History of Documentary

The Lumiere brothers made the first ever documentary in 1895. They made and used a camera that could hold only 50 feet of film stock. Their short unedited clips captured the life around them. They were named ‘Actualities’.

The most famous documentary was ‘Un Train Arrivee’ made in

1895. This documentary featured a train pulling

into a station. However, audiences were shocked

by seeing moving images for the first time, this

being the reason why it was so famous.

The more popular documentary format arose with ‘Nanook of The North’ made by Robert Flaherty in 1922. The word ‘documentary’ was founded by John Grierson, and it was used to describe this type of documentary. Nanook was the first factual film, and was the first to use what Grierson described as ‘The Creative Interpretation of Reality’.

Flaherty planned most of the scenes, therefore the documentary was more exciting and dramatic for the audience.

Grierson became the head the GPO film unit in England in the 1930s and was a major exponent of ‘poetic-realistic’ approaches within documentaries. Nightmail (1936) began as a film about the mail train from London to Edinburgh.

The filming and editing emphasised the poetic elements of film form: movement, rhythm, light and sound. Critics of Grierson accused him of neglecting the social and political issues in his films, being in favour of a more modernist approach that celebrated machinery more than human beings.

Major documentaries appeared again in the 1950s and 60s. Direct Cinema arose, this was a movement in the United States aimed to present social and political issues in a direct and unmediated way, giving the perspective that events were recorded exactly as they happened without the involvement of the film-maker. The development of light-weight film cameras using smaller film stock (16mm as opposed to 35mm film) allowed cameras to be shoulder mounted and be used in a mobile matter. Key names in this movement are The Mayles Brothers, Pennebaker and Fred Wiseman.

The modern social issue documentaries such as Supersize Me and Bowling for Columbine has its place in direct cinema. The film-maker usually has a political or social agenda that presents the events as ‘real’ as they can be, even though they are in full control of the editing process.

A similar movement called ‘Cinema Verite’ (Cinema Truth) was on the radar. ‘Cinema Verite’ is a minimalist

style of film making that the viewer is given a direct view of what is happening in front of the camera without any

artificial parts which was usually incorporated in the film-making process. ‘Cinema Verite’ favours direct sound,

location filming , natural lighting and hand-held cameras.

Jean Rouch was an important documentarian in the 1960s. However, ‘Cinema Verite’ and the techniques have been used by drama-makers such as Ken Loach, following the term ‘drama documentary’ used to describe films like ‘Cathy Come Home’

The use of ‘Cinema Verite’ techniques make a film seem more realistic and honest to an audience. Recently, film-makers use documentary codes and conventions to fool audiences into thinking a programme or film is factual, however it is not. This form of film-making is known as a ‘Mockumentary’.

Mockumentaries usually demonstrate how codes and conventions can be faked, they cause the viewer to consider why the audience place fait in documentaries and rely on them as form of information.