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 filmmakers perspective more
  evident. Interview styles and interventionalist
  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 film makers 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 other interviews,
  recorded images, newsreel or/and archival footage)

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Interactive Mode

• Jean Rouch and Cinéma Vérité
• Anthropologist, film maker, 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 Italian immigrant.

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Cinéma Vérité

• As the film progresses, the light opening scenes
  give away to intimate revelations and hotly
  contested political arguments.
• Using the camera as their tool and the
  film-making process as a means to explore their
  subjects 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 was provided by them

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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
• Barbies trial in Lyon proves Ophulss point

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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 subjects 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 film maker as provocateur
• Whether the film maker allows interviewées to put
  their case fully or not
• The manners the film maker 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 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