January 25 Lecture Wk 2

1
January 25 Lecture Wk 2

• Main themes in this course
• To encourage an excitement about the documentary
  form its history
• To explore techniques as they have evolved from
  music and cinematography to the limits of
  fictional representations in factual film making
• To encourage critical analysis

2
Note on Academy Awards

• Monday February 25th Hong Kong time
• Documentaries
• Doc features
• Doc shorts
• The highest accolade
• Nominees

3
Oscar Nominations

• Best documentary feature
• "No End in Sight" (Magnolia Pictures) A
  Representational Pictures Production Charles
  Ferguson and Audrey MarrsAnalyst and scholar
  Charles Ferguson examines the process behind the
  Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq in
  2003.
• "Operation Homecoming Writing the Wartime
  Experience" A Documentary Group Production
  Richard E. RobbinsThe experiences of Iraq War
  veterans are seen through their writings,
  accompanied by news footage and photographs.
• "Sicko" (Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company) A
  Dog Eat Dog Films Production Michael Moore and
  Meghan O'Hara
• "Taxi to the Dark Side" (THINKFilm) An X-Ray
  Production Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
  Previous doc ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE
  ROOM (2005) -- Nominee
• The case of an Afghan taxi driver beaten
  to death in 2002 while in U.S. military custody
  forms the heart of this examination of the abuses
  committed during the detainment and interrogation
  of political prisoners. When New York Times
  reporter Carlotta Gall investigates the death of
  cab driver Dilawar--
• "War/Dance" (THINKFilm) A Shine Global Fine
  Films Production Andrea Nix Fine Sean
  FineChief among the victims of the ongoing
  warfare in northern Ugandan are the country's
  children. .

4
Oscar Nominations

• Best documentary short subject"Freeheld" A
  Lieutenant Films Production Cynthia Wade and
  Vanessa RothFacing death from cancer, Detective
  Lieutenant Laurel Hester of the New Jersey Police
  Department spends the final year of her life
  fighting a policy that will not allow her to
  transfer her pension to her domestic partner,
  Stacie Andree.
• "La Corona (The Crown)" A Runaway Films and Vega
  Films Production Amanda Micheli and Isabel
  VegaIn a women's prison in Bogotá, Colombia, the
  inmates compete in an annual beauty pageant. Four
  prisoners are profiled as they prepare for the
  contest an unusual manifestation of a national
  obsession.
• "Salim Baba"A Ropa Vieja Films Paradox Smoke
  Production Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello
• Using a hand-cranked 1897 projector, Salim
  Muhammad offers his neighbors in the slums of
  Kolkata, India, a chance to view scraps of films.
  Although collectors have sought to buy his rare
  projector, Salim refuses to part with it, as his
  street shows are often the only films the local
  residents can afford to see.
• Sari's Mother" (Cinema Guild) A Daylight Factory
  Production James Longley
• 
  previously IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS (2006) --
  Nominee
• On a farm in central Iraq, a mother
  struggles to care for her ten-year-old son, Sari,
  who is dying of AIDS. As the boy's condition
  worsens, his mother must deal with a health care
  system that has fallen into chaos under US
  occupation.

5
Last Year Oscar Winners

• Feature
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Short
• The Blood of Yingzhou District Ruby
  Yang Thomas Lennon
• A Chinese AIDS orphan, faces possible
  rejection by his surviving relatives, who are
  torn between family tradition and their fear of
  the disease.

6
A Documentary Film History

• Our Main Lecture this week

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Docs Grew out of earliest film

• The history of film
• 1893. Thomas Edison.
• 1895. The Lumiere Brothers.
• The Lumiere factory film
• 1900-1920s Docs went hand
• in hand with the silent
• film era

8
Robert Flaherty

• Nanook of the North (1922)
• Moana (1926)
• Man of Aran (1934)
• Elephant Boy (1935)
• Show xfilm

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Documentary forms

• Robert Flaherty first practiced what came to be
  known as the observational or
• anthropological film making
• His films were criticized for having scenes and
  situations that were staged not real
• Issue of re-creation distortion et al
• "Sometimes you have to lie. Often one has to
  distort a thing to catch its true spirit."
• Robert Flaherty (c 1930)

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Truth in Docs Ongoing debate

• How much staging is permitted?
• Actuality versus greater truth
• Misrepresentation Honesty
• 1920 to 2008
• Michael Moore
• Most successful doc maker in terms in our
  time

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Docs Truth Distortion

• Recurring Question
• In Moore
• Roger and Me (1989)
• Bowling for Columbine (2002)
• Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
• Sicko (2007)
• Assignment screen ONE of the above
• DocMaker as Propagandist (DVD2)

12
The debate over the Documentary Form

• John Grierson
• a creative treatment of actuality (1926)
• The basic force behind documentary was social
  and not æsthetic. It was a desire to make a drama
  out of the ordinary, to set against the
  prevailing drama of the extraordinary a desire
  to bring the citizens eye in from the ends of
  the earth to the story, his own story, of what
  was happening under his nose.
• "I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a
  propagandist."

13
Early Docs Experimentation

• German Experimentation
• 1927
• Walther Ruttmann
• Berlin Symphony of a Great City
• Ruttmann an architect,
• graphic designer, painter
• vague expressionistic style

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Berlin Symphony of a Great City

• A simple chronicle from morning to night of
  Berlin life in five acts organized as a musical
  composition with each section building toward a
  faster paced montage of images at its end.
• An interesting historical document
• Remember the period 1923-1929
• Germanys Weimar Republic

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Berlin Symphony of a Great City

• Act 4
• Combines simple images of Berlin breaking for
  lunch
• With some social commentary
• Footnote Ruttmann composed his film using he
  1922 music of Max Butting
• Satisfies a tenet of good doc film making
• That they be experimental

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Docs and Experimentation

• Russian Experimentation
• 1929 Kino
• Dziga Vertov
• Man With the Movie
• Camera
• Similar to Berlin in its
• symphonic poetic approach

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Man with the Movie Camera

• Cameraman Vertovs brother Mikhail Kaufman
• A city picture like Berlin
• Moscow
• Also with musical instructions
• Plays with film devices used in fiction film
• Trick photography editing tricks

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A Man with the Movie Camera

• A record on celluloid in 6 reels an excerpt
  from the diary of a cameraman. This film presents
  an experiment in the cinematic communication of
  visible events without the aid of intertitles,
  without the aid of a scenario, without sets,
  actors. It aims at creating a truly
  international absolute language of cinema based
  on it total separation from the language of
  theatre and literature.
• Author-supervisor of the experiment Dziga Vertov,
  1929

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The Propaganda Film

• Survey
• Russia Soviet Agit-Prop
• Germany
• China
• America
• What is propaganda?

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Propaganda

• In the west, the word often carries a negative
  meaning.
• Incidentally
• In Chinese ?? the term is neutral
• To spread publicity or public awareness
• No sense of bias or untruthfulness

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The Propaganda Film

• Among the earliest documentaries were
  commissioned by governments to convey official
  messages
• To propagate a government line

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The Propaganda Film

• An effective propaganda film was one which
  stirred feelings of nationalism or national
  pride a sense of national greatness perhaps
  encouraging a people to action on behalf of a
  government or political mission.

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Germany Leni Riefenstahl

• Actress in 1920s
• Director from 1933
• Continued working
• nearly to age 101
• when she died
• Africa shoots

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Leni Riefenstahl

• Triumph of the Will (1934) 107m
• Hitlers film maker
• DVD the film opening
• one of the most famous
• opening sequences
• in film history

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Leni Riefenstahl

• Olympia (1938) 204m
• Techniques
• angles, tracking shot,
• slo-mo, under water
• http//www.riefenstahl.org/downloads/vi
  deo-riefenstahl.html
• Jesse Owens
• http//www.riefenstahl.org/downloads/video/olympia
  -jesseowens.rm

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America reacts to Riefenstahl

• Frank Capra
• 1934 won best director academy award
• Plus 4 more for
• It Happened One Night

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America reacts to Reifenstahl

• Frank Capra
• Why We Fight (1942)

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Propaganda films

• The manipulation of music
• Emotion
• In US and Chinese films heavy narration
• Images sky, clouds .
• Common to these films

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Early Films Influence

• Montage
• Experimentation
• Thought to music
• Techniques, slow motion, multiple camera angles,
  underwater shots, actuality
• Negative staging, re-shoots, alteration of
  sequence and time

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Next - Week 3 Documentaries for Television

• TV Documentaries 1958-2008

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JMSC 0044 Documentary Film Appreciation

• Fridays 930 to 1230
• Jim Laurie
• jlaurie_at_hku.hk

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More Quotes on Documentary

• "Documentary filmmaking combines the power and
  grace of fictional filmmaking with the boldness
  and authenticity of stories taken directly from
  life."
• Mark Freeman San Diego State
  University
• "Varying in style, technique, editing,
  story-telling, narration, and intent, it is a
  medium that records the cross-section of human
  experience, from monumental conflict to simple
  lives lived day to day."
• Ian Aitken, Author,
  Encyclopedia of the
• 
  Documentary Film

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Familiar Topics of Chinese Films

• Maoist political films
• Biographies of heroic figures like Lei Feng, Mao,
  Zhou, Zhu De, Deng etc
• The Day I Left Lei Feng 1996
• Zhou Enlai 1996

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China

• Documentary films celebrating Chinas greatness
  have been a feature of CCTV since the early
  1960s. The films also featured in theatres.

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Chinese Films Subjects
Historical films Japan films Korean War
films Great leaders films
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CCTV Documentaries

• Lets look first at what is new and then
• Work our way backward historically
• China Central Television has been the principal
  producer of documentaries in China from its
  founding in 1958 to the mid 1990s.
• Only with the independent film movement has that
  begun to change

37
New Sophistication in State Supported Documentary
Making

• Stylistically - 1980s influence of large scale
  multi-part documentaries made by Japans NHK
• The Silk Road (1980)
• The Yellow River (1986)
• See http//www.nhk.or.jp/digitalmuseum/nhk50years
  _en/history/p20/index.html
• In last 8 years China has made big but more
  subtle, sweeping, historical films in NHK or US
  Public Broadcasting tradition

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Rise of Great Powers

• http//english.peopledaily.com.cn/200611/26/eng200
  61126_325264.html
• Film maker Ren Xuean group spent three years
  making the documentary.
• Ren said his team visited nine countries, and
  interviewed more than 100 scholars and political
  figures.
• Three years ago, Qian Chendan (film adviser)
  delivered a lecture on the history of the great
  powers since the 16th century to members of the
  Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
  Peoples Daily

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China Central Television 2006

• The Rise of the Great Powers ????
• 12 part documentary
• November 2006
• See http//finance.cctv.com/special/C16860/01/ind
  ex.shtml
• ?????? Chinas Peaceful Rise

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Rise of Great Powers

• Excerpt from Episode 1 of 12
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vpkX82kukw_Y
• Rise of Japan excerpt
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vuPdQL7z151kmodere
  latedsearch
• Different from previous CCTV work

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Rise of Great Powers

• History not from victim POV
• History without dwelling on imperialism and
  hegemony.
• England in the past Opium
• Now - Queen Elizabeth I, She did not abuse her
  power or prestige.
• Departure from blatant agit-prop of past
• Still without directly mentioning Chinese power,
  the message is clear