The Evolution O f D ocumentary

1. The Evolution Of Documentary Sam Stapleton

2. Early documentary (1920s-1930s) • Documentary began when the Lumiere brothers created a camera that could hold 50 feet of film stock. • They used this to create short clips of things around them, including the famous ‘train’ film. (Un Train Arrivee, 1895) • However, the first documentary was created by Flaherty, named ‘Nanook of the North’ (1921). • The term documentary was coined by Grierson, who said that Flaherty’s documentary was a “creative interpretation of reality” (staged). • Grierson went on to help with the production of ‘Night Mail’ (1936), a documentary promoting national pride following the war in England.

3. Propaganda (1930s-1940s) • One of the most notorious propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film ‘Triumph of the Will’ (1935), which followed the Nazi Party and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler. • This documentary inspired many other filmmakers, including John Grierson, who created ‘Night Mail’, which is an example of documentary being used as propaganda in England, as it was created to promote national pride. • In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They became known as the Documentary Film Movementand they succeeded in blending propaganda, information, and education with a more aesthetic approach to documentary.

4. Direct Cinema (1950s-1960s) • By the 1950s and 1960s Grierson's ideals of creating documentary in order to educate viewers were no longer prominent, as a movement in the United States based on the French idea cinema verité, uses a handheld camera and films things “as they happen” in an attempt to portray truth to the audience. • They shoot on location, use handheld footage and synchronised sound to film events. • One example of a documentary inspired by this movement is ‘Cocksucker Blues’ (1972), a film that follows The Rolling Stone on one of their tours.

5. Political Weapons (1960s-1970s) • In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neo-colonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing Quebec society. • It was also used by the government in Chile in order to show a positive portrayal of the overthrow of the Salvador Allende government .

6. Modern Documentaries (1990s-present) • Compared to dramatic narrative films, modern documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable. • The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. • ‘Making of’ documentaries show how a movie or a computer game was produced and are usually made for promotional purposes; they are closer to advertisements than documentaries.

7. Influence on TV • The constructs of documentary have also had a large influence on contemporary TV, including reality television shows such as ‘Big Brother’ as there are elements of fly-on-the-wall, or factual television in them. • Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged.