Tracing the traces of documentary filmmaking
“In feature films the director is God; in documentaries God is the director.”
An art form that for over a hundred years has represented serendipitous romanticism, surrealism and life journey activism. Extreme naturalism is the key; Transcending the dilemmas of human existence, documentaries go beyond archetypal perception, unraveling the psychedelic mysteries of life, always giving a “voice to the voiceless.”
The art of documentary filmmaking dates back to before 1900, when the French coined the term to describe any nonfiction film for informational purposes. Often referred to as “news movies”, these would include very short stretches of filming, often a minute or less in length. There was no way of conceptualizing a real life event or representation of consciousness in these creations, mainly due to the technological limitations of the time. Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar (Save Dada), who in 1899 filmed a wrestling match, was probably the oldest trace of “topical” films in the Indian film industry. He is also credited with making the first Indian newsreel in 1901 by filming the public reception of Raghjunath P. Paranjpye, who had won a special distinction in Mathematics at Cambridge. Chitrapat Kaysa Taya Kartat (How Movies Are Made) (1917), directed by Dadasaheb Phalke, the “father of the Indian fictional film”, is another major milestone in the Indian “reality” film genre.
Czech filmmaker and theorist Vit Janecek was one of the first people to cobble together the term “documentary film” to replace a “documentary film”, to dramatize the camera shot on location, to represent discursive interests of a cultural-social domain. The first such attempts were by the Lumiere brothers, showing short cuts of a train entering a station, factory workers leaving a plant, etc. Romanticism found its way into the first official documentary, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), a contemporary look at life for Canadian Inuit Eskimos living in the Arctic. However, the term “documentary” was first used in a review of Moana by Flaherty (also known as the “father of the documentary film”) Moana in 1926. Over the years, with the availability of films from Cheaper 16mm films and the growing political movements in In Russia and the UK, documentaries gradually became a way to reach the masses. Films were projected on factory walls and screens were set up in church halls trying to raise awareness about unemployment, poverty and fascism. Thus we see the birth of “alternative newscasts” in the 1930s, a generation of left-wing filmmakers motivated to lead people from apathy to activism. The “newsreel” genre was also sometimes performed, recreating some of the actual events that occurred. Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda (literally translated as “cinema truth”) newsreel series depicted the everyday life of the bourgeois, trying to send a deeper message through a metaphorical montage of real-life recordings, often even using hidden cameras. This creation inspired the birth of cinema verite as another form of documentary, which used Vertov’s technique of juxtaposing scenes and non-intrusive filming techniques. This form of documentary film emphasized preserving the pristine form and authenticity of naturalism. John Grierson was the first documentary filmmaker and critic to coin the term “documentary” when writing a review of Flaherty’s Moana. He also expanded on the idea portrayed by Vertov, defining the art form as a “creative treatment of the present.” This decade also saw the birth of documentary filmmaking in India with the creative insights of Dr PV Pathy, KS Hirlekar and DG Tendulkar.
Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, documentaries became more propaganda in nature, emphasizing the marginalized and working majority of the depression and war years. This form of communication media assumed an activist role in its effort to understand reality and an ethical responsibility. Triumph of the Will (1934) was a masterpiece by Leni Riefenstahl, highly controversial and propagandistic in its horrific depiction of the Nazi Party Congress rally in Nuremberg. Despite the controversy surrounding the creation, in the realm of cinematography, this creation has earned unparalleled laurels from critics. The year 1940 is a major milestone in Indian documentary film-making, in which the British government created the Film Advisory Board (FAB) to provide the infrastructure to boost the war propaganda effort. In 1943, Information Films of India (IFI) and Indian News Parade (INP) were formed to expand and consolidate film production and distribution units. Between 1940 and 1946, the FAB and the IFI produced more than 170 films in addition to the INP newsreels. Unfortunately, in the year 1946, government grants to these institutions were drastically reduced and there was no official film unit to record Nehru’s ‘appointment with fate’ speech on the auspicious first India Independence Day. Efforts were revived in 1948, through the formation of the Film Division, the official vehicle of the Government of India for promoting the production and distribution of newsreels and films. The documentaries would be released under the banner “Indian Documentary Films”.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a theme of protest against neocolonialism. La Hora de los homos (1968), The Hour of the Ovens, directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanos, is a four-hour manifesto that incites a sense of revolution against imperialism and the disasters it brought to the Argentina. In addition to the depiction of social and political issues, biographical, rock concert/music related, and nature related documentaries also found their way into the mainstream during these years. Film stylization and informational reporting in documentary films have reached new levels of success with the advent of high-tech digital photographic equipment. Baraka (1992), by director/cinematographer Ron Ficke, represents “the essence of life”, transcending the limits of nature and time. Without a single narrated word in the film, he is often said to have delivered a “message without words” with his brilliant imagery accompanied by pristine musical scores.
Documentary making began for informational purposes but graduated over the years to reflect the compelling creative ambition of filmmakers. Along with the aesthetic nuances of Romanticism and Surrealism, films have become more chronological, self-reflexive, and experimental. The “topical” children’s art form of yore soon became the energetic activist threatening to overthrow the hegemonic powers of oppression. The cinematographic genre has extended far beyond the etymological sense of the term and this is how one of its authors and founding theorists, John Grierson, had envisioned it in a futurist article more than seventy years old that said: “The documentary is a description clumsy, but let it rest.”