There are many ways of asking why and how documentaries differ from fiction film, given that they share so many techniques. William Guynn, drawing on theory developed for fiction films, has argued that documentary film is less satisfying than fiction, because it fails to give the viewer the same unrecognized return of the repressed—the promise of fantastic unity and integration. Postmodernist analysts challenge documentary’s use of psychological realism (much the same as in fiction film) to represent reality. Realism, in their analysis, works merely to obscure the ideology of bourgeois culture. Nichols argues that documentaries that play with the viewer’s expectation for transparency and truth reflect more creatively the multiple perspectives of postmodern life. Meanwhile, Brian Winston states that in an age of endless digital manipulation and aggressive viewer intervention, documentarians cannot claim either scientific accuracy or paternalistic right to lecture but must acknowledge that they are merely a speaker among speakers. Cognitive theorists such as Noël Carroll respond that human beings reasonably accurately interpret the data from the world around them, including that from the screens they watch. The illusion of reality, they argue, is not necessarily disempowering.
Emerging areas
Documentary scholarship is still developing, and there are fruitful potential areas of growth. English-speaking scholars, for example, have typically drawn little on international scholarship on documentary, although the reverse is not necessarily true. The Yamagata film festival in Japan has vigorously fostered international exchange of scholarship with its online Documentary Box. There have been some impressive exceptions to English-language parochialism as well, such as the work of Julianne Burton and Michael Chanan on Latin American documentary and Markus Nornes on Japanese documentary.
Most cinema studies scholars know little of the business of documentary distribution and are little interested in the most popular kinds of documentary. They have focused primarily on independent production and films for general audiences, and on dissident and art-house works. They typically leave speculation about the effects of formulaic and sponsored documentary—where authorship is often much harder to track—to sociologists and other social scientists who study media effects and who often have no particular knowledge of documentary form and tradition.
And yet documentaries made for clients (“sponsored” documentaries) and those formulaic documentaries shown on television are important and growing facets of documentary production, both of which are usually viewers’ first experiences of documentary. Sponsored and formulaic TV films also often subsidize independent work, since this part of the business provides steady work for documentarians. Indeed, in some developing countries, sponsored work keeps the entire film sector alive in between big projects. Looking at the intersections between sponsored and independent work could provide a better understanding of how documentary evolves.
Because so little research has been done on sponsored documentaries, we know little about an area that surely accounts for the majority of film productions. Organizations now use documentaries for conventions, board meetings, presentations, sales campaigns, and in strategic campaigns aimed at schoolchildren, AIDS patients, or employees learning to avoid sexual harassment and the like. Sponsored filmmaking, both corporate and government, has also generated rich archival resources for filmmakers.
Formulaic documentaries made as lowbrow entertainment have not caught many researchers’ attention, but they may as the popularity of the genre grows. Cinema studies scholars eventually began studying genres such as the noir film and “the genius of the system,” as Thomas Schatz called it, of movie studios; the example would be well applied to the work of documentary-factories such as Discovery Communications.
As entertainment documentaries grow in importance, we can expect to see scholars exploring these subgenres, their structures, strategies of representation, and appeal. Performance documentaries in music and comedy, “making of” documentaries, extreme sports documentaries, television series such as how-tos, makeovers, cooking and other series, and docusoaps all build not only upon earlier by innovative documentarians but also condition the marketplace and viewers’ expectations. Early work, some of which is listed in Further Reading, has been done on rockumentaries, such as D A Pennebaker’s cinema verité classic Dont Look Back (1967) about a Bob Dylan tour, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978) on The Band, and Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Stop Making Sense, featuring the Talking Heads. Attention to more popular work will also engage scholars more fully with the economic realities of an art form bound tightly to commercial mass media; and we will learn more, through these means, about how economic conditions shape expression.
Other changes in documentary expression may well provoke academic activity. Burgeoning production in advocacy documentary and growing popularity of documentaries on timely topics may stimulate academic work on standards and ethics in the field. The growth in participatory media may stimulate more interdisciplinary work, as sociologists, anthropologists, communications scholars, political scientists, information scientists, and film scholars each seek to understand the phenomenon. Scholarship will continue to change our understanding of documentary, and it will reflect a creative engagement between the interests of academics and the practices of documentarians.
One Hundred Great Documentaries
These documentaries have been widely seen and discussed, and have been in many cases at the center of controversies; in other cases they have provided valuable teaching resources. They are all accessible for renting or buying for your private collection. You can use the index to this book and other books mentioned in the references, imdb.com, your local library, Netflix, Google, and the Library of Congress to find out more about why these films have attracted attention and esteem. Viewing this collection will set you up nicely with a context to watch your latest favorite, argue with this list, and build your own top one hundred.
Nanook of the North, 1922
Grass, 1925
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, 1927
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, 1927
Man with a Movie Camera, 1929
Rain, 1929
Land without Bread (Las Hurdes), 1932
Man of Aran, 1934
Song of Ceylon, 1934
Triumph of the Will, 1934
Night Mail, 1936
The Plow that Broke the Plains, 1936
Spanish Earth, 1937
Power and the Land, 1939–40
Listen to Britain, 1942
Why We Fight, 1942
Battle of San Pietro, 1945
Farrebique, 1946
Maîtres Fou, Les (Crazy Masters), 1955
Night and Fog, 1955
Tire Die, 1958
Primary, 1960
Chronicle of a Summer, 1961
Mothlight, 1963
Battle of Culloden, 1964
Tokyo Olympiad, 1965
Dont Look Back, 1967
Titicut Follies, 1967
Warrendale, 1967
Hour of the Furnaces, 1968
Salesman, 1968
High School, 1969
Sorrow and the Pity, 1969
Selling of the Pentagon, 1971
World at War, 1973
Hearts and Minds, 1974
Ax Fight, 1975
Battle of Chile, 1975–79
The Wedding Camels, 1976
Harlan County USA, 1976
How the Myth Was Made, 1978
The Last Waltz, 1978
With Babies and Banners, 1978
Trobriand Cricket, 1979
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, 1980
N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman, 1980
Garden of Earthly Delights, 1981
Atomic Café, 1982
Burden of Dreams, 1982
Sans Soleil (Sunless), 1982
First Contact, 1983
When the Mountains Tremble, 1983
Cabra Marcado para Morrer (Twenty Years Later, a.k.a. A Man Listed to
Die), 1984
Shoah, 1985
From the Pole to the Equator, 1986
Handsworth Songs, 1986
Sherman’s March, 1986
Eyes on the Prize, 1987–90
Cane Toads, 1988
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, 1988
The Thin Blue Line, 1988
Roger & Me, 1989
Tongues Untied, 1989
Body Beautiful, 1990
The Civil War, 1990
Paris Is Burning, 1990
Allah, Tantou, 1991
Afrique, Je Te Plumerai, 1992
Lumumba, Death of a Prophet, 1992
The War Room, 1993
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, 1993
Hoop Dreams, 1994
Celluloid Closet, 1995
Taking Pictures, 1996
4 Little Girls, 1997
Chile, Obstinate Memory, 1997
42 Up, 1998
What Farocki Taught, 1998
Cinéma vérité, 1999
Gleaners and I, 2000
Stranger with a Camera, 2000
Dogtown and Z-Boys, 2001
Fighter, 2001
Winged Migration, 2001
Amandla!, 2002
Bus 174, 2002
The Day I Will Never Forget, 2002
Rivers and Tides, 2002
Checkpoint, 2003
Fog of War, 2003
Control Room, 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004
From the Ikpeng Children to the World, 2004
The New Americans, 2004
Super Size Me, 2004
Tintin and I, 2004
Video Letters, 2004
A Decent Factory, 2005
Three Rooms of Melancholia, 2005
An Inconvenient Truth, 2006
Further Reading and Viewing
I have included here the most important texts I consulted in writing the book (in the case of prolific authors not all their books are referenced). Grant and Sloniowski, Warren and Izod, et al. are all essay collections featuring authors I have referred to in the text. The place where I and almost everybody else started was, of course, Erik Barnouw.
Films
McLaren, Les, and Annie Stiven. Taking Pictures. First Run Icarus, 1996.
Múller, Ray. The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. Kino on Video, 1998.
Stoney, George. How the Myth Was Made. Available on the Home Vision DVD of Man of Aran, 1978.
Wintonick, Peter. Cinema vérité: Defining the Moment. National Film Board of Canada, 1999.
Print
Aitken, Ian. Film and Reform: John Grierson and the Documentary Film Movement. London: Routledge, 1990.
_____. The Documentary Film Movement: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
Alexander, William. Film on the Left: American Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Anderson, Joseph L., and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Aufderheide, Patricia. The Daily Planet: A Critic on the Capitalist Culture Beat. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Aufderheide, Patricia, and Peter Jaszi, Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers. Washington, DC: Center for Social Media, American University, 2004.
Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
_____. Documentary: A History of the Nonfiction Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
_____. Media Marathon: A Twentieth-Century Memoir. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Barsam, Richard. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. New York: Dutton, 1973.
Beattie, Keith. Documentary Screens: Nonfiction Film and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Benson, Thomas W., and Carolyn Anderson. Reality Fictions: The Films of Frederick Wiseman. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
Bernard, Sheila Curran. Documentary Storytelling for Film and Videomakers. Boston: Focal Press, 2004.
Bluem, A. William. Documentary in American Television: Form, Function [and] Method. Hastings House, 1965.
Bousé, Derek. Wildlife Films. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
Boyle, Deirdre. Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Burton, Julianne. The Social Documentary in Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.
Campbell, Richard. 60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Campbell, Russell. Cinema Strikes Back: Radical Filmmaking in the United States, 1930–1942. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982.
Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Carroll, Noël. Engaging the Moving Image. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Chanan, Michael. Cuban Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Culbert, David, Richard E. Wood, et al. Film and Propaganda in America: A Documentary History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Cunningham, Megan. The Art of the Documentary. Berkeley: New Riders, 2005.
Delmar, Rosalind. Joris Ivens: 50 years of Filmmaking. London: Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute, 1979.
Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1927.
Doherty, Thomas. Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Eaton, Mick. Anthropology, Reality, Cinema: The Films of Jean Rouch. London: British Film Institute, 1979.
Edgerton, Gary R. Ken Burns’s America. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Ellis, Jack C. John Grierson: Life, Contributions, Influence. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.
Elsaesser, Thomas. Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-lines. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004.
Evans, Gary. John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Feldman, Seth. Allan King: Filmmaker. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival, 2002.
Ginsburg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod, et al. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Grant, Barry, and Jeannette Sloniowski. Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.
Guynn, William. A Cinema of Nonfiction. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990.
Hall, Jeanne. “Realism as a style in cinema vérité: a critical analysis of Primary.” Cinema Journal 30, no. 4 (1991): 38–45.
Halleck, DeeDee. Hand-held Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002.
Henaut, Dorothy. “Video Stories from the Dawn of Time.” Visual Anthropology Review 7, no. 2 (1991): 85–101.
Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Holmlund, Chris, and Cynthia Fuchs. Between the Sheets, in the Streets: Queer, Lesbian, and Gay Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Izod, John, R. W. Kilborn, et al. From Grierson to the Docu-soap: Breaking the Boundaries. Hadleigh, Essex, UK: University of Luton Press, 2000.
Jacobs, Lewis. The Documentary Tradition, from Nanook to Woodstock. New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1971.
Juhasz, Alexandra. Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Juhasz, Alexandra, and Catherine Saalfield. AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
King, John. Magical Ree
ls: A History of Cinema in Latin America. London: Verso, in association with the Latin American Bureau, 1990.
Klotman, Phyllis, and Janet Cutler. Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Leyda, Jay. Films Beget Films. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.
_____. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
MacDonald, Scott. The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
_____. A Critical Cinema 4: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
MacDougall, David, and Lucien Taylor. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Mamber, Stephen. Cinema Verité in America: Studies in Uncontrolled Documentary. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Matthieson, Donald. “Persuasive History: A Critical Comparison of Television’s Victory at Sea and The World at War.” History Teacher 25, no. 2 (1992): 239–51.
McEnteer, James. Shooting the Truth: The Rise of American Political Documentaries. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.
McKibben, Bill. The Age of Missing Information. New York: Random House, 1992.
Michaels, Eric. Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Films. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Moran, James M. There’s No Place like Home Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Nelson, Joyce. The Colonized Eye: Rethinking the Grierson Legend. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1988.
Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
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