A footnote to start this week

1
A footnote to start this week

• The Academy Awards
• The Oscar goes to
• Documentary feature
• Taxi to the Dark Side
• by Australian film maker Eva Orner
• Beat out Michael Moores Sicko

2
Academy Awards

• Taxi examines torture of prisoners in
  Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay
  
• Documentary short
• Freeheld
• By Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth
• A film about an American police officer dying of
  cancer and wanting to leave her pension to her
  domestic partner

3
Academy Award

• Documentary short for last year
• 2007
• Ruby Yang
• The Blood of Yingzhou District
• Will show film later in this semester
• Now on to the main lecture

4
Last Week

• Elements of Style
• Some original film makers
• Ken Burns
• Errol Morris
• Nick Broomfield
• Ross McElwee
• The debt to Cinema Verite pioneers

5
This Week

• Elements of Style in Documentary Film
• Cinema Verite
• Direct Cinema
• Jean Rouch
• The Maysles Brothers
• Frederick Wiseman

6
This Week

• Last lecture before spring break or reading week
• During reading week do 2nd critique
• Compare and contrast
• Focus on style or treatment
• Same or similar subject matter
• Examine classic documentary films

7
Critique 2 due March 14

• Compare contrast examples
• Night and Fog (Resnais) vs Sorrow the Pity
  (Ophuls)
  
• The Thin Blue Line (Morris) vs Murder on a Sunday
  Morning (de Lestrade)
  
• Note I will e-mail you in the next five days
  results of your 1st essay
  

8
Cinema Verite / Direct Cinema
9
Cinema Verite

• A fancy French term
• Truth in documentary films
• Central point of the debate about genre
• Can you capture truth on camera?
• Does the camera affect the subject of a film
• How much structure should a film have
• How much intervention by the filmmaker

10
Cinema Verite or Direct Cinema

• Some features of this style of film
• Direct cinema does not
• usually employ interviews
• No narration
• Some say OK to direct film subjects
• To impose, intervene in the pursuit of truth
• Others argue
• The camera is meant simply to observe
• No intervention in the shooting of the film
• Arrangement in the editing process

11
Cinema Verite

• From the mid 1950s onward
• First in film /then video tape
• Cameras became smaller
• Less obtrusive
• More flexibility for the documentary film maker
• Allowing Direct Cinema to develop

12
Influential CV Filmmakers

• Jean Rouch (1917-2004)
• engineer Africa, journalist with AFP
• Chronique d'un été (Chronicle of a Summer) 1961
• Made with French Canadian cameraman Michel
  Brault
  
• Note one powerful scene Marceline
• Staged ? -- Q. of Truth? 1 Wintonick 3724-4640
  9min

13
Albert Maysles (1926 - )

• Since 1955 has directed/produced more than 40
  documentaries
  
• The Salesman (1969)
• Grey Gardens (1976 and updated in 2006 on DVD)
• Gimme Shelter (1970)
• http//www.mayslesfilms.com/

14
Albert Maysles

• Book Liz Stubbs Documentary Filmmakers Speak
  (2002)
  
• Albert Maysles interview chapter 2
• The Father of Direct Cinema
• Grey Gardens (1976) show excerpt
• The Salesman (1969)
• Strong, unusual, sad, characters
• uncontrolled cinema
• Albert Maysles speaks of film Wintonick
  11311737
  

15
Frederick Wiseman (1930 - )

• One critic said
• Frederick Wiseman is arguably the most
  important American documentary filmmaker
  of the past three decades. A law professor
  turned filmmaker in 1967, Wiseman, in his most
  dramatically powerful documentaries, chronicles
  the exercise of power in American society by
  focusing on the everyday life.
• http//www.zipporah.com/
• An argumentative, self promoter uncompromising
  film maker
  
• Wintonick 11738 12104 or start at 77 min 40
  secs
  

16
Frederick Wiseman

• Wiseman films (more than 40)
• Institutional subjects
• Titicut Follies (1967)
• High School (1968)
• High School II (1994) excrpt
• Near Death (1989)
• dvd interview 252-1218

17
Influential Films Filmmakers

• In Hong Kong and China, Wiseman has influenced
  film makers like Tammy Cheung.
  
• Secondary School (2002)
• Also Zhou Hao, Senior Year (2005)
• Also Chen Weijun
• Please Vote For Me
• All derivative school films - CV or DC style

18
Next

• Mid term break
• Work on 2nd film critique
• 2 films compare and contrast
• Due March 14th
• On March 14th Chinese films Part 1
• Films about China
• Films by Independent Chinese film makers -
  guest lecturers