Blog 5 - Reflection

In the last five weeks we have learned a multitude of things about New Documentary and I know I have taken a lot from this class as a whole. For the most part it has really opened my eyes up to all the facets of documentary filmmaking that before I had been pretty ignorant about. For one thing, I had no idea there were so many different styles of documentaries. It seems that I had always seen a particular type of documentary, notably the styles of David Attenborough and Michael Moore, and I hadn’t noticed that you can really put art into these films in a way that is both engaging to the audience and effective in its delivery of the point it is trying to get across.

This course so far has showed me that the word Documentary has a much more complicated definition than I previously thought. Just like the age old debate of “what is art?” the idea that documentary can be nailed down to one clear cut definition is not very accurate to the bigger picture. Documentaries incorporate many different aspects of filmmaking that sometimes are reserved mostly for feature films, effects, camera tricks, dramatization, recreation, and while some of these things are frowned upon in the trade, it can be used to make a more powerful and enriching point.

I’ve learned that one of the basic tenants of documentary filmmaking is to have a point. It really isn’t a documentary without expressing a point of view. Even the most simple nature docs or Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera are saying something about the point of nature they explore. It is important and necessary not to only document, which is something simple that a security camera could do, but to also show a greater meaning to the images and words you capture.

Also the nature of documentary can be that of an activist. We saw in Lovely Andrea that the work had strong feminist overtones throughout, starting with a simple narrative but quickly branching out into all sorts of different forms of storytelling.

Also I learned that the line between fact and fiction is often very muddy. This is best exemplified in Close Up, which really clearly blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and in doing so, makes the audience question the very notion of truth and artifice.

Blog 4 - Close Up and docufiction.

This week we discussed the concept of docufiction and watched an example of one in Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up. The nature of this genre is an interesting look into the very complexity of the medium of the documentary and on a closer look, I find that it says more about documentaries then some actual documentaries do.

Kiarostami set out to make the movie after reading an article written by the journalist portrayed in the first moments of the film. He was then given permission to film the court proceedings of Hossain Sabzian, who was being accused of fraud in an attempt to impersonate Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

This film is considered a classic and a masterpiece of world cinema. I think it plays a very important look at the inner workings of documentary as well as the complexity of truth itself.

In the film we see a man who is impersonating another man, all the while the film is impersonating a documentary. It has many scenes ripped straight out of reality while also reconstructing past scenes, with people playing themselves. This to me is an expert move in the central theme of artifice. I think the film shows truth by obscuring it. The entire point is to lean back and think “wait a minute, was that real?” and by doing that you do the same thing to the world beyond that. I think documentary serves to have a point and build evidence around it. Is it bad documentary making to include dramatizations? To have a title sequence? To put the director in the event, therefore changing it? The nature of the documentary is to use reality as your paintbrush, and I think Close Up does a really good job of this.

            The style of this film helps put ourselves in the place of Hossain and his fraud. Watching this we are compelled to think that, just like him, we impersonate every day, whether it be someone else or others reflection of ourselves. The style of this film lends itself very clearly to that.

Blog 3 - The Wonder Ring - Nature on Campus

https://vimeo.com/135933174 Nature on Campus

This week we shot a small video on campus reflecting the natural life of the area. This task helped us get acquainted with the cameras while also making a piece of work in itself. The nature piece was meant to showcase the natural environment in a way that had a sort of narrative of and within itself. Our video was meant as an example of how we see nature often through reflections, and how seeing images on top of images can be damaging to the scene but also beautiful in some ways. We conveyed this by filming the reflective glass doors right up next to the shot of overlaid images of nature, edited to give a transparent attribute to the first.

            Stan Brakhage’s Avant garde film making is influential in the way that he tampers with film, rearranges frames, and paints on frames and scratches into film. The methods he practiced are considered to be staples of the craft

This could be compared to the Wonder Ring in that it serves as a visual memento and it says a lot without any dialogue and little sound. Stan Brakhage shows the train route in the beautiful 5 minute film that serves to document something that is no longer there. The film conveys a powerful message without saying anything. Michael Renov discusses this film as ‘lyrical’ and offers that it is subjective and powerful because it puts the viewer in a position where they are seeing things as he saw them. The Wonder Ring served to give Brekhage a visual memento to something that is gone.

            Our film, Votive to Progress. Is meant to convey the title in that, nature is the votive, or sacrifice, when progress is sought. It is a trade-off. This is why interspersed with nature, we see images of buildings and a few people walking by without noticing it.

I think that one of the core tenants of documentary is to have a point. One could hardly say that Brekhage is a documentarian, and yet, many of his films do exibit techniques used by the documentarian. One could say that his subjectivity, especially in regards to Wonder Ring disqualifies him form such a title but I think subjectivity is at the core of all documentary. I would say that his films are art films and not documentary because they do not lend themselves to a narrative.

Blog 2 - Early Doc - Man with the Movie Camera - Nanook of the North - Ethics in Documentary

This week we explored the world of early documentaries.

Looking at examples of early documentary it is clear to see that there is less of a distinction between objective truth and artful interpretation. In Nanook of the north we see one of the first, best examples of a fleshed out feature length documentary. Robert J. Flaherty is a pioneer of documentary filmmaking and Nanook is considered a milestone in the craft. Looking back, the practices displayed in the film would probably be considered abhorrent by today’s standards. At this point, the medium was just finding its feet and the film is still largely praised.

                For different reasons, the Man with the Movie Camera is seen as a staple of documentary filmmaking and filmmaking in general. Dziga Vertov showcases a brand new style of filmmaking that combines documentary as well as heavy influences of art film. The movie on the surface is just the goings on of 1929 Soviet Russia, but the way in which this is conveyed is artful and unique. Vertov sought out to capture a world “caught unawares.” This can be seen as a foray into the Poetic mode of documentary, similar to Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. Vertov employs a number of camera, editing, and post production techniques like splicing, split-frame and quick cuts and ultimately uses them to portray the life and energy of the world he inhabited.

                These films along with the other films we sampled like The Blood of the Beasts, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, The River, and Night Mail all show an example of work that manipulates the reality of the situation for the purposes of enhancing the film. This practice has certainly been drawn back in recent years with an emphasis on the objective truth of the moment. It could be seen that at the time these movies were not made to show exactly what happened but rather to reflect the overall ideas of the situations. They were working on a limited set of tools and they made the movies that conveyed their point of view.

One thing to be said about these films is that although they may not be necesarily "ethically sound," they have a message and use the means that they have to convey them. You could say that documentary can only depict true events and I think that is true, but it is not unusual for a filmmaker to make the truth suit his or her needs to fit the narrative. I would say the level of manipulation is important to moniter and varies by case.

Blog - 1 Lovely Andrea-Yung Jake-Defining Documentary

This week we really explored what a documentary film really is. We opened with a discussion on the nature of what exactly makes a film a documentary.

The article Defining Documentary puts things into a broader perspective, looking at all the suggested definitions and reconstructs a definition from all of that. The article brings up the argument that a documentary is a portrayal of the facts. While this is true, a documentary also has to have other things and cannot simply be something as blank as say, security camera footage. The article mentions the need for realism but also the conventions of film, as well as the need to teach or express and illuminate a certain point of view.

Lovely Andrea is a really interesting documentary because it seems to create conventions while still fitting comfortably within the scope of a documentary. The film manages to convey several messages without telling the audience what to think. By clear expository, very raw filmmaking, the film manages to showcase a variety of issues like feminism, sexuality, past vs. present, freedom and bondage, as well as independence in the modern word.  It does all of this in a mixed up, non-linear fashion, intercutting music and clips from cartoons, music videos and movie clips.

Yung Jake’s e.m-bed.de/d really stretches the lines of what you could call a documentary, possibly even to the point of absurdity. The video shows something that certainly conveys and idea and does so in an interesting way, using open windows to show a cumulative rise to fame of the artist. The video shows just how fame spreads on the internet, gathering fame slowly until it takes off and then showing just how quickly something can go viral in the modern world. It is an exploration and possibly a critique of modern fame and the internet and how it enters our life. The problem that I have with calling it a doc is that it is presented as a fictional story and does not truthfully track any real person.