DocumentaryÞlmandthe poeticsofhistory295284,en.pdf · documentary Þlm history practice-based research reßective analysis ABSTRACT How do documentary Þlm-makers picture the past

May 30 2011 175 IntellectJMP Page-3 JMP-12-1-Finals

JMP 12 (1) pp 3ndash25 copy Intellect Ltd 2011

Journal of Media PracticeVolume 12 Number 1

copy Intellect Ltd 2011 Article English language doi 101386jmpr1213_1

DESMOND BELLUniversity of Edinburgh

Documentary film and thepoetics of history

KEYWORDS

documentary filmhistorypractice-based researchreflective analysis

ABSTRACT

How do documentary film-makers picture the past and in what ways does theirapproach differ from the orthodox writing of history In this article I draw uponmy own experience as a documentary film-maker to explore a broader set of issuesconcerned with the relationship between academic history and factual film-makingDoes the history documentary as found on television involve a lsquodumbing downrsquo ofhistorical understanding Or does it as I suggest encourage a form of historiographicpractice that is more reflexive experimental and critically aware of its own auspicesIn reflecting on a range of my own broadcast work I seek to illuminate some of theways contemporary documentary film-makers have engaged with the past and in sodoing expanded the language of documentary film and of historical narration

INTRODUCTION

While documentary films addressing historical topics have always been a stableof public service broadcasting now within the proliferating world of cable andsatellite television we have specialist channels such as History Channel exclu-sively concerned with history programming and a number of others such asBiography Discovery and National Geographic with a substantial percentage ofsuch programming Historians regularly appear in front of the camera intro-ducing these programmes and act as consultants on them But is the historicaldocumentary a populist form that necessarily involves the lsquodumbing downrsquoof academic history Or can the inclusion of historical documentary material

3


Desmond Bell

within the television schedule extend access to historical understanding to abroader range of people than the specialist texts of academic written history1

1 Survey data gathered inAustralia and theUnited States suggeststhat in these societiesat least 81 per cent ofthe population ratedfilm and television astheir primary sourceof historicalinformation with only53 per cent identifyinga print source See JWarren-Findlay(2003) lsquoHistory innew words Surveyresults in the UnitedStates and AustraliarsquoAustralian CulturalHistory 23 pp 43ndash52

In this article I do not seek to provide a definitive answer to these ques-tions nor do I present a comprehensive review of contemporary documentarypractice and its approach to the representation of history Instead I seek to illu-minate the issues that I think are involved by drawing upon my own work asa documentary film-maker concerned with exploring Irish history Hopefullymy reflections on that work may enable the reader to explore some of the waysthat film- and programme-makers have dealt with problems of historical rep-resentation and narrative The films discussed here are my own They lsquodorsquo acertain sort of history Through a reflective analysis of my work in lsquohistory filmrsquoI seek to tease out the distinctive manner in which documentary film-makersapproach history

METHODOLOGY

Over the last number of years in collaboration with my editors Roger Buck andmore recently Simon Hipkins I have developed an archivally based creativedocumentary practice that seeks to explore aspects of Irelandrsquos post-Faminepast including the Irish diaspora Rotha Moacuter an tSaoilThe Hard Road to Klondike(Bell 1999) drew on a rich reservoir of early film material both actuality andfictional in character in order to retell the classic Irish emigrant story of MiciacuteMacGiobhanrsquos tramp through frontier America to the Yukon Rebel Frontier(Bell 2004) employed a similar archival strategy combined now with live actionre-enactment to retell the story of the Irish and Finnish miners of ButteMontana and their struggle against the Anaconda Copper Mining Companyduring World War I This film narrated by actor Martin Sheen employed theadditional device of the lsquounreliable narratorrsquo The story of the momentousevents unfolding in Butte is told from the perspective of a Pinkerton agentsent to break the minersrsquo strike This might be a young Dashiel Hammet andthe script draws upon Hammetrsquos 1926 novel Red Harvest set in Butte TachraacutenGan TodhchaiacuteChild of the Dead End (Bell 2009) deals with the life and work ofDonegal-born navvy poet and writer Patrick Mac Gill It also employs a rich cor-pus of archival images alongside dramatic elements somewhat more elaboratethan those found in the earlier films

These films have been heralded for their use of archive that has been rec-ognized as quite distinctive within documentary film-making in Ireland inparticular in so far as they employ early cinema material as an expressive andstorytelling resource employing the conventions of continuity editing in cut-ting this footage (Mac Conghail 1999 25) For some time I have been seekingto make sense of my own creative documentary work and its use of archivematerial as both historical trace and as narrative resource exploited to engagewith the past (Bell 2004) Hopefully these reflections might illuminate thebroader issues around documentary film as historiographical practice raised inthis article

Needless to say my methodological approach is that of a practitioner con-cerned with illuminating the creative and critical auspices of my own workrather than that of a film theorist per se Film-making is always an explo-ration and testing of ideas about the medium its creative capacities and itsmode of public address However any attempt to theoretically extrapolate

4


Documentary film and the poetics of history

from onersquos own experience of a creative project is always likely to be tenta-tive and partial And of course film-makers are in the first instance primarilyconcerned with the production of an art object rather than with a lsquoresearch out-comersquo That said one of the challenges of practice-based research and indeedof art as public culture is to encourage artists to engage in reflective analysisthat can be shared with an interested public Can the film-makerresearcherrender explicit the forms of tacit knowledge implicit in their practice byengaging in a structured reflection on that practice the process Jurgen Haber-mas (1974) calls Nachkonstruktion a term perhaps best rendered as rationalreconstruction

I would argue that one of the most useful approaches to practice-basedresearch in the film and the media field is one that respects the autonomy ofthe anterior creative practice (lsquomaking workrsquo) but that promotes the rationalreconstruction and interrogation of a body of professionally organized practiceas a rich source of lsquodatarsquo and understanding2

2 As I have arguedelsewhere (Bell 2006)the authorrsquos reflectiveanalysis is but oneinterpretative positionwith regard to a filmwork always subject tothe scrutiny of othercritical positions

As I have argued elsewhere (Bell 2006) this mode of reflective understand-ing may well be arrived at in a pedagogic encounter ndash explaining our workto others ndash and is perhaps best communicated to other practitioners in sucha context rather than by so-called lsquoresearch disseminationrsquo Those of us whowork in a university environment as teachers of film in a sense contract intopursuing our creative practice within a context of critical accountability Thisentails seeking to more fully know our practice by engaging in an a posteriorireconstruction of it in which we seek to tease out the rule systems that governthat practice and our understanding of it

Needless to say this is not the model of practice-based research favouredby the research councils who seem intent on bending the creative process tothe demands of a set of homogenized pseudo-scientific research protocols(governed as much by norms of bureaucratic accountability than by epistemicconcerns) It is not at all clear to me what is gained by forcing practice-basedresearchers ndash whether masters and doctoral candidates or project researchers ndashto adopt the alien language of lsquoresearch questionsrsquo and replicable lsquomethodolo-giesrsquo in their work The studio and production process has its own disciplineand research dynamic Practice-based research is not another generic methodof research alongside for instance ethnographic semiotic historical anal-ysis of cultural production Rather it is an integral element of good artspractice The cognitive interest is exercised through reflective analysis andthe critical appropriation of a creative process that has its own expressivedynamic

We still have relatively few contemporary exemplars of practice-basedresearch based on reflective analysis Sue Claytonrsquos recent illuminating lon-gitudinal review of her film work (Clayton 2007) certainly points in the rightdirection as does Gideon Koppelrsquos discussion of the making of his creativedocumentary film Sleep Furiously (2008)

Unfortunately the notion of self-reflection currently employed in the cur-rent discourse of practice-based research remains unclear and often fails todistinguish clearly between reflexivity and reflection

The terms lsquoreflexivityrsquo or lsquoself-reflexiversquo are much employed in cultural stud-ies and in critical discussion of experimental and documentary film practiceThey seek to identify a disposition on the part of the researcherpractitioner tobecome aware of the researcherrsquos contribution to the construction of meaningsthroughout the research process

5


Desmond Bell

The notion of reflexivity seeks to acknowledge

the impossibility of remaining lsquooutside ofrsquo onersquos subject matter while con-ducting research Reflexivity then urges us to explore the ways in whicha researcherrsquos involvement with a particular study influences acts uponand informs such research

(Nightingale and Cromby 1999 228)

Advocates of practice-based research have often been enthusiasts for an ethosof reflexivity Very often such research takes place around a creative projectdesigned primarily to advance our knowledge of a designated research topicrather than as an intrinsic work of art Much doctoral work is of this characterand a concern with reflexivity on the part of the studentinvestigator seems avital part of such practice-based research as it is of any enlightened researchpractice in the arts and humanities

However much practice-based research conducted within the academy isnot so conceived and is concerned with creative work produced for purposesother than research ndash namely as a professional outcome intended for exhibitionto an audience Work produced within a professional setting and primarily forexhibition to a general audience can of course become the object of subsequentsystematic reflection and this is the basis of this article My own work forexample is produced within the commercial strictures of public service televi-sion It is written shot and cut with a popular audience in mind rather than for agroup of my academic peers Indeed it is precisely this professional context thatprovides the lsquowell founded laboratoryrsquo within which an academic-practitionercan explore the formation of filmic practice in both its aesthetic and institutionaldimensions through reflective analysis

Social scientists have found it useful to distinguish between two types ofreflexivity ndash personal reflexivity and epistemological reflexivity The former involvesa disposition to reflect

upon the ways in which our own values experiences interests beliefspolitical commitments wider aims in life and social identities haveshaped the research It also involves thinking about how the researchmay have affected and possibly changed us as people and as researchers

(Willig 2001 10)

Reflective analysis by a film-maker will often involve an exercise in personalreflexivity as they seek to reveal the manifestation of subject position in theirwork ndash whether expressed in the point of view adopted in a film or in theimprint of personal experience in its treatment

Epistemological reflexivity on the other hand involves a disposition toengage with the methodological and theoretical auspices of our researchpractice and its construction as a rule-governed activity In the case of practice-based research in film and the visual arts this engagement often takes the formof rational reconstruction of the process of production and its context A distinctfilmic text is available for interrogation as is the process of its production andthe researcher as author has a measure of privileged access to process and prod-uct On the other hand the demands of epistemological reflexivity require thattheir reflections be aligned with a range of critical issues

6



This distinction between personal and epistemological reflexivity can Ithink be usefully related to Jurgen Habermasrsquos attempt in his classic textKnowledge and Human Interest (1974) to delineate the critical character of self-reflection as a mode of knowing quite different from the protocols of scienceHabermas ever the rationalist is concerned to distinguish between the deeplypersonal forms of self-reflection ndash found for instance in the psychoanalyticencounter ndash and what he calls rational reconstruction The former is concernedwith grasping the processes of self-formation of the individual while the latterinvolves modes of reflection concerned primarily with cognitive outcomes

Self-reflection brings to consciousness those determinants of a self-formative process of cultivation and spiritual formation (Bildung) whichideologically determine a contemporary praxis of action and the con-ception of the world (Psycho) analytical memory thus embraces theparticulars the specific course of self-formation of an individual

As he notes (Habermas 1974 22) psychoanalytical dialogue does not in itselfproduce rational discourse and lsquoreflection on oneself does not produce rea-soned justificationrsquo Something more beyond the personal act of reflection isrequired

What is reasoned justification within the context of acts of reflectionon oneself bases itself on theoretical knowledge which has been gainedindependently of the reflection on oneself namely the rational recon-struction of rule systems which we have to master if we wish to processexperience cognitively or participate in systems of action or carry ondiscourse

Rational reconstruction can be contrasted with personal reflection in so far asthe former seeks to deal with anonymous rule systems or rational norms Anysubject can comply with these norms if they have acquired the correspondingcompetence with respect to the rules3

3 Habermasacknowledges thatcritical theories ofreflection lsquohave notadequatelydistinguishedposteriorreconstruction(Nachkonstruktion)from reflection ononeselfrsquo Moregenerally Habermasargues that criticaltheory must guardagainstover-burdening theconcepts of thephilosophy ofreflection that it hastaken over Theconcept of reflexivityintroduced intocontemporary culturalstudies seems to beprecisely one suchloan concept andinvolves theover-extension ofessentially idealistpremises aboutself-hood andcognition into thesphere of socialrelations

My approach in this article is one of attempted lsquorational reconstructionrsquo Indiscussing a corpus of work produced over a twenty-year period I have chosento focus on four issues within contemporary documentary practice that seem tobe having historiographical import

bull the status of re-enactment within the historical documentary and therelated topic of the relation between the factual and fictive elements in thenon-fiction film

bull the use of archive and found footage in historical documentariesbull the role and character of the voice-over within the documentary film and

related notions of authority and truth in the narration of history andbull the engagement of the documentary film with personal and collective

memory as historical source

THE HISTORIANS AND FILM

From the outset let us admit that historians have a deep suspicion towards thenotion that film-making might represent a methodologically valid way to lsquodorsquohistory Historiansrsquo distrust of the historical accuracy of film is most pronounced

7


Desmond Bell

in their assessment of fictional film genres ndash the costume drama historicalromance the epic or memorialized historical event Their scepticism partly restson the popularizing aspect of film and television Both media strive to producesimple narratives often based on personal stories manufactured for a massaudience Historians are often askance at the resulting cavalier attitude of filmdirectors and television producers with regard to questions of historical detail4

4 This scepticism has along history Chicagohistorian LouisGottschalk wrote in1935 to the presidentof MGM DavidSelznick to complainabout the low qualityof historical films andthe need for scholarlyconsultants in order tomake them moreaccurate

and continue to decry Hollywoodrsquos determination to remould the past withinthe contours of the action movie in films like Gladiator (Scott 2002) Troy (Peter-son 2004) Kingdom of Heaven (Scott 2005) 300 (Synder 2007) and a rangeof other movies that roam over ancient history to produce what humouristJoe Queenan (2009) recently christened lsquoFaux-Quasi-Centurion Neo-FeudalMerovingian Ultra-Hyborean Men of Yore Action Flicksrsquo

What then of film works that purport to be factual in character Howdoes documentary film fare in the eyes of historians Documentary film asBill Nichols has observed (2001) has generally operated within lsquoa discourseof sobrietyrsquo That is to say it has developed beyond the razzmatazz of theHollywood fantasy factory and in a critical relation to commercial studio filmproduction Documentary film stakes its claims on its unflinching engagementwith lsquolife as it isrsquo It is Kino Pravda5 cinema veriteacute6 direct cinema observational cin-

5 The name of the Sovietnews reel groupfounded byfilm-maker DzigaVertov in 1924

6 The term somewhatmisleadingly is usedto refer to both the UStradition ofobservation cinemaassociated with DrewAssociates and to theFrench documentaristJean Rouch whohimself associates itwith Vertovrsquos work

ema ndash the documentation and analysis of everyday life captured by the cameraThe dilemma of the documentarist remains how to reconcile the commit-ment to accurately record and report upon real events with a desire to givetheir film work expressive force and narrative drive7 John Grierson captured

7 In a positivist age itsuited many of theearly proponents ofdocumentary film tofocus on thephotographic basis ofthe form and to treatthe photographicprocess as theunproblematicinscription of realityThis was so despitethe importance offilmic rhetoric (andartifice) throughoutthe development ofthe genre One hasonly to think of thevisual pyrotechnics ofDziga Vertov or theelaborate stagings andfabulism of RobertFlaherty of thepoetical lyricism of aBasil Wright or aCavalcanti or thelsquocinema provocationsrsquoof Jean Rouch torealize howconstructed a mediumdocumentary film hasalways been

this dilemma perfectly in his classic definition of documentary as the lsquocreativetreatment of actualityrsquo8

8 Grierson was primarilyconcerned withdistinguishing thedocumentary filmfrom on the onehand the broader

Historians and documentarists by and large share a commitment to anethic of public communication with its attendant notion of truth and impar-tiality However historians remain suspicious of the epistemological status andcultural role of documentary film Many have concerns about the evidentialstatus of the forms of personal testimony and narrative revelation that doc-umentary films often rely upon Many are uncomfortable with the notion ofmemory as a constitutive concept within historiography On the other handmany historians remain oblivious to the mediated and contingent nature ofcollective memory that has so fascinated film-makers And this is so despitethe development of oral history approaches within their discipline and theincreasing use of visual sources and media contents as historical data Signif-icantly the debate about popular memory and the intersection of power andhistorical knowledge has been largely conducted outside the confines of aca-demic history9 Labour history has sought to give voice to the marginalized andoccluded within the traditional historical record and to extend data gatheringinto the realms of audio and video recording of oral testimony But these remainmarginal methodological preoccupations within a discipline still focused on thewritten text and statistical table as preferred evidential sources

Historians after all regard history as a profession Their discipline has itsown standards of proof and of methodological consistency and accompanyingpractices of training and professional socialization From this perspective thehistorical documentary can look like an applied and letrsquos face it lsquosecond-ratersquoform of doing history Dependent for its factual accuracy on the mother disci-pline the historical documentary film is viewed as an act of dissemination ofpreviously accredited historical knowledge via an untrustworthy mass mediumIt functions as the documentary does in the public communication of scienceAccordingly contemporary historians are generally more at ease with what

8



Nichols has identified as the expository documentary ndash films with an authori-tative voice-over or presentation to camera from a historian acting as narratorand objective assessor of evidence ndash than they are with creative or authoreddocumentary modes that seek to problematize historical knowledge and visual

field of factualfilm-making (educationalscientific health publicinformational film etc)and on the other fictionaland dramatic films Thedifferentiating feature ofthe documentary for himis the capacity of thefilm-maker to bring acreative treatmentemploying all the tools ofcinema to bear on theirsubject matter

evidence

9 In France the debate wasclosely associated withthe attack led by thehistorians attached tothe Communist Party onrevisionism andhistorical erasure andthe failure ofcontemporary historiansto address Frenchcollaboration with theNazis during theoccupation in WorldWar II Otherintellectuals outside theparty such as MichelFoucault (1996)contributed to thisThere is a real fightgoing on Over whatOver what we canroughly describe aspopular memory Its anactual fact that people ndashIrsquom talking about thosewho are barred fromwriting from producingtheir books themselvesfrom drawing up theirown historicalaccounts ndash that thesepeople never less have away of recordinghistory or rememberingit of keeping it freshand using it ( ) a wholetradition of strugglestransmitted orally or inwriting or in songs etc

However to fully understand the scepticism of the historians towards filmI think we have to understand what has shaped the contemporary practice ofresearching and writing history So permit me a diversion

Somewhat over ninety years ago history as a discipline experienced whatJacques Ranciegravere has identified as its lsquoCopernican revolutionrsquo (1994) The writ-ing of history up to that point had largely been focused on monarchs anddiplomats treaties and wars With the emergence of the Annales school ofhistorians10 history strove to break from this sole focus on the textual records

10 The group of Frenchhistorians clusteredaround the journalAnnales drsquohistoireeacuteconomique et socialeThe school has beenhighly influential insetting the agendafor historiography inFrance and indeedacross Europe sinceWorld War I TheAnnalisteschampioned the useof social scientificmethods by

provided by elites and from the writing of authoritative narratives based onsuch records The Annalistes ndash initially in France but very quickly elsewhereacross Europe ndash sought to model history on the emergent social sciences of eco-nomics demography sociology human geography and anthropology If thesenew domains could lay claim to the status of science then surely the venerablediscipline of history could do likewise

But history from its classical origins in ancient Greece has always beenabout storytelling and its truth claims intimately bound up with the efficacy ofthe narratives deployed by the writer However with the drive in the late nine-teenth century to establish the scientific character of history the reinvigorateddiscipline sought to distance itself from narrative and literary considerations

History in the twentieth century ndash economic social cultural political ndashincreasingly becomes the province of the professional specialist Such an expertwas now conversant with statistical methodologies and data tabulations Theywere anxious to distance the discipline from its literary functions and story-telling origins In particular history sought to put clear water between itselfand the historical novel or romance ndash the literary form in which broad swathesof the population consume history in the nineteenth century Roll the argumentforward another 50 years or so to the filmic innovations of DW Griffiths11 andit is in relation to the narrative and descriptive practices of film ndash now comingto dominate the market for popular accounts of the past ndash that history mustrealign itself

It is then in this context of the scientific aspirations of history as a disciplineand the emergence of film as an epic mode of narration of the past that wecan begin to understand the resistance of historians to filmic takes on the pastwhether factual or fictive

Well and good But as Ranciegravere reminds us history has found it hard to doaway with words or to abandon narrative form Indeed to do so would involvea reduction of history to the contributory disciplines of the various human sci-ences that the Annalistes lionized demography and social statistics geographysociology and anthropology In other words the baby would go out with thebathwater12

This meant preserving the power of storytelling within the historical enter-prise and re-engaging with a field of literature itself experiencing the revolutionin writing wrought by modernist practice Ranciegraverersquos argument is that even asit moved into its post-literary quasi-scientific guise history had to come toterms with a practice of realist and modernist literature This is a practice withan aesthetic that in Hayden Whitersquos words (Ranciegravere 1994) lsquolaid claim to thestatus of a kind of knowledge every bit as ldquorealisticrdquo rigorous and self-critical

9


Desmond Bell

as either science or historyrsquo Ranciegravere despite the intense interest in the filmicimage displayed in some of his other writing (2006 2007) does not in an earliertext like The Names of History discuss the impact of the evolution of cinema onthe writing of history Nor does he address how the emergent language of filmwith its photographic verisimilitude and complex handling of time and spaceshaped historiography However Ranciegravere does offer us what he calls a lsquopoetics

historians and aconcentration onsocial cultural andeconomic subjectmatter rather thanpolitical ordiplomatic themesThey encouraged theidea that historycould be writtenlsquofrom belowrsquo ratherthan be simply anaccount of politicalelites although asRanciegravere pointsmany of theAnnalistes wereuncomfortable withthe radicalimplications of thisdeparture

11 Griffith is usuallyattributed withpioneering thedevelopment ofnarrative cinemaMany of his filmsaddressed historicalthemes and in workslike Birth of Nation(1915) and Intolerance(1916) he displays apropensity towardsan epic treatment ofhistorical content

of historyrsquo ndash a critical consideration of historyrsquos literary practices in relationship

12 The more clear sightedof the Annalistessuch as Braudel andLe Roy Ladurierecognized that therigours of the newsocial sciences wouldhave to be reconciledwith the narrativepractices of literatureif history was toavoid the fate ofbecoming merely abranch of socialscience offering alongtitudinal analysisof social data

to a broader field of cultural production and I think that the term is a useful onein reconsidering the relation between history and film13

13 Ranciegravere asks howhistory balances itsnarrative scientificand political tasksoffering not so mucha sociology ofhistorical knowledgeas an identificationof the literaryprocedures by whichhistorical discourseseeks to escapeliterature and claimthe status of ascience

HISTORIANS AND THE CAMERA

The scepticism of historians towards film and television has not of course inhib-ited them from offering their services as historical consultants to programme-makers tackling historical subjects Within the BBC model of the historicaldocumentary which generally follows the expository mode the historical con-sultant functions as a source of lsquoquality controlrsquo She (and they are mainly men)is brought on-board to oversee and underwrite the authenticity of the pro-gramme content in accordance with the existing state of historical knowledgeWithin this Reithian14 inspired model historians do not need to know much ndashor indeed anything ndash about the programme production process Nor do theyneed to be aware of the formal features of film They are hired to vouch for thehistorical credentials of the piece and that is all

The historians who actually appear in front of camera in historical doc-umentaries (and they are a chosen few) have approached the challenge oftelevising history largely from a pedagogic standpoint Most operate with amodel of broadcast documentary as a form of illustrated lecture The histo-rianpresenter marshals hisher arguments before the camera and illuminatesthese employing the visual resources television can make available The greatmasters of this genre such as AJP Taylor and Kenneth Clarke produced spell-binding performances to camera in a simpler television age Today SimonSchama has assumed the mantle of the lsquohistory manrsquo Besides writing thescripts of the series he has been involved with15 Schama has also had a signifi-cant input into other aspects of some of these productions including the choiceof locations and elements of visualization strategy16 Unlike Taylor and ClarkeSchama in his films has to deal with the indignity of large sections of dra-matic reconstruction where out-of-work actors and hapless extras are directedto show us how things looked felt and indeed were in lsquoolden timesrsquo

Documentarists remain divided (Nichols 1991 176) about the validity ofre-enactment within factual film-making

Reenactments risk implying greater truth-value for the re-created eventthan it deserves when it is merely an imitation or copy of what has alreadyhappened once and for all

The problem as Nichols reminds is that documentary film in its contract withits audience vouches to represent the world and not just a fictional constructionof a world given flesh in the diegesis and design of a film Yet no matter howthorough our historical research in the absence of surviving testimony or visualrecords we can only represent the distant (pre-photographic) past by making aseries of assumptions about it through a filmic diegesis

10



This hypothetical history works ndash if it works at all ndash not because the directorsticks to the facts (under the watchful eye of the historian) but because sheeffectively abandons them They do so in favour of the imaginative logic of the

14 As in John Reith(1889ndash1971) firstdirector general of theBBC and leadingproponent of publicservice broadcasting

fiction film and the willing suspension of disbelief In other words directors

15 Simon Schama The Powerof Art (5 episodes 2006)A History of Britain (11episodes 2000ndash2002)

settle for a form of coherent verisimilitude that has little to do with the obser-

16 Interestingly Schama hassaid that he saw hiswriting task on theseries he has worked onas akin to providing ascreenplay

vational practices of documentary film-making and everything to do with therealist codes of the nineteenth-century novel and the twentieth-century onesof the historical lsquocostumersquo drama I will call this approach found in many histor-ical documentaries lsquounreconstructed reconstructionrsquo The introduction of suchlsquowell-dressedrsquo fictive elements into a documentary film can be a destabilizingone The desire to achieve the lsquolookrsquo of the past and to hypothesize how peo-ple dressed talked and behaved peddles the illusion that we as audience candirectly access the past through the photographic power of the filmic mediumIt offer us the illusion that the screen can be an unmediated window on thepast showing us lsquohow it really wasrsquo

Re-enacting history

I have to admit I have not been immune to the allure of rhetorical performanceto camera nor from lsquounreconstructed reconstructionrsquo However there are otherways to do dramatic reconstructions of past events My first film Wersquoll Fight andNo Surrender Ulster Loyalism and the Protestant Sense of History (Bell 1989a)and two later ones Redeeming History (Bell 1989b) and Out of Loyal Ulster (Bell2002b) sought to engage with popular senses of history in Ireland and theirrole in the construction of contemporary collective identities17

17 All of these films wereeither acquired orcommissioned byChannel FourTelevision at a timeat which the channelhas a serious interestin exploring thehistorical dimensionsof the lsquoIrishproblemrsquo The bestdiscussion ontelevision history andIreland remains BobFergusonrsquos 1985monographWersquoll Fight at one point involves a lsquoreconstructionrsquo of the iconic moment in

Loyalist history when the fabled twelve apprentice boys of Derry rushed for-ward to slam the gates of the city in the face of the advancing Jacobite army inDecember 1688 thereby committing the Protestants of Ulster to the Williamitecause

We lsquomonkeyed aroundrsquo with the lsquopartsrsquo During the shoot a number ofunemployed Catholic young men habitually hung around the walls killing timeWe asked them to lsquoperformrsquo the shutting of the gates event by closing a mod-ern security gate erected by the British army within the original Magazine Gateof the city to control vehicular access to the commercial centre of Derry in thecontext of the IRA bombing campaign of the period This lsquolive actionrsquo materialwas then intercut with footage shot at a later date of Loyalist bands parading ata lsquoRelief of Derryrsquo commemorative parade (Figure 1)

We see the bandsmen advancing in full regalia towards New Gate whichleads into the historic centre of the city In our treatment the Loyalists lsquoplay thepartrsquo of the besieging Jacobite forces while the defenders of the lsquoMaiden Cityrsquoare played by the nationalist youth in an ironic reversal of traditional roles

I guess we were seeking to make past and present collide ndash not I might addin the reassuring formula of Irish revisionist historiography where the profes-sional historian exposes the mythic status and folly of popular and ideologicallycharged versions of history Loyalist or Republican but in a dialectical man-ner This strategy quickly took the film-maker beyond the faux naturalism ofcostume drama

In Redeeming History commissioned by Channel Four Television in 1989 weinvited a group of Protestant six form pupils from a school in Derry to exploreaspects of a radical Protestant tradition The film explores the period of the Vol-unteer movement (just prior to the French Revolution) It plots in particular

11


Desmond Bell

the political career of one the Volunteer leaders the enigmatic Earl Bishop ofDerry Frederick Augustus Hervey (1730ndash1803) As the young people got fur-ther into the story of what we can call for want of a better term Protestant orcreole nationalism18 they discover the difficulties the lsquoProtestant Patriotsrsquo had in

18 The term has beenused to characterizethe assertions ofpoliticalindependence forIreland made by andfor the benefit of aprotestant propertiedclass from 1690 to1798 (see Cleary2002)

accommodating the democratic requirement of Catholic Emancipation withintheir demands for political autonomy for Ireland As the project developed sig-nificant differences of opinion appeared within the group of students Theseappeared to relate to contemporary political anxieties within the Protestantcommunity In a key sequence in the film we explored Herveyrsquos failed attemptto convince his fellow Volunteers at the national convention of the movementto support Catholic Emancipation19

19 On 10 November 1783the Grand NationalConvention of theVolunteer delegatemet in the RotundaDublin under thepresidency of theEarl of CharlemontDuring this time theclaim of theCatholics to vote atelections wasadvanced by theirself-appointedchampion FrederickAugustus HerveyEarl of Bristol andProtestant Bishop ofDerry

Radically different filmic elements are brought together to narrate this keyepisode in Irish history contemporary footage of a St Patrickrsquos Day Paradein Dublin heated discussions amongst the pupils on the question of polit-ical identity and contemporary republican terrorism Herveyrsquos speech to theConvention is delivered by actor Stan Townsend This performance is intercutwith contemporary footage of the loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry burningan effigy of the iconic traitor to the Loyalist cause Robert Lundy as theydo every December Through montage past and present historical fact andmyth ethnographic observation and fabulation are brought into an expressivealignment History is grasped as a process of investigation that can lead to com-munal self-questioning Our engagement with the past reveals the anxietiesand interests of the present

Historian Robert Rosenstone (1995 76) argues that the experimental his-tory film is a distinctive way of doing history

Rather than opening a window directly onto the past (it) opens a windowonto a different way of thinking about the past The aim is not to telleverything but to point to past events or to converse about history or toshow why history should be meaningful to people in the present

12



To lsquoconverse about historyrsquo [ ] lsquoto make it meaningfulrsquo [ ] could these notbe common aims for the historian and the film-maker

Historians however remain stubbornly empiricist in their methods Theirpreoccupation remains one of establishing the facts and the facts are seen asembodied in written documents and statistical tables rather than in oral witnessor visual sources such as photographs and film clips

Rosenstone identifies the chirographic bias of traditional historiography(1995 77) As he argues

The challenge of film to history of the visual culture to the written culturemay be like the challenge of written history tradition of Herodotus andThucydides to the tellers of historical tales

Documentary film with its power to provide personal witness and to explorememory through our visual archives has contributed to re-establishing thenew centrality of the oral and the visual as sources for lsquodoing historyrsquo Indeedthis may perhaps be its abiding contribution to the sort of postmodernhistoriography Rosenstone envisages

In my film An Scealaiacute DeirenachThe Last Storyteller (Bell 2002) I exploredthe role of oral record and visual archive in exploring folk memory This filmmade in both English and Irish follows the life of veteran Irish folklore collectorSean Oacute hEochaidh who died in 1992 (Figure 2)

The film deals with the eclipse of traditional storytelling within Gaelic cul-ture in the twentieth century It also muses on how filmic language ndash includingthe evocative power of moving image archive ndash might provide a new resourcefor the retelling of folk tales and for the exploration of myth as communal narra-tive The film retells a number of the classic folk tales Sean collected in Donegal

13


Desmond Bell

from the 1930s In one of these ndash The Cobbler and His Wife ndash fiction footage ele-ments ndash from Brian Desmond Hurstrsquos 1935 version of Riders to the Sea ndash arecombined with documentary footage of a 1940s Irish market town and withcontemporary live action cinematography to retell this story We explore Done-gal folk ways and interrogate myth Such is the stuff of anthropology I hear thehistorians saying

Indeed anthropology as a discipline has been more open to the challengeof film Ethnographic film may have started off its life as a mode of illustrat-ing the lsquoscientific findingsrsquo produced by traditional fieldwork writing ndash a moremodern form of the lecturerrsquos lantern show However it soon evolved intoa genre much more attentive to the formal features of filmic language andalert to the complex dynamics that the introduction of camera produces in anysocial encounter The subject position and cultural location of the ethnogra-pher as well as that of hisher informants now have to be factored into any fieldencounter As Marcus Banks (1999) has reported a lively synergy now operatesbetween visual anthropology media studies and documentary film-makingIndeed social anthropologists like Banks have acknowledged that lens-basedpractice has transformed their discipline undermining positivist certitudes andencouraging a new spirit of reflexivity and ethical engagement on the part ofresearchers

Traditional historians remain sceptical of such methodological manoeuvresThe discipline has been resistant to any lsquopostmodernist momentrsquo In generalhistorians are not known for their self-reflexivity nor for their propensity forsustained consideration of their writing practices and the roles these play in theproduction of historical truth

PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE AS HISTORICAL SOURCE ANDNARRATIVERESOURCE

One area where the conversation between historians and film-makers mightusefully begin is around the use and interpretation of the archival image Thepicture archives still and moving serve both as testimony to past events avail-able to the historian and as an expressive resource for visual storytelling forfilm-makers

Film theorist Joachim Paech (1989 59) reminds us of the preservative powerof the archival image lsquoThe ephemeral historical moment becomes a permanentpresence in the moving image in these archives of historyrsquo The photographicimage still or moving as Bazin observed (1981) embalms or mummifies his-tory providing in its visual trace a lsquosecond degree originalrsquo The traditionaltelevision documentary often operates under journalistic auspices As withintraditional historiography photographic sources are treated as transparent tothe historical reality they purport to depict But these evidential claims rest on aparticular limited understanding of the photographic process In Paechrsquos wordslsquoThe signifying material has to become invisible in favour of the intensified vis-ibility of the signifiedrsquo (1989 58) The photograph opens like a window on thepast

Indeed the indexical character of the photographic image is seen to under-write the documentary filmrsquos claim to facticity The photographic image signalsthe presence of the camera on the scene at the historical moment of imagecapture Digitalization may be changing all this and certainly the expanded

14



opportunities of image manipulation render the evidential status of the pho-tographic image much more problematic We have long been aware of thepossibilities of artifice in photographic practice in the use of the airbrush andin the cropping of the print but also in the camera point of view and in theeditorial decisions and occlusions of the operator Digital manipulation ndash theterm is a tautology of course ndash greatly expands the capacity for departures fromthe veridical

For the creative documentarist particularly those working in the traditionof found footage film-making the archival image is as much about memory asabout evidence And in relation to memory the photographic image (still ormoving) is a fragmentary survival from the past

In developing her analysis of found footage film-making and its forms ofmontage Catherine Russell (1999 240) draws upon Walter Benjaminrsquos theo-rization of memory as an aesthetic of ruins and traces The ruin for Benjaminis both the most material and most symbolically powerful form of the allego-rization of history Its fragments are testimony to what has gone before but arealso indicative of a loss that can never be repaired The photograph is like aruin in that it is always an incomplete record of what it purports to representThe photographic document has to be read and this requires a critical engage-ment at the level of representation Benjaminrsquos analysis Russell believes offersa critical solution to one of the recurrent problems faced by post-structuralistthought lsquohow to theorize cultural memory without mystifying it as an origi-nal sitersquo (Russell 1999 8) The found footage film does not seek to offer theimmediate indexical access to the past promised by the original photographicsources from which it is assembled For in the found footage film the imagesare all mixed up Combined together under a montage principle they establisha different sort of relationship with the past to the denotational claims madefor the individual photographic image The relationship of archival element tohistorical event becomes a figurative rather than referential one For Russell(1999238)

Its intertextuality is always also an allegory of history a montage of mem-ory trace which the film maker engages with the past through recallretrieval and recycling

Accordingly

The complex relation to the real that unfolds in found footage filmmaking lies somewhere between documentary and fictional modes ofrepresentation opening up a very different means of representing culture

So historians beware With the photographic image all is not always what itseems In the found footage film the complexity of the archival image becomesapparent We have to attend not only to the denotative aspects of the imagewhat it points to in the world that it depicts but also to its connotative elementsits meaning as a cultural statement and its construction through technologicalcultural and representational process

With this health warning in mind ndash how should we deal with this stockpileof images that both documentarists and historians pore over and use Are theseto be treated as primary evidence and mute testimony to an unattainable pastor as narrative resource capable of releasing the submerged voices of historyand of attending to their story

15


Desmond Bell

ARCHIVE IN THE CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY

Consider the use of archive in my film Hard Road to Klondike And in particularin one of the core sequences in the film portraying the arrival of Donegal emi-grant Miciacute Mac Gabhann in New York in the 1890s on-board an emigrant shipThis montage involves fictional elements period actualities of New York (fromthe Edison paper print collection) short varieties of staged incidents (from thesame source) and live action footage seeking to capture the historical reso-nances in the contemporary metropolis As in other found footage films noattempt is made to discriminate between these different sorts of footage by theuse of any framing or titling device (although at one point the sound track withits dubbed sound of a cine projector at work does explicitly invite the audienceto peep into a lsquocinema of attractionsrsquo20)

20 This term has beeninvoked by historianof early cinema TomGunning (1989) torefer to the works ofthe very early orlsquoprimitiversquo cinemawhere spectacle andspectatorship were atthe core of thepublicrsquos fascinationwith the novelty ofthe moving image

The archive material is not used here as it is in many television docu-mentaries to illustrate a didactic argument primarily established through anauthoritative voice-over provided by a historian Stephen Rea voices Mac Gab-hannrsquos story from a script adapted from the book and this is employed as thefilmrsquos central narrative thread He does so in an lsquoactorlyrsquo manner lifting thenarration to a level of subtlety where voice image and sound track resonatein an evocative manner creating a diegetic space somewhere between fact andfiction

Nor is the archive material used as evidence of a now gone lsquoway of lifersquoIndeed the use of the archive is on occasions not strictly bound by concernswith complete historical and geographical accuracy (Mac Gabhannrsquos early lifewas lived before the advent of film and the moving image material assembledto cover this part of his story is from a much later period much of it from the1934 film of the Aran Islands Aran of the Saints)

Is the film-maker guilty of playing free and easy with documentary sourcesIs he involved in some sleight of hand in this blurring of the boundaries of factand fiction in the choice of the archival mix

I would see Klondike as falling within a tradition of lsquofound footagersquo film-making as discussed by Ross As Beattie (2008 82) tells us the found footageor compilation film is one where

The found footage film-maker may combine nonfictional images selectedfrom sources as varied as commercial stock footage newsreels homemovies and fiction footage to construct an argument about the socio-historical world

This sort of film has its origins in a set of avant-garde visual practices based onthe found object on the method of collage and on early theories of film mon-tage Traditional television documentary film-making of course habitually usesarchive but it does so largely to illustrate other elements such as interviews andvoice-over In general it does not share the concerns of the found footage film-maker with problematizing the sources it uses Nor is it concerned with makingthe compilation of the material and its retournage an aesthetic end in itself as isthe case with film-makers like Bill Morrison in his film Decasia (2002) or PeterForgaacutecs in his Free Fall (1996) who slow down reframe and manipulate thefootage they use to achieve expressive effect

The found footage film does not seek then to offer the immediateindexical access to the past promised by the original photographic sourcesfrom which it is assembled In the found footage film the images are all

16



mixed up For example Mac Giobhan abandoned by his companions in thefrozen waste of the Yukon falls asleep and has a feverish dream in whichimages of his home of a love abandoned and of a hovering eagle merge(Figure 3)

The elements used here are 1930s archive footage of Curraghs off the Kerrycoastline a clip from William S Hartrsquos 1915 Alaskan adventure The DarkeningTrail and 1980s television archive of a raven in flight in the Yukon Com-bined together under a montage principle they establish a different sort ofrelationship with the past to the denotational claims made for the individualphotographic image The relationship of archival element to historical eventbecomes a figurative rather than a referential one Found footage film-makinglies somewhere between documentary and fictional modes of representation asit does between documentary practice and that of the avant-garde film-makerIt offers a critical reading of history and its sources As Keith Beattie (2008 85)argues

In this way metacommentary and historiography are implicated withina process in which source or lsquofound footagersquo is interrogated via filmiccollage to release functional and valuable ambiguities inherent in thefootage

Thus The Hard Road to Klondike seeks to remain faithful to a traditional prac-tice of storytelling while drawing on the figurative powers of the photographicimage and the critical practices of found footage film-making The film recaststhe autobiographical recollections of one particular migrant worker and hispassage to the new world Miciacute Mac Gabhannrsquos story is a thoroughly mod-ernist one speaking as it does to a wider experience of colonized peoples andof diaspora Mac Gabhannrsquos distinctive story speaks then to a wider experience

17


Desmond Bell

of colonized peoples not only through the account of his passage to the newworld but also in his relationship to the Native American peoples he encoun-ters in Montana and later in the Yukon In turn our treatment and its use offound footage casts Mac Gabhannrsquos story21 in broader terms in so far as the

21 Mac Gabhannrsquoscapacity as astoryteller inRotha Moacuter antSaoil lies in hisability to lift hisnarrative out ofthe sentimentalreminiscence ofthe emigrant Hisstory addressesissues ofsolidarity anddifferencebetween hishistoricalexperience as aGael and that ofthe Indiansmarginalized byminer-settlerssuch as himselfSee LukeGibbons (2005)lsquoWe knew theirplight wellrsquo ThirdText 19 5pp 555ndash66

archival photography employed once freed from its indexical lsquoobligationsrsquo canfunction figuratively to paint a bigger picture

Rebel Frontier is also a story of diaspora ndash in this case the attempt by emi-grant Irish and Finnish workers to bring distinctively European traditions ofradicalism (nationalism socialism and syndicalism) into the US labour move-ment at a pivotal moment in the class struggle in America However the filmplays the evidential power of the archival image off against the fictive possi-bilities of the lsquounreliable narratorrsquo Dashiell Hammett (1894ndash1961) had a shortcareer as a Pinkerton agent before emerging as a writer He appears to havebeen in Butte Montana during the labour disturbances that occurred thereduring World War I Later he drew upon this experience in the writing of hisclassic detective novel Red Harvest (1926) also set in Butte though at a slightlylater period

In the film we lsquoembodyrsquo the voice-over (provided by Martin Sheen) in thepersona of a Pinkerton agent who identifies himself as lsquoAbraham Byrnersquo Byrnetells us he has been sent to Butte to spy for the Anaconda Copper Company

ABRAHAM BYRNE (VO) And who am I you may ask You can call meAbraham Byrne in 1917 just 22 years old fresh out of Baltimore andeager for a slice of the action Up to then my work for the agency hadbeen pretty routine stuff matrimonial and missing person cases This Ireckoned was gonna be different

Byrne appears fleetingly before the camera throughout the film but his pres-ence is established primarily through his voice-over The agent looks back overthe tumultuous events that took place in Butte and on occasions ndash such asthe lynching of World War I activist Frank Little22 ndash is revealed as a possible

22 Frank Little was thefull-time organizerfor the syndicalistlabour union theIndustrial Workers ofthe World and waslynched in ButteMontana in June1917 in the midst ofthe minersrsquo strikethere A copy of aremarkablephotograph of hissemi-naked bodylaid out in themorgue is stilldisplayed in theSilver Dollar Saloonin the town and theoriginal of this waspart of the exhibitionWithout Sanctuaryshown at theRencontres dePhotographie in Arlesin summer of 2009(the image is used inmy film)

participant in these eventsHowever the mythic character of Hammettrsquos involvement is identified from

the outset by a number of interviewees who in a montage of contributions makeclear to us that we may be dealing with rumour hearsay and legend ndash in shortthe lsquocontingency of memoryrsquo ndash rather than with attested historical fact

MARK ROSS Dashiell came to Butte in 1917 as an operative for thePinkerton Detective Agency which had been hired by the AnacondaCompany to keep an eye on the miners[ ]in the labour unrest that washappening at that time here in townDAVE EMMONS Pinkerton was the favourite agency of the Companyby that time and amongst the spies who worked here during those yearswas Dashiell HammettKEVIN SHANNON We know Dashiell Hammett was offered $5000[ ]you know who Hammet was[ ] ehJERRY CALVERT He was employed as a private detective and thatformed the basis of his detective fiction later on[ ]

The narrator Abraham Byrne can then only but be regarded as a potentiallyunreliable one He may or may not represent Dashiell Hammett He may or

18



may not be giving us an accurate account of his activities in Butte The historicalrecord is unclear and the narration reflects that

Throughout the film the interviewees bring us back to the historical recordand to a popular memory of the labour struggles in Butte Intereviewee JackyCorr brandishes a print of the funeral of lynched World War I activist FrankLittle and reminds us that lynching is lsquonot un-Americanrsquo (Figure 4)

The reconstruction of the lynching in the film is based on the reported tes-timony of the witnesses of the time The problematizing of the narrative voiceaims not to relativize the truth of this shocking incident but to alert the viewerto the contingency of memory and the fallibility of documentary report

Most of us are aware of the negative portrayal within documentary filmcriticism of the lsquovoice of Godrsquo narration typically found within much of thedocumentary output of television This voice is often didactic in tone authora-tive in manner and expository in form In the historical documentary it is oftenthe voice of the historian as lecturer Voice-over does not have to be like this itcan problematize truth and authority claims ndash as in the case of Abraham Byrnein Rebel Frontier

Stella Bruzzi in the context of a discussion of the work of experimentaldocumentarist Chris Marker draws our attention to

the various ways in which the classic voice-over has been modified andits rules transgressed through the insertion of ironic detachment betweenimage and sound the reflexive treatment of the narration tradition andthe subversion of the archtypical solid male narrator

(2000 40)

Certainly in all three compilation films of mine discussed here I quite con-sciously sought to depart from a lsquovoice of Godrsquo narration in favour of avoice-over that had more in common with the lsquoinner monologuersquo found infiction film-making Here the voice-over often is used to reveal a personrsquosinner thoughts and motivations These can often be ironic and contradictory(although the voice-over can also be asked to provide exposition and narrative

19


Desmond Bell

coherence) Certainly the impact of using a nuanced voice-over such as thatfound in Rebel Frontier is not only to destabilize the veracity of the narration(but not that of the sources) but also to create a different sort of relation ofvoice to archival image to that found in the traditional television documentary

DOCUMENTING LIFEWRITING

Child of the Dead End addresses more directly the problem of evaluating thetruth claims of life writing and the authority of narration Its title sequenceoffers the viewer an exploration of lsquothe fact and fiction of the life of a writerrsquo andsignals that viewers will have to navigate between the two realms Historianshave rather assumed that Patrick Mac Gillrsquos early novels in particular Childrenof the Dead End (1913) and The Rat Pit (1914) can be read as autobiographicalaccounts of Mac Gillrsquos time as a navvy in Scotland Accordingly the books areregarded as an important historical source for understanding the life of themigrant Irish in pre-World War I Scotland (Dudley Edwards 1986)

I am not sure that is how Mac Gill saw his work His first novels combinesocial documentation and Gothic narrative in equal measure (above all in thetragedy of Norah Ryan central to each book) I was clear that from the outsetthat our film would have to mirror the ambivalent handling of fact and fictionpresent in Mac Gillrsquos work Accordingly the film archival sequences are seguedinto dramatic re-enactment of scenes from Mac Gillrsquos books and vice versa Theoriginal scene from the books may or may not portray events Mac Gill directlyexperienced We simply do not know Other scenes in the books are clearlyfictive in nature and are presented as such in the film Thus we fairly faithfullyfollow Mac Gillrsquos account of the early life of his central character Dermot Flynnas a spalpeen in Ulster and the west of Scotland provided in Children of theDead End This element of the book is usually regarded as lsquothinly disguisedrsquoautobiography not least because Mac Gill also rehearses this account in variousnewspapers interviews he gave Moreover his description of the life of the Irishitinerant labourer in Scotland in the first decade of the twentieth century iscapable of some degree of verification with regard to the historical record23

23 See Heather Holmesresearch (2002)

However with the introduction of the character Norah Ryan as Dermotrsquoslove interest in Children of the Dead End and as the main character in The Rat Pit(both books are narrated in the third person) we clearly move into the fictiverealm The account of Norahrsquos doomed relationship with her fellow workerDermot Flynn is only really intelligible within the tropes of the Victorian Gothicnovel although Mac Gill strives also towards social realist engagement with thelives of female migratory workers How then to film a life revealed in a series oftexts where social documentation and Gothic fable collide

The story of Norah Ryan is presented as a series of live action re-enactedscenes drawn from Children of the Dead End Dermot and Norah work togetherin the tatty fields They fall in love Dermot gambles away his wages Norahgoes off with a gentlemanrsquos son She becomes pregnant and ends up in a Glas-gow lodging house lsquoThe Rat Pitrsquo where her child is born She enters a life ofprostitution to support her son Dermot searches for but then rejects Norahon discovering her new status He leaves for London to take up a career as awriter This entire plot unfolds through dramatic action intercut with archivalsequences Fictive means are employed to portray fiction material

Our film then follows the real life of Patrick Mac Gill (available to us throughvarious documentary sources) as he becomes a writer and begins drafting his

20



work no longer in navvy bothies and model lodging houses but in St GeorgersquosLibrary at Windsor Castle24

24 In this we were greatlyassisted by thediscovery in thelibrary of WorchesterCollege Oxford ofan important cacheof letters from MacGill to his mentor inWindsor Canon SirJohn Neal DaltonThis revealed theextent of the debt ofMac Gill to Daltonwho assisted him inediting his earlybooks and in gettingthem published

Originally I had intended to provide an interpretative context for Mac Gillrsquoslife and work by recording a series of interviews with a range of social and cul-tural historians capable of providing informed opinion on the broader socialcontext within which Mac Gill wrote and discussed the fabric of his writingThis is a standard but useful television documentary didactic strategy How-ever as the editing of the film progressed it became clear to both my editorand me that much of the insight that could be gained from these recordedinterviews had already been integrated into the elaboration of the dramatic ele-ments Moreover the use of the archive assembled in the film could provide themost appropriate form of historical contextualization of Mac Gillrsquos story

The dramatic reconstructions in the film seek a congruence with thearchival material used in the film The intention here was not to try and elidethe two and create the illusion of a window on the past Rather we sought toopen up larger social issues as the drama plays out against a visual record ofthe time The interweaving of the two strives to parallel the manner in whichfact and fiction documentary report and gothic fable mingle in Mac Gillrsquos lifewriting an admixture that proved very successful in helping him achieve realistoutcomes as a writer

As in my other films the film is framed within a retrospective first-personnarration In this case the narrator an elderly and infirm Mac Gill (played byStephen Rea) is introduced to us on camera (Figure 5)

The old Mac Gill we encounter is now a failed writer living in Floridacirca 1957 He looks back on his life and tells his story directly to us the audi-ence (that is he addresses the camera directly as in a documentary interview)This mode of address is used throughout the film by the various charactersthat appear and provide something akin to documentary witness The rangeof material employed is similar to that found in the earlier films although there-enactment elements are more pronounced The live action materials such asthe archival clips serve to not only elaborate the narrative but raise questionsabout the truth status of Mac Gillrsquos life writing

21


Desmond Bell

In a direct address to the camera old Mac Gill reveals the fictive status ofNorah Ryan his character and reprises her story He hints at the continuinghold this character and her story had over him as a young author struggling tomake sense of his sudden elevation into the higher echelons of English society

OLD MAC GILL I decided to return to Glasgow to research my secondnovel The Rat Pit I needed to discover what had befallen Norah Ryan[ ]OK there was no Norah Ryan But there were hundreds of NorahRyans[ ] young innocent Irish girls driven into prostitution by povertyand desperationI came across many unfortunates like Norah during my time in Glas-gow These women ndash like the navvies ndash were treated like outcasts bylsquorespectablersquo society[ ]

Rearsquos narration is dubbed over stills of female tenement dwellers in the Cow-caddens slums (one of which we have briefly seen earlier in the hands of youngMac Gill in Windsor) These shockingly intimate indeed intrusive images ofwoman and their children were taken in 1906 as part of the documentationof housing conditions in Glasgow and are now archived in the cityrsquos MitchellLibrary25 (Figure 6)

25 See Roberta McGrathrsquosdiscussion of thiscollection in AOrsquoBrien and AGrossman (eds)(2007) Migration andLocationTransculturalEthnographic MediaPractice LondonWallflower Press

Present and past indexical photographic trace and imaginative retellingare brought into creative alignment in a manner that hopefully both moves theviewers and causes himher to question what they are seeing and what thenarrator is telling them The collision of past and present and of different sortsof documentary images and sounds intermingled with fictive reconstructionseek to provide a critical interrogation of a key text dealing with Irish migrantexperience

22



CONCLUSION

Documentary film-making today is an exciting field of creative innovationwhere many of the key elements of practice ndash the archival image the voice-over the reconstructed sequence ndash are currently the subject of experimentationand critical discussion The creative or performative documentary26 is plotting

26 The term has beenintroduced intodocumentary filmcriticism by BillNichols (2001) torefer to films thatdepart from earlierconcerns with anobjective andexpository stylechoosing insteadapproaches that areoften quite subjectivein which thefilm-maker has apresence and hisherpractices ofconstructing theirfilm often figure asmuch as the social orhistorical topic theyare addressing

new ways to narrate the past In the found footage film in particular we can seethe contrasting ways that historians and film-makers deal with picture archiveresources The former seek to privilege the photographic image as evidentialsource while the latter seek to exploit the expressive and interrogative powerof the found and manipulated image

In reworking these archival resources in order to represent and interro-gate history creative documentary film-making is I believe doing importanthistoriographical work It both undermines objectivist historical accounts andencourages the viewer to actively engage with how we make sense of the pastIn effect I am arguing that if historians knew more about the language andproduction processes of film then they might be more critical and reflexiveabout the ways in which history operates as discourse including the challengeof how history might deal with visual evidence I suggest that experimentalor creative documentary film practice is the leading exemplar of what mightbe called a lsquopostmodern historyrsquo that is a representation of the past that isreflexive multivocal and partial (in both senses of that word)

Filmic history encourages the discipline of history to reflect critically on itslsquopoeticsrsquo and on its contiguity with other practices of cultural production His-torians are having to think through their use of narrative figurative trope anddiscursive strategy within the practices of writing and conceptualization theyemploy History is also having to reflect on the role of subject position and ide-ological inflection in the production of the historical text Such reflections arenow commonplace in enlightened documentary film practice and indeed theinteraction of history as a discipline with the practices of literature and of filmproduction may be encouraging this development

Hopefully this article provides a useful exemplar of a reflective analysis offilm practice that can help to illuminate a range of critical issues around theplace of documentary film within the lsquopoeticsrsquo of history

After all despite 70 years of social scientific aspiration history remains whatit always has been ndash an art of telling stories about the past Perhaps it sharesmore in common with documentary film-making than it cares to admit

REFERENCES

Banks M and Morphy H (eds) (1999) Rethinking Visual Anthropology NewHaven Yale University Press

Barthes R (1972) Mythologies (trans Annette Lavers) London PaladinBeattie K (2008) Documentary Display Reviewing Non Fiction Film and Video

London Wallflower PressBell Desmond (dir) (1989a) Wersquoll Fight and No Surrender Ulster Loyalism and

the Protestant Sense of History Channel Four Television 55 minutes GlassMachine Productions

mdashmdashmdash (1989b) Redeeming History Protestant Nationalism in Ireland ChannelFour Television 52 minutes Faction FilmsGlass Machine Productions

23


Desmond Bell

mdashmdashmdash (1999) Hard Road to KlondikeRotha Mor an tSaoil RTETG4BBCNI 55minutes Faction FilmsGlass Machine Productions (screened at the 1999Venice Film Festival)

mdashmdashmdash (2002a) The Last Story TellerAn Scealai Deirenach RTETG4 52 min-utes Asylum PicturesBesom Productions (screened at the 2002 Venice FilmFestival)

mdashmdashmdash (2002b) Out of Loyal Ulster Channel Four Television 52 minutesFaction FilmsGlass Machine Productions

mdashmdashmdash (2004) Rebel Frontier RTEYLE 5260 minutes Asylum Pic-turesPoolbeg Productions

mdashmdashmdash (2009) Child of the Dead EndTachran Gan Todhchai TG4BBC Scotland7383 minutes Glass Machine Productions (screened at the 2009 FestivalFilms du Monde Montreal)

Bell D (2004) lsquoShooting the past Found footage filmmaking and popularmemoryrsquo Kinema Spring edition pp 74ndash89

mdashmdashmdash (2006) lsquoCreative film and media practice as research In pursuit of thatobscure object of desirersquo Journal of Media Practice 7 2 pp 85ndash100

Bill Morrison (dir) (2002) Decasia 67 minutes Hypnotic PicturesBruzzi S (2000) New Documentary A Critical Introduction London RoutledgeClayton S (2007) lsquoVisual and performative elements in screen adaptation A

film-makerrsquos perspectiversquo Journal of Media Practice 8 2 pp 129ndash45Cleary J (2002) lsquoMisplaced ideas Locating and dislocating Ireland in colonial

and postcolonial studiesrsquo in C Bartolovich and N Lazarus (ed) MarxismModernity and Postcolonial Studies Cambridge Cambridge University Presspp 101ndash24

Dudley Edwards O (1986) lsquoPatrick MacGill and the making of a historicalsource With a handlist of his worksrsquo The Innes Review of the Scottish CatholicHistorical Association 37 2 pp 73ndash99

Ferguson Bob (1985) Television on History Representations of Ireland LondonComedia

Forgaacutecs Peter (dir) (1996) Free Fall 75 minutes HungaryFoucault M (1996) lsquoFoucault live Interviews 1961ndash1984rsquo SemiotextGunning T (1989) lsquoThe cinema of attractions Early film its spectator and

the avant-gardersquo in Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (ed) Early FilmLondon British Film Institute

Habermas J (1974) Knowledge and Human Interest London HeinemanHolmes H (2002) lsquoRemembering their history Memories of Irish migratory

agricultural workers in Scotlandrsquo Human Affairs 2 pp 139ndash52Koppel G (2008) lsquoDocumentary ndash the evocation of a worldrsquo Journal of Media

Practice 8 3 pp 305ndash23Mac Conghail M (1999) lsquoThe hard road to Klondikersquo Film West 34 pp 25ndash26Nichols B (1991) Representing Reality ndash Issues and Concepts in Documentary

Bloomington Indiana University Pressmdashmdashmdash (2001) Introduction to Documentary Bloomington Indiana University

PressNightingale D J and Cromby J (eds) (1999) Social Constructionist Psychol-

ogy A Critical Analysis of Theory and Practice Buckingham Open UniversityPress p 228

Paech J (1989) lsquoThe mummy livesrsquo in W De Greef and W Hesling (eds)Image Reality Spectator Essays on Documentary Film and Television LeuvenAmersfoot pp 57ndash65

24



Queenan J (2009) lsquoBarbarians at the studio gatesrsquo The Guardian 4 December2009

Ranciegravere J (1994) The Names of History Minneapolis Minnesota UniversityPress

mdashmdashmdash (2006) Film Fables (trans Emiliano Battista) Oxford Bergmdashmdashmdash (2007) The Future of the Image (trans Gregory Elliott) London VersoRosenstone R (1995) Visions of the Past Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History

Cambridge Harvard University PressRussell C (1999) Experimental Ethnography The Work of Film in the Age of Video

Durham Duke University PressWillig C (2001) Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology Buckingham

Open University Press

SUGGESTED CITATION

Bell D (2011) lsquoDocumentary film and the poetics of historyrsquo Journal of MediaPractice 12 1 pp 3ndash25 doi 101386jmpr1213_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Desmond Bell is Visiting Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Study ofthe Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and formerly Professor of FilmStudies at Queens University Belfast He is currently working on a film on IrishRepublican activist and International Brigade volunteer Frank Ryan ContactIASH University of Edinburgh Hope Park Square Edinburgh Scotland

E-mail dlbellqubacuk

25


Desmond Bell

within the television schedule extend access to historical understanding to abroader range of people than the specialist texts of academic written history1

1 Survey data gathered inAustralia and theUnited States suggeststhat in these societiesat least 81 per cent ofthe population ratedfilm and television astheir primary sourceof historicalinformation with only53 per cent identifyinga print source See JWarren-Findlay(2003) lsquoHistory innew words Surveyresults in the UnitedStates and AustraliarsquoAustralian CulturalHistory 23 pp 43ndash52

In this article I do not seek to provide a definitive answer to these ques-tions nor do I present a comprehensive review of contemporary documentarypractice and its approach to the representation of history Instead I seek to illu-minate the issues that I think are involved by drawing upon my own work asa documentary film-maker concerned with exploring Irish history Hopefullymy reflections on that work may enable the reader to explore some of the waysthat film- and programme-makers have dealt with problems of historical rep-resentation and narrative The films discussed here are my own They lsquodorsquo acertain sort of history Through a reflective analysis of my work in lsquohistory filmrsquoI seek to tease out the distinctive manner in which documentary film-makersapproach history

METHODOLOGY

Over the last number of years in collaboration with my editors Roger Buck andmore recently Simon Hipkins I have developed an archivally based creativedocumentary practice that seeks to explore aspects of Irelandrsquos post-Faminepast including the Irish diaspora Rotha Moacuter an tSaoilThe Hard Road to Klondike(Bell 1999) drew on a rich reservoir of early film material both actuality andfictional in character in order to retell the classic Irish emigrant story of MiciacuteMacGiobhanrsquos tramp through frontier America to the Yukon Rebel Frontier(Bell 2004) employed a similar archival strategy combined now with live actionre-enactment to retell the story of the Irish and Finnish miners of ButteMontana and their struggle against the Anaconda Copper Mining Companyduring World War I This film narrated by actor Martin Sheen employed theadditional device of the lsquounreliable narratorrsquo The story of the momentousevents unfolding in Butte is told from the perspective of a Pinkerton agentsent to break the minersrsquo strike This might be a young Dashiel Hammet andthe script draws upon Hammetrsquos 1926 novel Red Harvest set in Butte TachraacutenGan TodhchaiacuteChild of the Dead End (Bell 2009) deals with the life and work ofDonegal-born navvy poet and writer Patrick Mac Gill It also employs a rich cor-pus of archival images alongside dramatic elements somewhat more elaboratethan those found in the earlier films

These films have been heralded for their use of archive that has been rec-ognized as quite distinctive within documentary film-making in Ireland inparticular in so far as they employ early cinema material as an expressive andstorytelling resource employing the conventions of continuity editing in cut-ting this footage (Mac Conghail 1999 25) For some time I have been seekingto make sense of my own creative documentary work and its use of archivematerial as both historical trace and as narrative resource exploited to engagewith the past (Bell 2004) Hopefully these reflections might illuminate thebroader issues around documentary film as historiographical practice raised inthis article

Needless to say my methodological approach is that of a practitioner con-cerned with illuminating the creative and critical auspices of my own workrather than that of a film theorist per se Film-making is always an explo-ration and testing of ideas about the medium its creative capacities and itsmode of public address However any attempt to theoretically extrapolate

4











5


Desmond Bell








(Willig 2001 10)



6
















7


Desmond Bell













8





evidence











9


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






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SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25











5


Desmond Bell








(Willig 2001 10)



6
















7


Desmond Bell













8





evidence











9


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell








(Willig 2001 10)



6
















7


Desmond Bell













8





evidence











9


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25
















7


Desmond Bell













8





evidence











9


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell













8





evidence











9


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25





evidence











9


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell














10










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25










Re-enacting history








11


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell








12










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25










13


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell








14







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25







Accordingly




15


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell











16







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25







17


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell













18









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25









(2000 40)


19


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell









20









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25









21


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell






22



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25



CONCLUSION








REFERENCES






23


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25


Desmond Bell






















24









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25









SUGGESTED CITATION


CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS



25

Documents

DocumentaryÞlmandthe poeticsofhistory295284,en.pdf · documentary Þlm history practice-based research reßective analysis ABSTRACT How do documentary Þlm-makers picture the past