Track The Popularity Of Documentaries

Jade Reeson

1895• The ‘Lumieres Brothers’ created the first moving films, of which the most

popular was ‘L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat’, translated into English as ‘The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station’. The 50 second silent film fascinated it’s audiences for the simple fact they were able to see the detail of movement captured through a film camera for the very first time.

• These short clips were known as ‘Actualities’, they were called ‘Actualities’ because the footage that was captured was real life events that were happening around them.

1922• We then move on to see the creation of ‘Nanook Of The North’. It’s

creator Robert Flaherty and also one of the main features of this documentary based this film on his family and The Canadian Artic. Flaherty was massively criticized however for creating and staging events within his documentaries. This was done though to dramatize the events that took place to make the documentary exciting and gripping to it’s audiences – this is a common theme in todays documentaries.

• The word ‘Documentary’ was created by John Grierson to describe Flaherty’s film. Nanook was the first feature length Factual film and Grierson described this production as ‘the creative interpretation of reality’.

1936• In the 1930’s Grierson went on and became a major exponent of poetic-

realist approach to documentaries. Nightmail (1936) was an international film made about the mail train from London to Edinburgh. Grierson was highly criticized for this film as it focused more on its poetic elements, such as; movement, rhythm, lighting and sound rather than focusing on the social and political elements – making machinery favored over human beings.

1950’s-1960’s• The next major development of documentaries was called ‘Direct Cinema’.

This began in The United States Of America. It’s aim was to present social and political events directly, in an unmediated so it was presumed that the footage is recorded exactly as the events happen, without any need of a film-maker.

• Camera’s also developed in this time, allowing them to be hand held making the recording more spontaneous.

1950’s-1960’s• Whilst Direct Cinema was being developed, at the same time a similar sort

of development was being created in France called Cinema Verite (‘Cinema Truth’). This was a way of filming real life situations in natural settings.

• Cinema Verite uses; handheld camera’s, natural lighting, location filming and direct sound.

• Cinema Verite techniques make the film seem more realistic and truthful to it’s audiences.

From as early as the 1960’s• Mockumentaries were about as early as the 1960’s however wasn’t really

seen until the 1980’s. Mockumentaries take the typical codes and conventions of documentaries to make the audiences think that it is factual when it actually isn’t.

• Because it is so easy to fake the codes and conventions of a documentary it often makes it’s audiences question whether we can trust the documentary style.