I got an excellent book out of the university library called New Documentary: A Critical Introduction by Stella Bruzzi which provides a 'contemporary look at documentary' and examines 'critical issues of performance, gender, authorship and spectatorship and suggests how these are important to an understanding of documentary cinema'.
We began our lecture with a quote from John Grierson:
In her book Stella Bruzzi also refers to a Grierson quote, his early definition of documentary as "the creative treatment of actuality".
The book looks at several viewpoints regarding whether documentary film is an unbiased truthful recording of actual events (as Cinema Verite, or direct cinema claimed itself to be) or whether all footage is filmed with at least a little input from the film maker, for example focusing on particular subject, camera angles used and deciding what to include in the screen, therefore the film not being truly impersonal and not contain at least some of the film makers own personal emotion and preferences.
It would be interesting to see if I could actually film something that is truly Direct Cinema. Would it have to be a film purely for the sake of film, which means that I just leave a camera filming at some random place and whatever will be filmed will be filmed without intervention. That may serve no purpose, or make an interesting film, which would ultimately be it's purpose for being. But how could I film 'something' that I wanted to film and not make it completely impartial on my part? For example, I love the old information films of the National Coal Board (currently under the collection: 'Portrait of a Miner' compiled by the BFI). They show, supposedly, what real life was like for real miners, but there is a lot of creativity and editing involved in the films, so how far removed did the final film stray from real life by the time the director and editor had finished with it. I've seen at least two of these films which include dream sequences!
Stella Bruzzi's book discusses how historical footage is used in contemporary documentary and again how the film maker uses the chosen clips not only to show an actual event but to show it under a pre-considered written narrative therefore manipulating the viewer into processing what they are being shown for the film maker's own purpose. I very much felt this during the screening of Handsworth Songs and the Battle of Orgreave films that we watched in our lecture.
There is a phrase in the introduction to the book that I really like: 'John Grierson's early definition of documentary in light of Flaherty's work as 'the creative treatment of actuality' (Rotha 1952: 70) has been viewed as contradictory. As Winston (1995:11) suggests: 'The supposition that any "actuality" is left after "creative treatment" can now be seen as being at best naive and at worst a mark of duplicity'.
I have always been naive with regard to documentary. I really enjoy watching old newsreel such as the Pathe news films, information films and commercial works such as the films of the GPO Film Unit and the National Coal Board Film Unit.
I feel that there is no such thing as a wholly truthful documentary film. Although it is considered the mechanical eye, all film cameras have by their very nature been set up to record something, therefore the film maker has had a decisive input from the very start. An exception to this, which is discussed at length in the book, is that of film as accidental record. This is where something is recorded that wasn't the intended record that the film maker was seeking to create when they set up the camera. The prime example of this is 'Abraham Zaprunder's 22 seconds of 8mm film showing the assassination of President Kennedy, 22 November 1963, Dallas, Texas'. Zaprunder didn't intend to film the shooting of the president but the footage caught the pivotal moment of that event.
Also of interest was the chapter in the book which discusses the use of voice over and narration. It looks at the opposing views of whether the voice over is a necessary evil of the documentary which gives insight or a device that could be leading the film to work on 'filmic-dramatic principles' which is in essence the opposite to 'true' Direct Cinema'.
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