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Documenting Facts?Documentary: ‘truth’ and narrative forms

#med105

robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk

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Overview

Documentary History Formats Critique

Multimedia developments

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Documentary

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‘Truth’?

The power of documentary to reveal a ‘truth’ grants it special status

To ‘document’ a subject implies keeping a factual record for future reference

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John Grierson (1930s-1940s)

Education+Propaganda=Social reform?

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Expositional documentary

See Bill Nichols (1991/2004)

Tended to depict institutions, communities and traditions

Public mode of address: Highly formal Serious Educational

Aimed at informing citizens in a mass democracy.

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Observational documentary

1950s onwards

cinema vérité (‘cinema truth’ or ‘direct cinema’)

observe and record the reality of everyday life as it happened without the usual organisational planning and structured direction

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Fred Wiseman

High School (1968, USA)

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Planet Earth (BBC, 2006)

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Fakin

g it?

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real / reality / realism

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Genre hybrids – ‘fly on the wall’

Paul Watson’s The Family (1974/2008)

Roger Graef’s Police (1982) Filming events exactly as they happened Agreeing in advance the specific subjects

to be filmed Showing the edited version to the

participants, but only to ensure any factual errors may be corrected

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Critique

‘To be sure, some documentarists claim to be objective – a term that seems to renounce an interpretive role. The claim may be strategic, but it is surely meaningless.

The documentarists, like any communicator in any medium makes endless choices. He (sic) selects topics, people, vistas, angles, lens, juxtapositions, sounds, words.

Each selection is an expression of his point of view, whether he is aware of it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not.’ Erik Barnouw (1993: 287)

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Ideological construction

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BBC2 (2004), Adam Curtis

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Contemporary developments

Genre hybridity

Deregulation of broadcasting

Competition for attention

Driving School (BBC, 1997) 11 million viewers

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Participatory mode

Welcomes direct engagement between filmmaker and subject(s)

Filmmaker: becomes part of the events being

recorded is acknowledged (even celebrated) for

their impact on events Michael Moore Nick Broomfield

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Reflexive mode

Acknowledges the constructed nature of documentary

Artifice is exposed Not ‘truth’ but a reconstruction of ‘a’

truth, not ‘the’ truth

Frequently features the film-maker making the documentary

De-mystifying its processes

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Reflexive mode

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Performative mode

Emphasizes the subjective nature of the filmmaker

Polemical, evocative and aiming for affect Morgan Spurlock Louis Theroux Nick Broomfield Michael Moore

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Authored documentaries

Fronted by an investigative anchor who is frequently positioned at the centre of an unfolding narrative

A meta commentary (often via voice-over) on the nature of documentary making and representation as processes of construction

Deeply personal

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Louis and the Nazis (2003)

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Historical reconstructions?

Challenges posed by distance from the event: Funding Interviews with participants Access to archive footage Copyright clearance

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Man on Wire (2008)

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Ethics

Challenges posed by documenting criminal activity Access to participants Undercover surveillance Honeytraps Legality

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The Imposter (2012)

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Supersize Me (2004)

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Interactive documentary

Non-linear and interactive

Audience as active participant

Funding problems

Required skillset

Exhibition

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Summary

Long history of documentary production – origins in educating with the aims being to bring about social change.

Special power of documentary to report the ‘truth’ – to expose hidden agendas and ideological malfeasance.

However, this attempt to speak to the truth is also ideological – the film-maker selects what should be seen, structures it, etc.

Various genre transformations to draw attention to the constructed nature of the format

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Sources

Erik Barnouw (1993), Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, Oxford University Press

Stella Bruzzi (2000), New Documentary: a critical introduction, London: Routledge

Simon Cottle (2009) Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age

Bill Nichols (2004) Introduction to Documentary - 2nd Edition, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

Amir Saeed (2007)  'Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media', Sociology Compass (1) (2007) (available  at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00039.x)