Documentary Film What is documentary The term documentary

Documentary Film

What is ‘documentary’? • The term 'documentary' - a source of argument. • John Grierson – a pioneer of such filmmaking thought documentary was a 'clumsy' term but he said it should stand. • Another definition Grierson used was 'the creative interpretation of actuality'. – What do you think that phrase might mean?

• I think it's inevitable that people will come to find the documentary a more compelling and more important kind of film than fiction. Just as in literature, as the taste has moved from fiction to nonfiction, I think it's going to happen in film as well. In a way you're on a serendipitous journey, a journey which is much more akin to the life experience. When you see somebody on the screen in a documentary, you're really engaged with a person going through real life experiences. So for that period of time, as you watch the film, you are, in effect, in the shoes of another individual. What a privilege to have that experience. —Albert Maysles

• Every cut is a lie. It's never that way. Those two shots were never next to each other in time that way. But you're telling a lie in order to tell the truth. —Wolf Koenig

Nanook of the North • first significant nonfiction feature, made in the days before "documentary“ • filmmaker Robert Flaherty had lived among the INUIT in Canada for many years as a prospector and explorer, and he had shot some footage of them before he decided to make a more formal record of their daily lives • financing by Revillion Freres, a French fur company with an outpost at Hudson Bay • filming took place between August 1920 - August 1921, mostly on the Ungava Peninsula of Hudson Bay • Flaherty employed two recently developed Akeley gyroscope cameras which required minimum lubrication; this allowed him to tilt and pan for certain shots even in cold weather. He also set up equipment to develop and print his footage on location and show it in a makeshift theater to his subjects • rather than simply record events as they happened, Flaherty staged scenes -- fishing, hunting, building an igloo -- to carry along his narrative • the film's tremendous success confirmed Flaherty's status as a storyteller • Nanook, the subject of the film, died of starvation not long after the film's release. v http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=ka. DVov. Gj. NOc&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active