The documentary has a long story at history and is the only genre that has been existence since the birth of the film camera in the late 1800s.
The earliest moving pictures were actually single shot moments captured on film recorded by Lumiere Brothers in the 1890’s. These are shots of a train entering a station, factory workers leaving the work place, or simply shots of examine the novelty of an actual real life event. These were by definition documentaries.
And what generally considered the first attempt to dramatized reality, photographer Edward Curtis film In the Land of the Work and News in 1914 using accurse to portray Native Americans. These scenes were staged but the story was presented as a truthful reenactment. Lay in the ground, work for things to come, Robert Flaherty’s film Nanook of the North released in 1922 is generally sided as the first featured length documentary. The film employs many of the conventions of later documentary and ethnographic film making including narration, a subjective tone, stage shoots, and a focus on the character and his development as the film center piece.
The term documentary was an actually associated with the genre until 1926, when film maker John Grierson coined the term and here’s a review of the film Melina. Although Great Britain and Russia were the first to create what became known as Propaganda Film as early as 1920, it was the German back 1935 film Triumph of the Wheel that is generally considered the landmark film both in terms of documentary film making and social implication. The film was release around the world in multiple languages. German Director Leni Riefenstahl look at the Annual Nazi Party Rally in 1934 showed the astonishingly powerful movement in society reflected and represented through media. She pioneered the tradition of films main with explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point.
1935 also saw the creation of The March of Time news real series. A new concept at that time which centered on in forming the audience with picture journalism using dramatic reenactments, force for narration, and footage shot on location. Developed by Roy Edward Larsen, a Senior Executive of Time Life Fortune Incorporated, the 15 to 20 minutes long news real will be shown at theaters between feature films.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that newly developed 16mm lightweight cameras assured in the era of the Cinema Verite Style of documentary film creation. A French term meaning real film, it wasn’t attempt by a young generation of film makers to create authentic, uninterrupted and unrehearsed documentaries in order to bring the creators and the audience closer to the subject. Voice overs and direct intervention was push aside and since were generally shot on location to present a more realistic environment, and strive for reality rather than a film based in reality with stage shots.
Stylistically, Cinema Verite centered around following a subject during a crisis using newer hand held camera to capture close ups and more personal reaction shots. There are no sit-down interviews and the amount of shooting time was longer than another documentary formats.
The finished product is generally the result of the editors finding and sculpting the shots into a story. The 1960 film Primary, Joe Associate is documentary on the Wisconsin Democratic Presidential Primary is generally regarded as the first American attempt to a Cinema Verite.
One of the first documentaries to see the success at the box office and have a wide range of the actual distribution was D.A Pennebaker’s account of a young Bob Dylan in the 1967 film, Don’t Look Back. The 60’s and 70’s politically charged notions brought forth the new movement of narrative and first person accounts of documentary story telling.
Moving away from the Cinema Verite format and more into the realm of social commentaries, this way the ground work from mini modern films as well develop the blue prints for what commonly became known as a Participatory Documentary. The development of lighter more sophisticated video cameras throughout the 1980’s lead to the first ground breaking reality television series in 1989. As John Langley and Malcolm Barbour Cops mixed elements of Cinema Verite and commentary from on duty police officers to carry its episodes.
Following the hills of cops MTV’s real world was the first hugely successful reality television series. The show was the precursor to what we now know as the reality TV Documentary Genre which combines element of Cinema Verite, scripts, and stage shots. To capture real on film is an illusive goal and the popular genre of today’s reality shows brought that experimental discovery to the main stream.
From the Lumiere Brother’s curiosity to Michael Moore’s In-Your-Face Exploration, documentaries are consistently evolving different strategies to try and capture reality for their audience.
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