Film Studies 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: National Film Board Of Canada, Documentary Film Movement, Vivian Sobchack
17 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
Touching the void (macdonald, 2003) important dates: 1910 - first film newsreels; continued into mid-1960s. 1921 - nanook of the north (dir. 1930s - john grierson and classical documentary o o o social doc: education, social change sound: voiceover structures film reliance on experts, authority: didactic. 1939 - john grierson heads canadian national film board (nfb) 1960s - observational cinema: aka direct cinema," cin ma v rit ," cinema direct". Late 1980s - growth of reality tv & other non-fiction genres through cable and satellite. Defining documentary documentary from the latin docere: to teach. Reality tv ranges, docu-drama, made for tv movies, mockumentaries. Andrew sarris: all documents are someone something sometime someplace. We think of documentaries as the real world, but not much different than fiction films. Documents only have a pretense of objectivity. Camera and filmmaker are not neutral, control representations through the choices he/she makes.
