Flaherty felt his film had been too much of a, “travelogue,” similar to most of the documentary work done since the Lumière brothers. It is unclear how much of the film was staged but it is commonly seen in hindsight as a, “documentary,” nonetheless, because it documents reality more than it manufactures a fiction.Documentary filmmaking was relegated to a small niche market and its practitioners were generally little known until the invention of videotape and cheaper, more portable film equipment in the late 1950s.
In defense of Flaherty it is necessary to step back and think long and hard about what he accomplished and how he had no guidebook to tell him what would later be considered proper documentary behavior. Critics of Nanook, Moana, and Flaherty’s work in general, point to his staging of events as a huge mark against him and the truthfulness of his films.Some of Flaherty’s staging was out of absolute necessity, like building half an igloo and using it as a set to show how the Eskimo slept. You understand in moments like this how all power has its limits and even great power can be severely limited by the simplest obstacles. You feel as if you have travelled back in time and been present with the people on screen, at the moments you are privileged to witness, because somebody really was there with them, recording it. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. In a way this is a valid point but it is also a bit of intellectual trickery, because the camera has no intentions and therefore it is incapable of lying. For this thrilling, behind-closed-doors account of that campaign, renowned cinema verité filmmakers D. A. Pennebaker (Monterey Pop) and Chris Hegedus (Startup.com) closely followed the brainstorming and bull sessions of Clinton’s crack team of consultants—especially the folksy James Carville and the preppy George Stephanopoulos, who became media stars in their own right as they injected a youthful spirit and spontaneity into the process of campaigning. Like all Kennedy footage, Primary has taken on a special significance ever since the young President was murdered before completing his first term, but this footage in particular speaks to the rock star magnetism that put him in the White House. He was openly defying a court order with the old refrain of, “States Rights” as his defense. Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. All rights reserved. He was no match for the celebrity of Kennedy but he was an equal in intellect and a pioneer in moving the Democratic Party from Segregation to Civil Rights. La fortune de l'expression « cinéma-vérité » trouve son origine en 1960, dans une chronique d'Edgar Morin qui rendait compte d'un festival de films ethnographiques à Florence. The children asked the filmmakers, Why is it that whenever pictures of us are put in the papers, our faces are blacked out.
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This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occuring. Leacock started out working for Flaherty as a young man in the 1930s and all of these filmmakers continued on to notable careers.
Shot on location in Manhattan with a mostly nonprofessional cast and crew, Shadows is a penetrating work that is widely considered the forerunner of the American independent film movement. You leave these films feeling that you know the subjects in a way that books and fiction films cannot match. At the end these same people watch the footage constructed from their conversations and then discuss the degree to which the film is true.
The best part of the film is the ending, when we watch part of the President’s landmark Civil Right address, hastily constructed in the hours following the resolution of the crisis and delivered to a national TV audience. It made this into a story with characters the audience cared about and rooted for.