Documentary Film: Some Observations

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Documentary FilmSome Observations
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General Comments

• documentary vs. fictional film
• medium film (35mm, 16mm), video, digital video

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Documentary conventions

• sound voiceovers diegetic and non-diegetic
  sound
• filmed on location
• frequent use of archival footage or photographs
  to illustrate or give historical evidence or make
  a point
• interviews
• B/W or color use of the former creates a sense
  of gritty realism that can be quite different
  from color
• text on screen
• Little need for continuity editing (e.g., a
  documentary will cut from present interview to
  past archival footage) Bill Nichols calls the
  kind of editing used in documentary evidentiary
  editing, which organizes cuts within a scene to
  present the impression of a single, convincing
  argument supported by a logic rather than the
  continuity editing

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Narrative

• is there a narrative line, or does the filmmaker
  self-consciously disrupt it?
• are there characters who recur in the film is
  there a narrative line drawn through these
  characters lives?
• do events follow each other in a logical, causal
  manner?
• are events narrated in chronological order or
  not?

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Style

• objective documentary with god-like voiceover
  that speaks with authority on a particular
  subject they do not speak from an individual
  perspective, but from a generalized one perhaps
  the films of Frederick Wiseman (High School
  (1968, State Legislature 2006) are
  representative
• personalized the voice(s) is not the god-like
  objective voice of a disembodied narrator, but
  attached to real people and their real experience
• autoethnography I or we speak about
  ourselves
• postmodern draws attention to the film medium
  itself and to questions of representation
• mockumentaries This is Spinal Tap, Blair Witch
  Project purport to be real, but are in fact
  fabricated

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Style

• Nichols gives the following modes of
  documentary
• Poetic (emphasizes visual associations, tonal or
  rhythmic qualities, descriptive passages and
  formal organization e.g. Sallys Beauty Spot)
• Expository (verbal commentary and an
  argumentative logic)
• Observational (direct engagement with the
  everyday life of subjects as observed by an
  unobtrusive camera)
• Participatory (interaction between filmmaker and
  subject e.g., Whose Donuts?)
• Reflexive (calls attention to the assumptions
  and conventions that govern documentary
  filmmaking)
• Performative (emphasizes the subjective aspect of
  the filmmakers own engagement with the subject
  e.g., History and Memory)

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Industry/Funding

• almost exclusive independent and made outside
  the studio/star system
• rarely made made for profit or commercial
  motivations (although some, like Michael Moores
  Farenheit 9/11 or Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth
  probably do turn a profit)
• funded by private funds, but also frequently
  supported by various endowments, public granting
  agencies (NEH, NEA, NAATA, National Film Board of
  Canada), and public television stations

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Audience

• generally not shown in commercial theaters
• film festivals and special documentary festivals
  (e.g., Hot Docs in Toronto, Yamagata Documentary
  Film Festival, Amsterdam Int. Doc. Film Fest. )
• many go to TV (PBS and various cable channels)

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Motivations

• made to edify, to teach, to change society, not
  for entertainment, etc.
• documentaries often have a rhetorical quality,
  that is, they seek to influence and convince
  (think of Michael Moores films)
• probing questions of identity
• subverting official history

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Why does AA film start with the documentary?

• made to edify, to teach, to change society, not
  for entertainment, etc.
• documentaries often have a rhetorical quality,
  that is, they seek to influence and convince
  (think of Michael Moores films)
• probing questions of identity
• subverting official history

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Asian American documentary

• Visual Communications (VC) Group
• grew out of Ethno-Communications program at UCLA
  in the 1960s
• first films were of anti-development
  demonstrations in Little Tokyo in LA
• influenced by notions of triangular cinema
  (which sought a unity of community, storyteller,
  and activist) and notions of Third Cinema (a
  reaction against Hollywood classical cinema and
  the European art film)
• the VC group began in 1970 to promote Asian
  cinema self-definition, self-determination,
  cultural reclamation as a reaction to
  Hollywood images of Asians
• three main concerns identity politics,
  historical injustices, and contemporary racism

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Asian American documentary

• first full-length feature produced by the VC
  Group was Hito Hata Raise the Banner (1980),
  devoted to WWII experience of an Issei in the
  Little Tokyo district of LA

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Asian American documentary

• Rise of documentary film
• response to several factors (1) counter to the
  dominant representation of Asians in Hollywood
  cinema (2) desire to create a truer, fuller
  history of Asian Americans, accounting for
  racism, etc. (3) give Asian voice to Asian
  experience (4) draw attention to politics of
  exclusion and racism
• important themes identity and generational
  conflict personal history and cultural heritage
  
• style generally personal, intimate, and
  emotional but with obvious political and social
  implications

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Asian American documentary

• Examples of documentaries
• Yellow Tale Blues An Anatomy of Two Families
  (dir. Christine Choy and Renee Tajima)
• Banana Split (dir. Kip Fulbeck), about a
  biracial man
• Whos Going to Pay for these Donuts Anyway?
  (Janice Tanaka)
• My Mother Thought She Was Audrey Hepburn (Sharon
  Jue)
• a.k.a. Don Bonus (Spencer Nakasako), about a
  Cambodian boy who escapes the Khmer Rouge and
  makes his way to San Francisco
• Anatomy of a Springroll (Paul Kwan), Vietnamese
  American director looks for cultural roots in
  food
• History and Memory (Rea Tajiri)

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Asian American documentary

• Styles of Documentaries
• History as Subject Personal Diary Films and
  Family Portraits
• History as Consciousness Biographies and
  Communal History
• History as Agency Social Issue Documentaries