Teaching Documentary Film History

teaching media
with Boris Trbic
In the Archive
of Cinematic
Memories:
Teaching
Documentary
Film History
I
t is not surprising that film and media students often think
of documentary film as a platform for expressing political
opinions, dissent or frustrations with important, contemporary social issues. In recent years our media and
English curricula have been inundated with American
documentaries focusing on the political profiles and governing
strategies of neo-conservatives, the Western geopolitical mores
in the Middle East, the emergence of political and extremist
Islam, corporate crimes and media misdemeanours in an era of
unprecedented economic progress.
In the last eighteen months, however, there appears to have
been a marked decline in the amount of feature documentaries
in cinemas. It seems that those suffocated by the steady diet of
political documentaries include filmmakers, audiences and
distributors. English, media and film educators who regularly
used documentary films in their classes may find this situation
challenging. However, students can be given relevant insights
into the history of the documentary form – an aspect of
curriculum that was marginalized in previous years, giving way
to the coverage of current political issues.
Where to begin?
Teachers who were bombarded by articles, study guides,
conference papers and other support material regarding gun
control, the war in Iraq or corporate kleptocracy may be willing
to change the texts and the format of their classes, but they
could also be unsure about the relevance of old documentary
texts or their capacity to engage present-day students. So,
where to begin? This overview of documentary film history
provides a list of the essential films and filmmakers and notes
that might help educators in choosing the most relevant and
appropriate film texts for their classroom practice.
There was a lot of interest in film factuality at the end of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century that
coincided with the establishment of film as a medium. Auguste
and Louis Lumière’s shorts produced in 1895/1896 may assist
students in understanding how the early films engaged the first
The term ‘documentaire’ was used by the French to describe
travel films, also popular in the early decades of the twentieth
century. However, the term was first used to convey its present
meaning by John Grierson in February 1926, in his review of
Robert J. Flaherty’s film Moana (1926) in the New York Sun.
Grierson defined documentary film as ‘the creative treatment of
actuality’.1 Flaherty’s remarkable film about Inuit life Nanook of
the North (1922) is often described as the birth of creative,
engaging documentary film. It is a fascinating account of exotic
lands, people living in a harsh, unforgiving climate and a
dramatic evocation of the reality of life under those conditions.
Poetic and inspiring, Nanook of the North still carries the aura
of a pioneering attempt at the documentary form. Short
excerpts from this film and Flaherty’s Moana could help initiate
class discussion and reveal a lot about our perceptions of
‘reality’ in a documentary film. As Bill Nichols tells us, Flaherty’s
great story about the struggle for survival in the Arctic represents
Inuit culture in the way that the Inuit were not yet prepared to
do for themselves. In addition to that, Nichols suggests that
Flaherty’s sponsor, Revillon Frères, had a commercial interest
This overview of documentary
film history provides a list of the
essential films and filmmakers
and notes that might help
educators in choosing the most
relevant and appropriate film
texts for their classroom practice.
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audiences, and inspire them to look at the events, settings,
social actors and circumstances of interest to early filmmakers.
Films about amputations and various medical conditions were
at first very descriptive, primitively structured and lacking a
point of view, but were very popular among early cinemagoers.
Left: the fog of war right: grizzly man
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teaching media
with Boris Trbic
Though documentaries had been
used in communist Russia from
the early 1920s to promote the
rule of the working class, it was
the work of Leni Riefenstahl in
Germany that most memorably
and effectively used documentary
filming as a form of propaganda.
Left: night and fog right: march of the penguins
in representing fur hunting as an activity that benefits the Inuit
as well as consumers. Flaherty’s stress on the traditional skills
of a hunter, no longer relied on by most Eskimos in the 1920s,
and on the nuclear family created for the sake of the film also
suggest that the filmmaker wished to portray a particular
lifestyle and characters in his film.2
In the Soviet Union, experimental filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s
Kino-Eye (1924) and Man With a Movie Camera (1929) introduced avant-garde formalism that saw film as an education
tool. Preoccupied by the aesthetic of visual image, Vertov used
montage to convey the idea of Soviet progress.
Alberto Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (1926) was an original
study of Paris and its people and was followed by a series of
city symphonies documentary films. Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin:
Symphony of a Big City (1927) used rhythmic montage to
examine life in the urban, industrial metropolis. Ruttmann’s film
is widely available and provides a very good link with Impressionist documentary style and, when screened with or without
musical accompaniment, the aesthetics of silent film and the
importance of sound. Jean Vigo’s personal style in A propos de
Nice (1930) and Joris Ivens’ The Bridge (1928) and Rain (1929),
exercising rhythmical patterns in movement, opened new
avenues for creative expression in the documentary realm.
Screening social consciousness
Hitler’s coming to power signified the birth of documentary as a
propaganda tool. Though documentaries had been used in
communist Russia from the early 1920s to promote the rule of
the working class, it was the work of Leni Riefenstahl in
Germany (Triumph of the Will [1935], about the Nuremberg
Rally, and Olympia [1938], about the 1936 Olympic Games in
Berlin) that most memorably and effectively used documentary
filming as a form of propaganda. Hitler’s propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels first used propaganda in radio news and
commentary, but filmmaking emerged as a revolutionary tool
for conveying political ideas to the masses.
Riefenstahl’s biography and films are highly controversial. Her
documentaries are often used to illustrate Hitler’s popularity in
1930s Germany and are frequently accompanied by films
commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. The problem with
screening Riefenstahl’s documentary masterpieces on their
own is that some students may not be aware of the wider
historical context and the implications of the rise of Nazism in
the 1930s.3 Nevertheless, screening them as a ‘double bill’ with
Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (1956) as English teachers often
do, focusing on the literature of the Holocaust, may lead to
confusion as students may mix up the periods of films’ production and the political, cultural and historical contexts.
At the same time, filmmakers on the Left, like Spanish surrealist
filmmaker Luis Buñuel, tried to show their opposition to social
inequality and their support for the poor and the marginalized.
Buñuel made Land Without Bread (1932), a socially conscious
documentary about the appalling conditions of endemic
poverty in the Spanish countryside. The 1930s saw many other
filmmakers supporting social equality, like Joris Ivens (The 400
Million, 1939) or Jean Renoir (La Vie est à nous, 1936), but also
some non-political documentaries, like Jan Kucera’s Construction (1933) or John Ferno’s Easter Island (1934).
‘Winning’ the war: Second World War
documentaries
During the war, the British and American governments and
creative sources joined hands to create a strong propaganda
Jennings’ short documentaries with poetic, multi-layered voiceover narration could be used to convey the importance of the
well-structured script, the relationship between visual material
and spoken word and the attention to detail in camera work
and editing. More than six decades after they were produced,
these documentaries have not lost their appeal.
Post war: Looking back, looking forward
Following the war, the memories of atrocities echoed in
European documentary films. Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog is
an homage to those that perished in concentration camps.
Some teachers may decide to accompany the screening of
Resnais’ film, only thirty-two minutes long, with excerpts from
Marcel Ophuls’ The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), a longer and
more elaborate study of the French collaboration with the
Nazis. Ophuls’ film is rarely used in senior secondary curriculum, but students might find it an open, uncompromising
critique of collaboration and cowardice during the occupation.
While cuts in government funding prevented the British
documentary film from continuing along the path threaded
before the war, individual filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson,
Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson still made some interesting
films during the 1950s. In the United States, popular
presenter Edward R. Murrow and his producer Fred
Friendly confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy using
the CBS network’s See It Now program. Excerpts
from George Clooney’s feature film Good Night,
and Good Luck (2005) about the external pressures applied to Murrow’s editorial team might
assist students in understanding the significance
of balanced reporting in resisting repression and defending
freedom of speech.4
James Monaco points out, ‘[T]his new style of documentary
eschewed narration, ostensibly allowing its subjects to speak
for themselves.’6 D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967)
and Monterey Pop (1968) do not merely look at the rise of pop
culture, but also chronicle the rebellion of the 1960s generation
against war, totalitarianism and sexism.
Renowned observational documentary film High School
(Frederick Wiseman, 1968) makes for compelling viewing as it
allows teachers and students to speak for themselves and
allows the viewer/audience into their personal narratives.
Although it is rarely used in secondary schools, this film could
provide students with a strong sense of identification with an
observational documentary mode. It provides a lot of excellent
ideas on how to use the camera as a storytelling and not
merely a recording tool. It also broadly and un-schematically
deals with high school students and their problems, making it
extremely engaging viewing for their peers.
One should also remember
that the darling of conservative
film critics in America, March
of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet,
2005), could also be discussed
as a political film, marked by a
conspicuous absence of political
themes and issues.
New forms
New lightweight equipment
assisted the advent of
television and the new
generation of documentary
filmmakers. The mobile unobtrusive camera became the new
recording and storytelling tool of the
cinema vérité5 style in France and direct
cinema in the United States, with the television
picture having the appearance of live images. As
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In 1930s England, documentary film began its long journey as a
socially conscious form. John Grierson believed that a documentary must respond to social needs and must have social
purpose. Grierson’s Drifters (1929), Flaherty’s Industrial Britain
(1932), Basil Wright and Harry Watt’s Night Mail (1936), and
other films made in this period focus on the representation of
social and working conditions in England. Screening excerpts
from these documentaries in senior secondary classrooms can
be a very good introduction to conversations about the socially
and politically engaged documentary filmmakers. In 1939,
Grierson became the film commissioner and chief executive of
the National Film Board of Canada, the most important
documentary institution in the world.
Propaganda machinations
machine against the Nazis. Films by Pat Jackson and Humphrey Jennings (London Can Take It! [1940], Words for Battle
[1941], Listen to Britain [1942]) in Britain, and those made by
the Hollywood filmmaking stars John Huston, John Ford and
Frank Capra, emerged as the crown of Allied documentary
production. John Ford’s The Battle of Midway (1942) and
William Wyler’s The Memphis Belle (1944) are the most important American documentary films from this period. The Soviets
also used their leading filmmakers, Vsevolod Pudovkin and
Aleksandr Dovzhenko, to produce war documentaries.
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teaching media
with Boris Trbic
Focusing on the life of two former socialites – relatives of Jackie
Kennedy – living in their ruined mansion, Grey Gardens (Elen
Hovde and Albert Maysles, 1975) is an intimate observational
portrait of a world in decline, and simultaneously a post
scriptum legacy of the American Camelot. Barbara Kopple’s
Harlan County USA (1976), on the other hand, is a moving
portrait of the people of Harlan County, Kentucky, the epicentre
of the coal miners’ union movement in the United States. Thirty
years later, this film remains one of the rare attempts to map
out the industrial relations conflicts in the English-speaking
world; looking at the endemic poverty, health hazards, unresolved disputes as well as corporate strategies to eliminate
organized workers’ protest. Kopple’s use of live folk and rhythm
and blues music performed as part of the protest still reverberates among contemporary audiences. More than a storytelling
device or a stylistic exercise, her courage to confront the armed
thugs and strike breakers with a rolling camera is first and
foremost a lesson in a filmmaker’s integrity.
Kopple’s film is strongly recommended to secondary
teachers looking at the
issues of social equality
and freedom of
speech. It is also
mandatory viewing
for tertiary lecturers
of film and media
still perplexed by
the fact that
following a decade
of conservative
government and
radical reforms of
industrial relations laws (a
hundred years after they were
introduced), Australian filmmakers
are not looking at workers’ rights as an
area of interest for their cinematic narratives.
Recent tendencies
The advent of television brought a tidal wave of news and
current affairs programs that were ostensibly competitive with
the documentary ‘actuality’. However, this did not prevent nonconformist filmmakers from offering the increasingly globalized
film market a plethora of engaging documentary stories.
Werner Herzog’s documentary films emerge as an impressive
yet uneven body of work. Lessons of Darkness (1992), the film
that uses the narrative framework of science
fiction to convey the outcome of the Gulf
War, is interesting for discussing
the stylistic features of documentary narration. According to Adam Bingham,
Herzog makes an
attempt to begin in
abstraction and
proceed to try to
discover the deeper
layer of truth.7
Herzog’s career
spans five decades
and he continues to
make striking and
provocative documentaries such as Grizzly Man
(2005), which chronicles the life
and death of wildlife enthusiast
Timothy Treadwell who lived among
grizzly bears for thirteen summers.
Errol Morris’ films Gates of Heaven (1978), The Thin Blue Line
(1988), Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
(1999) and The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of
Robert S. McNamara (2003), and his extraordinary television
program First Person, are characteristic of the director’s
unwavering and ostensibly detached filmmaking style. They
could be screened to exemplify different interviewing techniques as well as the use of re-enactments in the broader
context of the documentary narrative.
British filmmaker Nick Broomfield developed his unique
interviewing style with his trademark sound boom and his onscreen appearances. Broomfield’s influence is evident in the
later works of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. Soldier
Girls (1981), The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (1991)
and Kurt & Courtney (1998) are some of his films that may
engage senior secondary and tertiary audiences. Teachers
should check for ratings and content.
Senior secondary and tertiary students frequently leave their
research aside or incomplete to focus on exhaustively filming
their subjects, hoping to discover what the film is about in the
process. They are often unaware of the crucial role of studying
their documentary subjects before the start of filming, let alone
the cost effectiveness of well-conducted research. The
engaging self-reflexivity of the veteran filmmaker Agnès Varda
in The Gleaners and I (2000), Melvin Van Peebles’ exploration
of the marginalization of African-Americans in Hollywood
(1998’s Classified X, directed by Mark Daniels) or home-movie
aesthetics used for dramatising the predicament of a pariah
family in Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003) may
assist such students in understanding different stylistic
approaches to documentary material.
Music documentaries, from Pennebaker’s 1960s films to
contemporary tales of success, failure and decline (Ondi
Timoner’s hilarious, Faustian DiG! [2004] – only for tertiary
audiences) remain highly valued material for aspiring filmmakers. Film and media students often find that the strategies
employed in narratives about contemporary pop stars remain
relevant almost half a century later in a variety of transformations of the medium, including the increasingly prevalent web
content. Yet this is by no means the only theme of interest for
contemporary student audiences. The ostensibly light-hearted
Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2002) deals with an array of complexities from responsible parenting to cultural integration and
provides a very good starting point for discussing the home
and school pressures on students in present-day society.
Ballets Russes (Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, 2005)
presents a neatly packaged narrative using rare archival
material, masterfully conducted interviews and dancing
sequences. For a film that ought to please a relatively narrow
target audience, it surprisingly also appeals to young viewers
immersed in contemporary pop culture.
Abbott, 2003) both entertaining and instructive. Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006), featuring Al Gore, has
found its place in the curriculum of many Australian secondary
teachers. However, the environmental politics of Darwin’s
Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, 2004), the closeted gay representation in Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (Mark Rappaport, 1992) or
the legacy of cross-cultural programming in Z Channel (Xan
Cassavettes, 2005) may emerge as more refreshing class material. One should also remember that the darling of conservative
film critics in America, March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet,
2005), could also be discussed as a political film, marked by a
conspicuous absence of political themes and issues.
Film and media students often
find that the strategies employed
in narratives about contemporary
pop stars remain relevant almost
half a century later in a variety of
transformations of the medium,
including the increasingly
prevalent web content.
Left: capturing the friedmans
right: the fog of war
Waco: The Rules of Engagement (William Gazecki, 1997) is an
excellent example of the filmmaker’s total control over documentary material. Waco was also one of the films that heralded
the tide of politically minded American documentaries. It looks
at one of the most traumatic events in America during the
1990s and is the forerunner to a series of films that will explore
America’s obsession with security, gun culture and religious
freedoms. An expert in post-production, Gazecki took on a
number of other roles in order to maintain consistency in
stylistic approach and presentation of material.
The work of documentary makers who focus on problems of
the underdeveloped world in The Good Woman of Bangkok
(Dennis O’Rourke, 1991) or Born Into Brothels (Ross Kauffman
and Zana Briski, 2004) may appeal to tertiary students who
might see regional narratives or exploration of social, economic
and political developments in Asia as local issues.
Teachers who seek to maintain a political focus in their
curriculum may find Control Room (Jehane
Noujaim, 2004), Enron: The Smartest Guys in
the Room (Alex Gibney, 2005) or The
Corporation (Mark Achbar and Jennifer
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Chris Marker’s documentary career spans more than five
decades; he assisted Resnais on Night and Fog. His own films
La Jetée (1962) and Sans Soleil (1983), characteristic for their
essayistic, literary style, are often screened to tertiary students.
Marker places the works of renowned filmmakers in the broader
ideological and sociopolitical contexts in The Last Bolshevik
(1993) and Une Journée d’Andrei Arsenevitch (2000). These
films may be even more appropriate for encouraging students
to take a bold and vigorous, yet contemplative and poetic
approach to cinematic material.
The mobile unobtrusive
camera became the new
recording and storytelling
tool of the cinema vérité
style in France and direct
cinema in the United States
77
teaching media
with Boris Trbic
While the documentary films in the Australian secondary
media and English curriculum often reveal the current tides
in film repertoire, one should also recognize that teachers’
insistence on screening documentaries over the last
decade has brought upon a new quality in the development
of media literacy in classrooms. Discussing screen ‘realism’, bias and representation, composition of cinematic
narratives and stylistic and technical devices used in the
production of ‘film actualities’ would have been hard to
imagine without work on popular documentaries. It has
increased student awareness of the language of film and
documentary in particular, improved their analytical tools
for text analysis and perhaps inspired them to work in this
challenging field. At a time when feature documentary has
lost some of its steam, educators might find it useful to
look for more inspiration in the archive of cinematic
memories.
•
Endnotes
1
Ephraim Katz, The International Film Encyclopedia,
Macmillan, London, 1980, p.345.
2
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 2001, p.7–8.
3
See Susan Sontag, ‘Fascinating Fascism’ in Bill Nichols
(ed.), Movies and Methods, University of California
Press, Los Angeles, 1976, p.31–43.
4
See Boris Trbic, ‘Dark is the Night: A Television Hero in
a Quest for Justice in George Clooney’s Good Night,
and Good Luck’, Screen Education 41, pp.34–42.
5
For a comprehensive list of directors and cinematographers and very interesting interviews with filmmakers
see the film Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (Peter
Wintonick, 1999).
6
James Monaco, American Film Now: The People, The
Power, The Money, The Movies, Oxford University
Press, New York, 1979, p.254.
7
Adam Bingham, ‘Apocalypse Then: Lessons of Darkness Re-visited’, CineAction, 62, Summer 2006.
below: the fog of war
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