Modern Practitioners

Is objectivity the bedrock of the medium, if the early pioneers were happy to reconstruct and dramatise?

Drama doc, a new phenomenon?

Isn’t all documentary performative? Fictional??

Is documentary the pursuit of truth?

Direct Cinema vs Cinema Vérité …

Direct Cinema

Documentary where images speak for themselves

No, or little, narration

Filmmaker doesn’t appear

Audience watch information, experience it directly

Assumption that camera is accepted, and ignored, by subjects (fly-on-the-wall?)

Truly objective and unmediated information??? …

Cinema Vérité

Often used now as synonym for documentary, Jean Rouch’s term…

Original definition – director cannot achieve objectivity because cannot forget the presence of the camera

Director acts as catalyst with the camera to prompt responses

Camera prompts self-reflection

Guilt and confession? …

Direct Cinema vs Cinema Vérité

DC = more photographic, records; CV = provocative, probing

DC = non-intrusive, tries to let truth out naturally; CV = intrusive, tries to unmask truth

DC = too passive, uncritical; CV = forces people, stops them from being themselves, manipulates and distorts?

Both capture life as it happens (not reconstructions?) & less pre-meditated?

Two case studies to consider...

Nick Broomfield

The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (1991)

Nick Broomfield Good case study for style/effects of DC

and CV

Broomfield renowned for performative, self-reflexive documentaries, doesn’t hide away

How do we read the clip of South African neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terreblanche?

What do we learn? DC or CV?

Truth? Objectivity? Reality? …

Nick Broomfield

The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (1991)

Nick Broomfield

Started making Griersonian films (Who Cares?, 1971)

Clear personal dimension though

Doesn’t script films; relies on improvisation; sniffing out a story; poking his nose in

‘fly-in-the-ointment’ attitude

Nick Broomfield

All films are ‘A Film by Nick Broomfield’

Implications? Egotistical? Investigative?

‘Why pretend you’re not there when everyone knows you are?’

Too subjective? Too much like entertainment?

Says he wants audiences to make up their own minds… does he succeed in that professed aim?

What of this clip…? …

Tracking Down Maggie (1994)

Michael Moore ‘Inventor of the personal essay-style feature-

length political documentary’ – ‘Ambush journalism’ (Rapoport, The Independent, 6 July 2007)

Similar to Broomfield? More political? More interfering? More egotistical and looking for entertainment?

Alleged that Moore is less improvisational, with shooting script, manipulates material and reshoots

Doesn’t shoot first, edit last

Lets look at some clips …

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Michael Moore How does Moore ‘construct’ his films?

How might you describe his approach?

Ambush journalism?

Why do you think his style is so popular…and successful?

Are there any problems with it? …

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Michael Moore From the clips, what differences do you see

with Broomfield's style?

Moore less objective, more partial?

Justified by bringing major political issues to the screen?

Does Moore try to get us to share HIS view, whereas Broomfield invites us to decide?

Differences between Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)? …

Things to consider…

‘The creative interpretation of actuality’

How useful is this notion for understanding documentary? How it works? What it seeks to achieve?

Can documentary truly be objective?

Is it not as manipulative as fiction?

Where is the power in documentary?

Is all documentary political?

The cinema is a pulpit…? And what of TV documentary …