Actuality Flashcards
The earliest films were (almost by definition) documentary films, as they recorded either the ‘real’ or a ___________ of a real event.
Simulation.
Thomas Edison’s ___ ______ ______(US, 1894, ph. W.K.L. Dickson) was a simple film of a man who sits facing the camera and sneezes, and this could be described as a documentary of a sneeze.
Fred Ott’s Sneeze.
Similarly with the Lumiere brothers’ Sortie des Ouvriers de l’Usine Lumiere (______ _____ __ _______) (France, 1895, ph. Louis Lumiere), they depict a real event (workers leaving at the end of their shift) and yet on close examination the factory workers appear over-dressed, and a number of them seem to be acting exuberantly for the camera.
Workers leaving a factory.
The actualities were dominated by the novelty or spectacle of the event, and many films simply showed panoramas, shots from vehicles, or simple actions without any manipulation of the ______.
Image.
Alternatively, where cameras were not present, filmmakers could reconstruct an event (a popular technique in contemporary television documentary), as the Williamsons’ Kinematograph Company did with Attack on a Chinese Mission (UK, 1900, Director: James Williamson) in replicating an incident from the _______ Rebellion in China at the end of the nineteenth century.
Boxer.
________ ________, a significant British producer of the period, was determined to use film as an educational tool rather than as the extension of the music hall theatre that he feared it was becoming.
Charles Urban.
As early as 1903 Charles Urban had begun a series of films that depicted the more inaccessible parts of the world and their peoples through his Bioscope Expeditions, and from the same year was producing ‘Unseen World’ series which produced such titles as Through the Microscope (UK, 1907) and _________ and their Habits (UK, 1908).
Rodents.
After the First World War the radical art movements that developed before and in the interwar period gravitated towards film both in European democracies and in the newly formed _______ _______.
Soviet Russia.
Denis Kaufman developed a Kino Pravda (or Cinema Truth) style of documentary production that was based on combining multiple _______ on an event to capture the essence of its ‘truth’ and to avoid merely offering a representation of the ‘real’.
Angles.
Using the principles of ________, Kaufman collided images, used techniques of multiple exposure and super-imposition, and reflected the subjects he captured through the rhythms he created.
Montage.
In _________ the actualities developed painterly qualities in the abstract work of filmmakers such as Walther Ruttman, whose interest in rhythms and the patterns in life betrays the influence of Kaufman.
Germany.
Focusing on a day in the life of Berlin, set to symphonic music (composed for the film by Edmund Meisel, though the film itself does not have synchronised sound), Berlin: die Sinfonie der Grobstadt (Berlin: Symphony of the City) (Deutsche-Vereins Film/Les Productions Fox Europa, Germany ______, Dir: Walther Ruttman).
1927.
What year was the Lumiere brothers’ Sortie des Ouvriers de l’Usine filmed?
1895.
James Williamsons’ Attack on a Chinese Mission was filmed in what year?
1900.
Charles Urban Rodents and their Habits was filmed in what year?
1908.
