nonfiction film Flashcards
Documentary
-not necessarily “true” and certainly not objective.
-doc filmmakers often claim their films give us access to the world rather than a world (but they are making claims about a particular world that they want to persuade you of)
-mediated and filtered through the medium and filmmaker’s voice. -Often narrative in form because this is how we’re used to learning and believing thing- “tells a story with evidence and an argument”
-focuses on persuasion, rather than expression.
Nichols’s 3 C’s of Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of effective or persuasive communication, often using language strategically to influence or appeal to an audience. It can apply to speaking, writing, or even visual media, and it’s used in contexts ranging from politics to advertising to everyday conversations.
Credible (ethos), compelling (pathos),
and convincing (logos).
Credibility (ethos)
trustworthiness of the filmmaker and the info presented (research, accurate representation of facts, ‘ethical’ filmmaking practices)
Compelling (pathos)
emotionally and intellectually engages the audience, captivating them through storytelling techniques, visual aesthetics, emotional resonance, crafting the subject matter such that it is relatable and impactful
Convincing (logos)
logic and persuasion of the doc overall, employing reason that aligns with the audience’s understanding and experiences
Photographic Indexicality
⦁ Plays upon the triad of ‘signs’ described by CS Pierce (father of pragmatism and a foundational figure in the field of semiotics): icon, index, symbol
⦁ An index is a trace of the world – bears some relationship to the physical thing that produces it – pointing back to its cause
⦁ e.g., smoke is an index of fire, a scar is an index of a wound, a footprint of an index of a foot
⦁ Like a pointing index finger, all of these traces point to a meaning or concept in their origin
⦁ Photography and film trace light, and thus point back to the objects they record
⦁ This connection accounts for our faith in photographic images
⦁ Film’s inherent indexical ability to point us back toward the world accounts for the power of documentary, the believability of its fiction
Six Modes of Documentary
Expository, Poetic, Observational, Participatory, Reflexive, and Performative
Expository
Expository
⦁ Aims to inform the audience directly
⦁ Visible/audible authority: voice of god narration or onscreen anchor
⦁ Structure derives from narration, a “show and tell” of elements
⦁ Frank Cappa’s Why We Fight (1940-42) series tries to inform soldiers why we went to war
Poetic
⦁ Breaks with continuity
⦁ Aims at a representation of a mood, emotion, affect
⦁ Form, pattern, sound, and other elements are stressed over continuity, narrative “cause and effect”
⦁ Joris Ivens’ Rain (1929) attempts to do poetic justice to a rainstorm in Stockholm (puddles swell, people duck inside, people come back out, beginning-middle-end structure) – “sense” of a rainstorm is what’s conveyed
Observational
⦁ Comes out of the 1960s, cameras got smaller, more lightweight, able to move through the world more quickly
⦁ Classic “fly on the wall” approach
⦁ Avoids narration, interview, any other intervention between audience and subject
⦁ High shooting ratio enables selective editing and structure to emerge
⦁ Frederick Wiseman’s films like High School give viewers a glimpse of life in American institutions (if you observe long enough, people will eventually go back to being themselves as though the camera isn’t there anymore)
Participatory
⦁ Exposes the observational mode for what it is: the idea that one could be a fly on the wall is a total fiction, everyone knows the camera is there
⦁ Instead of employing a “fly on the wall” approach, attempts to be the “fly in the soup”
⦁ Uses the camera itself to instigate a reaction from the audience
⦁ Mixes interview and provocative observation
⦁ Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer combines participation, observation, and self-reflection (audience become co-creators)
Reflexive
⦁ Lays bare the device, pulls back the curtain, shows one how the sausage is made
⦁ Attempts to mix-in the production of the film itself as part of the film itself
⦁ The attempt to “lay bare the device” or reveal how the sausage is made is part of the claim to credibility
⦁ Often considered postmodern
⦁ Dziga Vertov’s film Man With a Movie Camera is about filmmaking (people need to be shown how films are made in order to understand the constructed-ness of them, document of the city, and a documenting of the documenting of the city - meta)
Performative
⦁ Most abstract of the six modes
⦁ Uses poetic or performative driven cues to convey individual experience, identity
⦁ Has a “performative” function that it works to change or alter discourse
⦁ Experience, and capturing and expressing this experience, are primary forms of evidence
⦁ Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied (1989) puts black homosexuality on-scene
Documentary Modes of Address
⦁ Nichols conceives of documentary as a form of address (speaking to someone about something)
⦁ One way to attend to nonfiction is to ask “who is speaking to who about whom?”
⦁ Who is speaking: the filmmaker? An organization? The state?
⦁ Who is the film addressed to: general audience? Voters?
⦁ Who is the film about: same community as the above? Different?
Ethnographic Film/Relation to Documentary
⦁ Ethnographic films are a subset of documentaries that focus on representing cultures, communities, and social practices, often with an anthropological lens
⦁ They share documentaries’ emphasis on authenticity, evidence, and educational intent but specifically explore cultural realities, frequently involving cross-cultural representation
⦁ Ethnographic films often adopt observational approaches to minimize interference but face ethical challenges around representation and “othering,” making reflexivity crucial
⦁ Over time, they have evolved to involve more participatory collaboration with the communities they document, addressing earlier critiques of power dynamics and bias
