hit.  While the technical perfection of the mise-en-scene and the camerawork are exquisite, there is also real drama with real sporting events with real competition, and there are some genuine surprises, like the victory of the American Jessie Owens.[85]

     The legacy of Leni Riefenstahl remains controversial. For example, some critics like, Sontag, have noted Riefenstahl’s persistent obsession with strong male bodies in her German films, as well as in her later photographic books on the people of Nubia in the Sudan. In this context, it seems only fair to note that Riefenstahl became the first foreigner to be awarded honorary Sudanese citizenship by the Sudanese government for her efforts to document their people.  

    As can be seen in contemporary commercials for Calvin Klein underwear, Riefenstahl’s aesthetics are influential even today  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, as well as the political responsibilities of an artist.  Unrepentant to the end of her long life, Leni Riefenstahl remains an enigma.[86]

II.6. World War II

     While television had been invented prior to World War II, the television medium was too primitive and to play any role in the massive propaganda efforts mobilized by the warring powers. And even if television production had been more sophisticated, the lack of television sets in all the Western countries would have made television too exclusive to be practical. Instead, the warring powers devoted all their resources to the production of propaganda films which would arouse patriotic fervor and get citizens to support the war effort uncritically.

      Perhaps the most famous of these efforts was the afore-mentioned Why We Fight series produced by the Hollywood director Frank Capra. Known for his popular comedies like It’s a Wonderful Life, Capra might have seemed like an odd choice, but he did have a track record for successfully reaching American audiences, and he knew how to pluck American heart strings.

II.6.1. John Huston

     The critically acclaimed Hollywood director John Huston was one of Capra’s recruits, and Capra gave him three assignments: Report from the Aleutians (1942), The Battle for San Pietro (1944), and Let There be Light (1945). When Capra’s bosses, the generals in the War Department, saw the films, they were not happy. For example, The Battle for San Pietro showed the unfiltered realities of the life of an American foot soldier, and the generals were uncomfortable with those realities. According to Huston, one general said,” This picture is pacifistic. It’s against the war. Against war…” Huston replied, “Well, sir, whenever I make a picture that’s for war – why, I hope you take me out and shoot me.”[87]

       The general demanded cuts, and then decided not to release the film until the war was almost over. The third film, Let There Be Light, proved to be even harder for the generals to swallow. The army wanted a film to show that soldiers suffering from what today would be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder were “not lunatics”, so Huston had filmed rehabilitation sessions at an army hospital with hidden cameras. Huston described the results as “the most hopeful and optimistic thing I ever had a hand in” but the army did not share his enthusiasm, and banned the film for showing to any audience except to psychiatrists.[88]

     Clearly, Huston, ever the serious artist and humanitarian, had shown more of the true nature of war than the generals could swallow. In short, he had done his job as a documentarian too well, and the films today are respected as documentaries showing the human cost of war.[89]

II.6.2. Humphrey Jennings

     With a cadre of talented documentarians trained before the war in the G.P.O Film Unit of John Grierson, the Crown Film Unit produced some of the best documentaries of the war. Perhaps the most talented of all was Humphrey Jennings, who made several excellent documentaries about the British home front,       including Listen to Britain, (1942) perhaps Jennings’ most extraordinary cinematic achievement. While his supervisors and colleagues were opting for more traditional wartime propaganda, Listen to Britain is an audio-visual mosaic of British life during wartime, without narration or commentary.

      Jennings allows the sound and images to speak for themselves, and the result is a poignant and powerful poetic portrait of moments in the lives of ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives against all odds. In a 1954 article for the British magazine Sight and Sound, [90]director Lindsay Anderson later called Jennings “the only real poet the British cinema has produced.” [91]

II.7 The Rise of Television

    The post-World War II economic boom led to big changes on many home fronts in the Western world, with many implications for visual media, including documentary. The US Information Agency, which had produced the Why We Fight series and other wartime propaganda was closed, and suddenly documentarians were forced to cope with a radically different production environment.

     For example,  the theatrical Newsreel lasted only until the early 1950’s , when it was completely replaced by television news broadcasts; while the image quality of television was grainy black and white, and the sound quality was limited by quality of the monitor, and was generally poor, television had the attraction of seeming to be in real time, and looking at a television in your own home was far more convenient than going to a movie theatre.  This reality had a devastating effect on the extensive non-theatrical 16 millimeter educational distribution networks set up in Anglophone countries during the Second World War; thanks to the development of 16 millimeter cameras like the German Arriflex, 16 millimeter had become the format of choice for both Allied and Axis combat photographers during the war.[92]

     The initial problems for documentary on television after World War II were both financial and technical. First of all, commercial television had little interest in broadcasting documentaries without obvious commercial value as popular entertainment.  By nature, documentary films tended to be far too serious to be entertaining, so they were not considered commercial.

     In addition, American commercial television stations did not want to broadcast any films that might upset any of their commercial sponsors, and documentaries had a reputation for exposing embarrassing social problems. As a result, American commercial television stations neither produced nor broadcast documentaries. Documentarians could seek corporate sponsorship, but such sponsorship invariably meant control of content. As analog film documentaries were notoriously expensive to produce, this meant it was harder to find funding for independent documentaries after the end of the war. In both Europe and the United States, some oil companies like Shell Oil took the initiative to support productions they could endorse, and Robert Flaherty received backing from Standard Oil of New Jersey for his last documentary Louisiana Story (1948) a tale of a Cajun boy growing up in the Louisiana bayous.[93]

     The technical challenges posed by television were no less serious. The poor black-and-white image made it difficult to tell visual stories on television, which relied heavily instead on presenters to present news stories orally. Perhaps the best, and most famous of the American presenters was Edward R. Murrow. A popular and respected war correspondent during World War II, Murrow created See It Now, a television news program, with Fred Friendly for the CBS Network in 1951, with the aluminum company Alcoa as sponsor. Thanks to his stature within CBS, Murrow enjoyed more freedom and independence than most of his colleagues.

     In 1953, Murrow bravely broadcast a historic series of documentaries on the Senator Joseph McCarthy, the demagogue who had been terrorizing the American body politic for several years with his witch hunts on alleged communists in the government, in the entertainment industry, and elsewhere. No one had dared to confront Senator McCarthy before Murrow, and the three hour-length broadcasts had a dramatic impact.

     The furious McCarthy demanded to be given time on CBS to reply, but he never recovered, and was finally censured by the US Senate for his misconduct. His power broken, McCarthy died suddenly in 1957.[94]Ironically, rather than launch more independent television news programs like See It Now, CBS and the other networks quietly chose to discontinue them and replace them with safer fare, like Westerns. In the words of documentary historian Erik Barnouw, “McCarthyism, without McCarthy, was winning.”[95]

11.7.1. Alain Resnais

     One of the key ethical and aesthetic questions for documentarians was how should a responsible documentarian deal with a subject like The Holocaust. French director Alain Resnais offered an evocative but powerful answer with his documentary Night and Fog (1956). Today, many think this is the best film ever made on the subject of The Holocaust.[96] Resnais later described his intentions in making the film: “If one does not forget, one can nether live nor function. The problems arose for me when I made Nuit et Brouillard. It was not a question of making yet another war memorial, but of thinking of the present and of the future. Forgetting ought to be constructive…”[97]

II.7.2. Ricky Leacock

      According to Aufderheide, the roots of the cinema verite movement lay in an anti-authoritarian reaction to World War II. One of the first indications was Britain’s Free Cinema movement in the 1950’s. [98]Led by Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz, Free Cinema reacted against Griersonian didacticism by showing daily lives of ordinary citizens without editorializing.[99]

     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. While the French cinema verité documentarians and the American direct cinema documentarians had differences, generally cinema verite purists decreed that all sound had to be diegetic, or recorded live, and any uses of narration or music that had not been recorded live were violations of the cinema verite code. The very name cinema verite is an homage by the French documentarian Jean Rouch to the Kino Eye of Dziga Vertov. Ricky Leacock’s own description of cinema verite :“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…”[100]

II.8. The Post-Modern Debate on Documentary

     The recent rediscovery of Vertov and his ideas of documentary by a new generation of digital film and media scholars has come after two decades of debate on the true nature of documentary  by a generation of academicians popularly known as the Post-Moderns.  In an attempt to mediate and create some order in this often contentious debate, University of Indiana Professor Bill Nichols has posited 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.[101]”

     While Nichols’s “commonsense assumptions” seem 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 may soon be subject to modification.

     In 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 ethics of 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.[102]

     Simultaneously, 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.”[103] 

      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.”[104]

     Here, it would appear he has ruled out re-enactment, but again, Nichols employs subjective terms such as “real”, not to mention “play or perform roles”. He then observes that Robert Flaherty’s  Nanook of the North (1922) ‘can be said to be one gigantic reenactment, yet it retains significant documentary qualities.”[105]

     According to Nichols’ own stated criteria, it might seem that Nanook of the North would not therefore 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 also might be accused of 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.”[106]

      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, cinema scholar Jane M. Gaines summarized  the 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.[107]

     However, for the broadcaster, the documentarian, and the media consumer, there is another, 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 this 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.”[108]

      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 not mutually exclusive. In this context, it is important to remember that documentaries do not pretend to be objective depictions of reality, but are instead subjective artistic impressions of reality. Most documentarians today would agree with their colleagues Pamela Yates and Paco deOnis when they say that, “ We give equal weight to being artists as well as human rights defenders…The power and beauty of cinema are our artistic and political tools. Our canvas is global; our palette, the human condition…”[109]

     The rapid growth of what Manovich and others call New Media in the beginning of the 21st century has eclipsed the questions raised by Post Modern scholars as we are being forced to confront the realities and implications of the Digital Age. Perhaps it is now time, with the sudden introduction of New Media, to re-examine the legacy of Dziga Vertov to see if it can provide the criteria for creating a practical, operational definition for documentary.

II.9. Towards an Operational Definition of Documentary

     The reasoning for seeking an Operational Definition stems from necessity, since defining documentary according to content, as some have done, is simply intellectually and logically impossible. As we have already seen, 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.”[110]

     There are 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 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.[111]

     A more contemporary example of a documentarian using a hidden camera can be found in Danish Mads Brugger’s lively documentary The Ambassador (2012),[112] 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 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’.” [113]

   

       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)[114] and Ken Burns’ Civil War (1990).[115] : “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.”[116]

  

       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 classic book on documentary production, Directing the Documentary, producer, 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.”[117]

      Jack C. Ellis and Betsy McLane, authors of  A New History of Documentary Film, offer a similar response to post-modern 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.”[118]

     American cinema historian James Monaco would seem to agree when he avoids the post-modern debate by proposing we distinguish between two basic styles of cinema: Realist Cinema, in which what is most important happens in front of the camera, and Expressionist Cinema, in which what is most important happens behind the camera. [119]

     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; all the documentarian can do is to try to create personal truths following the 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.[120] 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.[121]

     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 sets creative goals and then strives to achieve them as best one can. Fidelity alone to a given set of rules does not determine the success or failure of an artistic product. Indeed, the so-called failure may be far more interesting than the supposed success. Therefore, 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.

     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 and director, 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 and break a few rules to get the job done.

    The British documentary theorist Dai Vaughan offers this version of Vertov’s Theory: “The cine-camera is endowed with all the potentialities of human sight – and more... 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.”[122]

II.10. 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 defined by Nichols in his essay, The Voice of Documentary.

II.10.1. The Direct Address Style of the Griersonian Tradition

     While there are always exceptions, a documentary shot in the Grierson 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 Grierson production would have what Nichols would call an Expository Style[123]with 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. The narration is suggestive, rather than dominant, and the story is told visually.[124] 

II.10.2. The Cinema Verite Style

     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 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 entered the fray, accusing the proponents of Direct Cinema of making impossible claims of objectivity.  American documentarian Fred Wiseman dismissed this 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…”[125]

     Regardless, the goal of making a fly-on-the-wall recording of 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. Common sense tells us 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. [126]

     Today, cinema verite and direct cinema are now generally recognized by documentarians as styles of shooting, rather than as aesthetic or ideological ideals.

II.10.3. A variation of cinema verite featuring a character or narrator speaking directly to the camera, sometimes in an interview

     Similar to the style employed by Vertov in Three Songs of Lenin,[127] this is the style favored by most television news broadcasts and institutional / corporate documentaries, with presenters talking directly to  the viewers to introduce and set up the story, and then having the subjects of the program tell the story through on-camera interviews [128]  

      For this style to work, the presenters must be charismatic and articulate, and the subjects themselves interesting and articulate. Above all, the editing must be fast moving, with interesting visuals to both illustrate the stories as well as to use as cut-aways when the talking heads are getting boring. These visuals are known as b-roll. This style is also found in feature documentary classics like  Marcel Ophuls’s Le Temoin et La Pitie(1969) , Peter Davis’ Academy Award winning history of the Vietnam War Hearts and Minds (1974) and Ken   Burns’ series on the American Civil War, The Civil War ( 1980). Some documentarians, like Ken Burns, employ academic experts to introduce episodes and give their material both credibility and intellectual respectability. Others, like Peter Davis, prefer to focus on testimony from participants or witnesses to events, since such testimony is usually more dramatic and emotionally involved than that the dispassionate comments of academicians or experts.  Regardless, what these films have in common is that the filmmaker stay off-camera and does not play a role in role in the drama. As soon as we see the filmmaker and he or she makes his or her personal comments to the audience, the style becomes Self-Reflexive.

II.10.4.A self-reflexive style featuring a mix of interview and comments, including \observations   from the documentarian

      As soon as the filmmaker interjects him or herself into the narrative, as previously noted, the style becomes Self-Reflexive. Most cinema historians agree that Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera was the first documentary in this style, and the film 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. Clearly, then, the Self-Reflexive  style would fit within the parameters of our operational definition.

      As documentarians have striven for increased honesty and rapport with their viewers, many have chosen the Self-Reflective style as a means of breaking what is called The Fourth Wall in theatre, and sharing the secrets of the creative process with the spectators. Just like the theatrical asides Bertholdt Brecht called verframdungseffekt,, sharing such secrets can help keep the spectator alert by reminding him that he is a participant in a creative process.  Barbet Schroeder’s documentary General Idi Amin Dada-A Self-Portrait (1974) is an interesting example.

     Schroeder and his cameraman Nestor Almendros were invited by the Ugandan dictator General Idi Amin Dada to make a propaganda film on his behalf.  Once they were in Uganda, Amin asked them to cover a number of events he had clearly staged for the occasion, Schroeder and Almendros went through the motions of covering the staged events while revealing the behind-the-scenes manipulations whenever possible. When the final film was screened in Paris, critics called it a “hilarious comedy”. General Amin was not amused, and proceeded to take a number of French residents hostage in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, and locked them up in a local hotel. Then he gave them Schroeder’s home telephone number, and asked them to tell Schroeder that they would would not be released unless certain scenes were removed. Schroeder agree to cut two scenes, and the grateful hostages were able to return to France. However, rather than replace the scenes, Schroeder instead dribed in text over a black screen, saying what had been cut, and why it had been cut. He then modified the title, to give credit to General Amin’s creative contribution.[129]The resulting film is a devastating portrait of a tyrant.

     Another example of a fearless documentarian employing a self-reflexive style is Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing ( 2012). With Oppenheimer narrating, this film tells the story of how he tracked down participants in the mass killing of accused communists in 1965 in Indonesia, and then got them to make dramatic films celebrating their acts of killing. The bizarre results are both powerful and horrifying as Oppenheimer succeeds in establishing a rapport with the most sympathetic of the killers, clearly hoping that he will be able to get the killer to express some remorse by the end of the film. He does not succeed.[130]

    Perhaps the best known of contemporary documentarians working in the self-reflexive mode is the American Michael Moore, who has made a series of documentary features on American political issues, starting with Roger and Me (1989). The film tells the story of the relationship between automotive giant General Motors and Moore’s home town of Flint, Michigan. Rather than using a conventional documentary style consisting of interviews with local residents and representatives of General Motors, Moore instead creates an artificial dramatic thread with the story of his trying to get an interview with General Motors executives he knows he will never get. What makes the film work is Moore’s on-camera character as he takes us around the city, meeting residents, and conducting a constant and often witty commentary about what we are seeing. The results are both entertaining and infuriating as Moore succeeds in getting us to empathize with the Flint residents while becoming disgusted with the callous attitude of General Motor. Even though shot on what obviously was a low budget, Roger and Me was a box office hit; this success has enabled Moore  to continue making films, as well as making him a media celebrity.[131]

     Whether the success of Roger and Me was due to Moore’s comic on-camera persona, or the political content of the film itself, the bottom line is  that American audiences now seem to accept the self-reflexive style, and that more and more documentaries are now being produced in this style today.

II.11. Borderline Forms

     Over the past two decades, some documentaries, such as those of the afore-mentioned Michael Moore, have enjoyed commercial success in the United States. As a result, the term documentary has lost its pejorative edge for many commercial producers and distributors. 

     Unfortunately, this change of attitude has not led to increased funding for serious documentary production; however, it has led to an increase in the production of commercial productions with a documentary veneer, such as: docudramas, historical dramas, reality-based television, docusoaps and mockumentaries.   These genres employ features of documentary, but arguably without being faithful to documentary aesthetics.

II.11. 1. Docudrama

     Nichols notes that while docudramas “draw much of their plot structure and characters from actual events”, they are “generally considered fundamentally fictions.”[132] 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, for example, that re-enactment does not belong in documentaries at all, However, others might be of the opinion that a certain amount of re-enactment is permissible, as long as it is overt, and not 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, designed not to prejudice the jury – or the spectator - in one way or another.  [133] 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.[134] However, docudramas would not.

II.11.2. 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.[135] In 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. [136]

     Therefore, historical documentaries would fall within the realms of our definition, while historical dramas or historical fiction would not.

II.11.3.  Reality Based Television

      Sometimes referred to as reality television, or infotainment, reality based television refers to a 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 is 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.”[137]

     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.[138]

     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, spin-offs of Survivor are produced in many countries around the world.[139] 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.” [140]

     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 endeavors, 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 not 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 Michael Rabiger has noted,” 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.”[141]

II.11.4.  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. As previously noted, 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.”[142]

     Dziga Vertov, for example, was proud to be making propaganda documentaries in the service of the communist party and the Soviet revolution. His problems arose when his ostensible clients in the party decided he was not making propaganda in the style they wanted. Vertov wanted to make documentaries with what he considered to be artistic quality, and his clients did not.

       Since the sponsor or backer of any production may want the production to reflect certain views, virtually any production with an institutional sponsor might be accused of being propaganda for that sponsor’s views. As a result, just as one does with advertising, perhaps it might make sense to distinguish between good and bad propaganda. Just like commercials, there are examples of well-made propaganda, and, just like some commercials, some examples propaganda can even be described as works of art.[143]

II.11.5. Mockumentary

      This term is 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[144].

     There have been previous examples of films which intitially led audiences to believe they were documentaries only to reveal at the end that, in fact, the stories were fictitious. Perhaps the most famous early example of this technique was not a film, but a radio show – Orson Welles’ 1938 radio dramatization of H.G. Wells’ book The War of the Worlds about a martian invasion of the United States. Delivered in the form of a radio news broadcast, this program created a reaction of mass hysteria as terrified Americans fled from the imagined alien intruders.[145]

     The same technique of creating a fake news broadcast was employed by the staff of the BBC television Panorama news program, for a wildly successful April Fools’ Day comic spoof in 1957 which showed Swiss peasants reaping their yearly spaghetti harvest from their spaghetti trees. According to some accounts, some British viewers were oblivious both to the realities of Italian agriculture as well as the date, and, like the earlier Orson Welles radio broadcast, the smooth professional presentation caused many to swallow the absurd premise as fact.  

     Since cinema has employed illusion and deception as dramatic devices since the days of George Melies, mockumentary techniques are generally recognized as valid narrative tools in cinema, particularly when used for comedy, like in This is Spinal Tap. However, other films using dealing mockumentary techniques to deal with serious subject matter have aroused controversy because they succeeded too well in their deception – notably Mitchell Block’s  No Lies (1973) about a woman who tells the story of her rape, and Jim McBride’s David Holtzman’s Diary ( 1968).[146] Perhaps the two most famous examples of what might be called dramatic mockumentary are 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),[147] 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 also received the ultimate accolade for successful cinematic subversion: they were banned for two decades – Battle of Algiers in France , and The War Game in England.[148]

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

II.12. Conclusions

      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, contemporary 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 Manovich. who feel that Vertov has particular relevance for Digital Documentary and New Media.  In the words of 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.”[149]

     If there is any trend to be detected in the evolution of documentary in the era of New Media, it would be seem to be in the direction of more participation on the part of the spectator. [150]The following chapter will explore the evolution of the environment of New Media, and attempt to place documentary in the context of that constantly changing new environment.                 

Appendix A :Notes

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

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

3.Barnouw, ibid. p.28

4.Anderson &Lucas, ibid.p.3

5 Link to Moana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0FNCp6aRM

6Ellis, Jack C. and Betsy A. McLane (A New History of Documentary Film) Continuum, 2005. P.3

7 Barnouw, ibid.p.99

8Link to Man of Aran: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXYC5Sv_fOQ

9Aufderheide, ibid.p35

10 Vertov, Dziga ( On the Significance of Non-Acted Cinema, in KINO EYE) 1923

11Aufderheide, ibid.p.32

12Gaines, Jane M. ( Collecting Visible Evidence) University of Minnesota Press, 1999. p.6

13Barnouw, ibid. p.36

14McLane, Betsy A. ( A New History of Documentary Film) Second Edition,  Bloomsbury, New York and London, 2012.

15Rothman, William “The Filmmaker as Hunter”, (Documenting the Documentary)Ed.

Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Skolimowski. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1998. P. 24

16Barnouw, ibid.p99

17Lippman, Walter (Public Opinion) Create Space Independent Publishing, 2010.

18Miller, Mark Crispin, In Edward Bernays ( Propaganda)  Lg Publishing, New York, 2005. Original copyright Edward Bernays, 1928, pp,9-12

19Miller, ibid.p.12

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

21Nelson, ibid.p.84

22Evans, Gary (John Grierson and the National Film Board- The Politics of Wartime Propaganda) University of Toronto Press, 1984. p.214

23Nelson, ibid. p.13

24Druick, Zoe. ( Projecting Canada – Government Policy and Documentary Film at the Canadian Film Board) McGill Queens University Press,  Toronto, 2007. p.72

25Evans, ibid. p. 240

26 ibid. p.230

27For 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

28For 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

29Evans, ibid. p.266

30ibid. p. 266

31 Nelson, ibid. p.156

32The author visited India in 1979 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.

33Interestingly, Vertov himself was apparently not a member of the party.

34Leyda, Jay, ( Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film) Third Edition, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.195

35Hicks, Jeremy,  (Dziga Vertov – Defining Documentary Film) I.B. Taurus, 2007. pp.123-124

36http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Montagu

37Tsivian, Yuri, (Lines of Resistance- Dziga Vertov and the Twenties)2004, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, pp358-359

38 A link to The Man with the Movie Camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

39Grierson, John, The Clarion, Vol. 3, no. 2, February 1931. From Tsivian ,ibid. p. 374

40Hicks,ibid.p.124

41Links to episodes 1-5 of Kino Pravda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c

42Hicks ,ibid. p.14

43ibid. p.14

44Vertov, Dziga, (On the Significance of Non-Acted Cinema) 1923, in Kino-Eye, p. 51; from   Hicks,ibid. p.15

45 Barnouw, ibid. p. 61

46Link to The Eleventh Year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csHcuiuTv8

47Link to Enthusiam- Sounds of Donbas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLZzk6pp0M

48Hicks, ibid.pp.106-107

49Dziga Vertov (RGALI 2091/2/174), from Hicks, ibid. p.84

50Leyda, ibid. pp 312-313

51 Link to Three Songs of Lenin: https://youtu.be/JeWK5iRp0BE

52Barnouw,ibid. p.65

53 Link to Kino Pravda, Parts 1-5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c

54Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dziga_vertov)

55Link to The Man With the Movie Camera: http://www.youtubeP.com/watch?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

56Manovich, ibid. p, xiv

57McLane, ibid. pp.14-15

58An example of Movietone News from 1934: https://youtu.be/7iNCwsGkE1E

59 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.

60For an example of 1930’s newsreel, please see this link to March of Time from 1938

https://youtu.be/Wb__OIUCaRM

61Renov, Michael( 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 .

62Bunuel, Luis. ( My Last Sigh),Vintage Books, New York, 2013

63ibid.pp.177-216

64 Link to Life Without Bread, English version. https://youtu.be/vUmmfYagWDA

65Bunuel quoted by Vivien Sobchak, Synthetic Vision – The Dialectical Imperative of Luis Bunuel’s Las Hurdes( Documenting the Documentary) ibid.p. 72

66Link to Rain: https://youtu.be/6ADNWzg4ZmE

67Jacobs, ibid.  p.60

68Barnouw ibid. p.133

69Link to Misere Au Borinage: https://youtu.be/cXg-uZ7_rVw

70 Barnouw, ibid. p. 134.

71 Link to This Spanish Earth: https://youtu.be/MTKtS4WtK_c

72Link to The 400 Million: https://youtu.be/szONyAKfi5c

73Barnouw, ibid. p. 139

74Link to Know Your Enemy – Japan: https://youtu.be/zBIfnPyK4rw

75Link to Indonesia Calling: https://youtu.be/kOANnt5KF4Q

76Barnouw, ibid. p. 279

77Link to The 17^th Parallel: https://youtu.be/Fh_YPnSF5H8

78Ray Muller, (The Horrible Wonderful World of Leni Riefenstahl) (1993)

79 German original: “ Hergestellt im Auftrage des Fuhrer/ Gestaltet von Leni Riefenstahl” from Barnouw, ibid. p.103

80 Barnouw, ibid.p.102

81Tomasulo, Frank P.,” The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema- Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, ( Documenting the Documentary) ibid. p. 102

82Link to The Horrible Wonderful World of Leni Riefenstahl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDS_1DKOEQ

83Link to Triumph of the Will: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8

84Everson, William K.(The Triumph of the Will )Infinity, September 1964, from Jacobs ibid..138-139 Apparently one of the filmmakers using her material to create anti-Nazi propaganda was Luis Bunuel, when he was working for the Allied war effort.

85 Link to Olympia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnGqMoNXRI

86   A few years ago, the American actress Jodie Foster tried to a make a movie about Riefenstahl, but financing that had been in place suddenly disappeared. For many feminists , Riefenstahl is a tough nut to crack. It is impossible to question her ability, but how should she be represented ideologically?

87 Barnouw, ibid. p.163

88 ibid.p. 164

89Link to Let There Be Light: https://youtu.be/uiD6bnqpJDE

90Leach, Jim, “The Poetics of Propaganda- Humphrey Jennings and Listen to Britain”

 ( from Documenting the Documentary) ibid. p.154

91 Link to Listen to Britain:  https://youtu.be/Nq1UqU2u1hs

92 Link to Kodak’s 16 mm Film – Getting Started: https://youtu.be/xgC4RmkBehg

93 Barnouw, ibid. p.216

94Ibid. p. 23451866225

95Ibid. p.225

96 Link to Night and Fog: https://youtu.be/CPLX8U2SHJE

97Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy “ Documenting the Ineffable – Terror and Memory in Alais Resnais’ Night and Fog”( in Documenting the Documentary) ibid. p. 204

98Lindsay Anderson on Free Cinema: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX33mYO4K1w

99Aufderheide ibid. p.44

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

101Nichols, Bill (Introduction to Documentary) Second Edition, Indiana UZZXCVBniversity Press 2010, pp,7-10

102 www.dailymail.co.uk/newsarticle-2254131/BBC-faces -backlash-live-wildlife

103 Nichols, ibid. p.8

104 ibid. p.8

105 ibid.  p.13

106 Fellini, Federico( Fellini  on Fellini) Delacorte Press, 1976, p.152

107 Gaines, ibid. p.2

108 Aufderheide, ibid.p.5

109Yates, Pamela and Paco deOnis ( Reflections on Getting Real: Debunking Five Myths that Divide Us) 2014. Anderson&Lucas, ibid, p. 4

110 Bruzzi, Stella( New Documentary) Second Edition. Routledge, 2006, p. 6

111Hicks ibid. p. 24

112 Link to trailer for The Ambassador: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+ambassador+trailer&sm=1

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

114Link to Part 1 of  Shoah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XNIrrJe_7g

115Link to Part 1 of The Civil War: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN2huQB-DmE

116 Eitzen ,ibid. p. 415

117 Rabiger ibid.p 9

118 Ellis, Jack C. and Betsy  A. McLane (   A New History of Documentary Film) Continuum Press, 2006. P. 335

119Monaco, James (How To Read a Film) Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2009,p.318

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

121 Carnap,ibid.p.232

122 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

123 Anderson & Lucas, ibid. p.22

124 Link to The Night Mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0

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

126Link to an episode from An American Family http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNL26zQv7w

127 Link to Three Songs of Lenin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWK5iRp0BE

128 Links to three examples from MONUSCO:

   ONU NEWS 11: https://vimeo.com/321140476,

   MONUC REALITES 72: https://vimeo.com/192881324

   UN CHEMIN VERS LA PAIX SEME D’EMBUCHES https://vimeo.com/72316065

129 Link to trailer for General Idi Amin Dada – A Self-Portrait

https://youtu.be/6esxP2_VEUA

130 Link to trailer for The Act if Killing

https://youtu.be/SD5oMxbMcHM

131 Link to trailer for Roger and Me

https://youtu.be/gOwXkstRaBw

132Nichols, Bill ( Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition) Indiana University Press, 2010.  P. 145

133Jon Else, Director of The University of California 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 Zinnes, First Edition, Continuum, 2006.p.19

134Link to  The Thin Blue Line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUJfrW1hNBk

135 Link to the Gettysburg Address Sequence from The Civil War: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCXUbQ4JjXI

136 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns

137 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cops_(TV_series)

138 Link to an episode of ‘COPS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1L1APOGhLI

139 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docu-soap#Documentary-style

140 Bruzzi,ibid. p. 121

141 Rabiger, ibid. p.40

142 Aufderheide ,ibid. p. 65

143 In some countries, like Brazil, propaganda is synonomous with advertising.

144 Link to trailer for This is Spinal Tap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDnjHSI8BRs

145 Link to War of the Worlds radio broadcast:

https://youtu.be/OzC3Fg_rRJM

146 Link to  David Holtzman’s Diary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5E9GEY05ZM

147 Link to The War Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dox_cmm4feE

148 Link to Battle of Algiers – Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-Ilve1ZYc

149 Hicks,  ibid. p136

 150As Henry Jenkins notes,the essence of what he has called the new Culture of Convergence is participation .

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

[99] Aufderheide ibid. p.44

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

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