Five Modes of Documentary Representation

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Five Modes of Documentary Representation

• The Interactive Mode of Documentary

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Table of Contents

• 1) The Interactive Mode of Documentary
  Representation
• 2) Cinéma Vérité
• 3) Ethical Questions

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Interactive Mode

• Interactive documentary arose from the
  desire to make the filmmaker's perspective more
  evident. Interview styles and inter-ventionalist
  tactics arose, allowing the film maker to
  participate more actively in present events.
  Bill Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 33

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Interactive Mode

• The prominence of filmmakers presence
• Interaction with people through interviews
• People express their opinions and the filmmaker
  juxtapose them with contrary opinions and combine
  with filmed images or/and archival footage.

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Interactive Mode

• Documentary as oral history
• The viewer as a witness to the historical world
  as presented by one who inhabits it

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Interactive Mode

• Medium shots of interviewees
• Long takes
• Synchronous sound recording
• (Inter-cutting interviews with recorded images,
  newsreel or/and archival footage)

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Interactive Mode

• Jean Rouch and Cinéma Vérité
• Anthropologist, filmmaker, civil engineer and
  explorer (1917-2004)

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Cinéma Vérité

• Civil engineer turned ethnographer.
• Recording rites, rituals and communities in West
  Africa, Niger and Cote DIvoire

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Cinéma Vérité

• Cronique dun ete (Chronicle of a Summer, 1960)
• Ground-breaking documentary with Edgar Morin

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Cinéma Vérité

• Two women sent to streets in Paris to interview
  passersby
• Starting with a simple question, Are you happy,
  sir?, the interviews delve into the lives of the
  interviewees.
• Marceline, a Holocaust survivor Angelo, who
  works in a Renault factory Landry, a student
  from the Ivory Coast and Mari-Lou, a young,
  beautiful and depressed Italian immigrant

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Cinéma Vérité

• As the film progresses, the light opening scenes
  give way to intimate revelations and hotly
  contested political arguments.
• To use the camera as their tool and the
  film-making process as a means to explore their
  subject's preoccupations

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Cinéma Vérité

• Marcel Ophüls, Hotel Terminus The Life and Times
  of Klaus Barbi (1988)
• A documentary of the prozess against Klaus
  Barbie, the Gestapo chief of Lyon, and about his
  life after the war.

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Cinéma Vérité

• Ophuls sarcastic, sceptical and aggressive
  interviews with dozens of people - mainly
  Barbies enablers and apologists.
• Interviews reveal how Barbie was useful to US
  intelligence and South American dictators -
  escape from France

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Cinéma Vérité

• Barbies anti-communism a handy excuse for his
  being able to remain in Bolivia till his
  extradition in 1987 - remaining in safe haven
• Barbies trial in Lyon proves Ophulss point -
  the verdict to Barbies crime

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Cinéma Vérité

• Claude Lanzmann, Shoah (1985)
• 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without
  using a single frame of archive footage.
• Interviews with survivors, witnesses, and
  ex-Nazis
• Shoah in Poland Part II

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Ethical Questions

• How genuine are reactions shown by an
  interviewée? Does interaction between a film
  maker and his subject always bring out truth?

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Ethical Questions

• The manners in which the filmmaker presents the
  interviews
• The ways in which filmmaker prompts the
  interviewée
• The filmmaker as provocateur
• Whether the filmmaker allows interviewées to put
  their case fully or not
• The manners the filmmaker edits the interviews
  for his documentary.
• ARE INTERVIEWS CARRIED OUT FAIRLY?

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Ethical Questions

• Michael Moore, Roger and Me (1990)
• About the negative economic impact of General
  Motors COE, Roger Smiths summary action of
  closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan,
  costing 40,000 people their jobs.

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Ethical Questions

• Yawning gap between the rich and the poor the
  disintegration of a one-time prosperous community
• Criticisms - Moore did talk to Roger Smith but
  the footage was not included in the film

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Ethical Questions

• The eviction at the end of the film took place on
  the day different from Smiths speech.
• Manipulation and tampering facts and interviews
• Satire scepticism social comment