CIN270Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Jean Rouch, Populism
11 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018
CIN270Y1
CLASS 2.12
Michael Moore’s Populism: Documenting the Political After 9/11
“Cinéma Vérité”
• The “interactive mode”
• Jean Rouch: a “catalyst”
• He intervenes; he participates
• “when filming,” Rouch says, he’s in a “ciné-transe”
“Uniquely Filmic Truths”
• Catalyst: creates the conditions for “truths” to emerge
• Truths are PROVOKED in such conditions
• They are pulled to the surface during the act of filmmaking
Chronique d’un été (1961)
• Cinema vérité = “cinema truth”
• Not stumbled upon by a camera and filmmaker
• Truth as rendered by cinema: the truth OF cinema
• A NEW truth: “nothing to do with normal reality”
• Filmmaking transfigures reality
Michael Moore
• Michael Moore’s work initiates a shift in mainstream American documentary – how?
1) Style
2) Rhetoric
3) Public visibility he is the most prominent and financially successful
documentary director; he has been equally controversial
Awkward Humour
• Michael Moore’s influence is largely rooted in a signature device: awkward humour
• Reality-based entertainments…
• Offbeat portrait films
• Prank & Hoax films
• Cringe, or awkwardness: a defining feature of reality-based media today
• But how should we characterize Michael Moore’s work?
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