Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film

(Note: Introduction is taken from uncorrected proofs. Changes may be made prior to publication.)

The documentary film can be regarded as the first genre of the cinema. During the 1890s, when the cinema came into existence, most viewers saw some kind of 'actuality' film. These early documentaries were often simple, single-shot affairs, showing newsworthy events, scenes from foreign lands, or everyday events. However, more fictional, or 'staged' actualities also began to be produced from the earliest years of the cinema, based on the special effects capacity of the cinema. An example here might be the Lumière brothers' Arroseur arrose, which appeared as early as 1895, but perhaps the most well known is Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon (1902). Between 1895 and 1905 a number of identifiable genres of documentary film emerged, including 'topicals', 'travelogues', 'scenics', 'industrials', sports films, 'trick' films, 'fantsy' films, and films which used fictional reconstruction or staging in a variety of ways. These early genres of documentary film were quickly assimilated into existing modes of popular culture and entertainment, and initially appeared in venues which used other, non-filmic, forms of performance, such as acrobatics, song, and dance.

From quite early on, however, the value of documentary film as a form of promotion and persuasion was also recognised. For example, the 'industrials' were usually made by corporate businesses in order to promote their image. Examples include English 'industrials' such as The Story of a Piece of Slate (1904). Such films were primarily descriptive and expressed little if any opinion on the industrial processes they represented.

Later, however, the value of the documentary film as a form of social and political critique, ideology and propaganda was quickly recognised, and particularly so during World War I. During the war, the participating countries all embarked upon major programmes of propaganda production involving the use of the documentary film, and documentary moved out of the province of entertainment and private sponsorship and into the service of the state. Initially, government services were antipathetic and suspicious about this new medium which had emerged from the working classes and appeared to posses the worrying ability to show things which governments would prefer to keep well hidden, or, at least, maintain as the preserve of minority elites. As a consequence, strict controls were placed upon documentary film-making during the war. For example, upon the outbreak of war, the War Office in England allowed cameramen to accompany the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into France. A decisive victory had been expected, but when the BEF was forced to retreat from Mons and Ypres in late 1914, all newsreel permits were withdrawn, and a blanket censorship was imposed. Nevertheless, important films were made during the war, in all the participating countries. Perhaps the most important of these, though, was the British film Battle of the Somme (1916). This film, striking for its images of life on the front line, had a considerable impact on its audience. Nevertheless, it was produced within the constraints of an extensive censorship system, and would not have appeared if its representations were not acceptable to that system.

The documentary film did not really come into its own as a major and significant form of film-making until the 1920s. Before 1920, documentary films were largely 'un-authored', so to speak, and often rather simple in both form and aspiration. Despite the appearance of Battle of the Somme, few large-scale documentaries were made before 1920, and fewer of these can be regarded as historically, aesthetically, or politically important. However, the inter-war period in Europe was an age of ideology, and documentary film was soon put to the service of political promotion, as well as artistic accomplishment.

One of the most important films in the history of the documentary film also appeared as early as 1922. It is difficult to exaggerate the historical impact of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. Set in the far north of Canada, Nanook of the North presents compelling images of Eskimo life and reveals the startling potential of the documentary film for bringing the everyday world to life. This potential was not lost on early film theorists, who soon began to see documentary film as the principal means through which a genuine form of film art could be created, against the background of the accelerating domination of the medium by the mass-produced Hollywood feature film. Thus, André Sauvage regarded Nanook of the North as an example of 'pure cinema', by which he meant that Flaherty's film foregrounded the raw, visual naturalism which Sauvage believed to be at the heart of the aesthetic specificity of the medium.

Nanook was also an inspiration for the emergence of a number of hybrid documentaries which appeared in France and Germany during the 1920s, which combined documentary with modernist form. These include Rien que les heures (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926) and Berlin: die Symphonie der Grossstadt (Walter Ruttmann, 1929). In addition to these films, Nanook also made it possible for Schoedsack and Coopers' Grass (1925) and Chang (1928) to appear, with their respective accounts of the tribulations of Iranian and Siamese peasant life and, less directly, Victor Turin's Turksib (1929), with its epic story of the building of the trans-Siberian railway. It was also in the Soviet Union that the second most important documentary film of the 1895-1945 period emerged: Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929). As with Nanook of the North, it is also difficult to exaggerate the importance which this film has had, both in terms of the documentary film, and in terms of film theory.

The 1930-1945 period marked another stage in the historical development of the documentary film, when individual authors began to emerge and documentary was put to increasing social and political use. In the United States, the Workers' Film and Photo League was formed, and committed films such as Native Land (Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz, 1942) appeared. Similar organisations sprang up in Europe, and committed, or socially concerned, documentary film-makers such as Joris Ivens, Henri Storck, Pare Lorentz, and Ivor Montagu also came to prominence. In Britain, John Grierson's documentary film movement made important films such as Drifters (1929) throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and cultivated important film-makers, such as Paul Rotha, Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Wright and Humphrey Jennings. Wright'sThe Song of Ceylon (1934) and Grierson's Drifters remain impressive today for their command of aesthetic form and visual beauty. During the war the documentary film movement also played a role in developing a new genre: that of the dramatised documentary, exemplified by Jennings' Fires Were Started (1943).

After 1945, documentary film developed in a number of different directions. More clearly 'authored' but still socially concerned films began to appear, by directors such as Frederic Rossif, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, Georges Franju, and Alain Resnais; of particular note is Resnais' Nuit et brouillard (1957, Night and Fog), with its stark and uncompromising portrayal of the Nazi death camps. Documentary genres were also developed further during this period. Chris Marker produced philosophical travelogues such as Letter From Siberia (1958), while the ethnographic film was taken to a new level of importance by Robert Gardner in The Hunters (1956) and Dead Birds (1963). Even more important however, in this respect, was Jean Rouch, and particularly his ground-breaking, reflexive Chronicle of a Summer (1961). The films of French film-makers such as Rouch also influenced the development of the North American cinéma vérité movement, and the films of Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, the Maysle Brothers and others, while this, in turn, influenced the film-making of Frederick Wiseman. Interview based films, such as Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity (1970) and the British TV series The World at War (1974-5) also made important advances within the field, by tapping into historical experience in an often profoundly moving and discomforting manner. The World at War also broke new ground in telling the story of World War II from the perspective of ordinary people, rather than from the perspectives of the great and good.

During the period from the 1980s to the present, important documentary films and film-makers continued to emerge. Important film-makers of this period include Claude Lanzmann, Michael Moore, Errol Morris, Chris Marker, Jill Godmilow, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Barbara Kopple, Julia Reichert, Nick Broomfield, Molly Dineen, Peter Watkins, and many others too numerous to mention.

However, perhaps the most significant development during this period was the gradual re-emergence of the documentary film as a mainstream cultural form and the creation of new, popular genres. Today, genres such as the docu-soap, reality TV, the 'mockumentary' and others receive widespread broadcast coverage around the world and have significantly increased the audience for the documentary film, turning it from the preserve of intellectuals and activists into yet another form of mass entertainment. Nevertheless, the recent success of a film such as Farenheit 9/11 bucks this trend and returns documentary to its subversive roots. Farenheit 9/11 also exemplifies a characteristic common to much recent documentary film-making: a tendency to indulge in a postmodern bricolage of technique, ranging from straight interview to fanciful reconstruction. Moore's film also illustrates another issue often set before documentary film-makers—the issue of the impact of this genre of highly realistic, and apparently persuasive cinema. Yet, despite its controversial character and public exposure, Farenheit 9/11 did not stop George W. Bush from being elected president in 2004.

To some extent, documentary film theory has reflected more general trends within film theory. Early written attempts to assess the role and importance of the documentary film tended to focus on questions of realism, authorship, and social representation, reflecting the concerns of much so-called 'classical' film theory. These include the work of Paul Rotha, Erik Barnouw, John Grierson, Basil Wright and others. Later work by Andre Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer in the field of film theory also contained a strong documentary dimension.

However, from the 1970s onward, documentary film theory tended to adopt the concerns and intellectual orientations of theorists within the semiotic, structuralist, post-structuralist and postmodernist camps of film theory. It was, perhaps, inevitable that a medium such as documentary film would become a subject of criticism, on account of its supposed 'realism', given the 'anti-realist' orientation of 'screen theory' and its derivatives. Given the general tendency of the period to dispense with 'master narratives' and a 'metaphysics of being', it was not surprising to find documentary film theory becoming increasingly preoccupied with the rhetoric and discursive patterns, the codes and interest-based practices of the documentary film, rather than more abstract questions of realism. Bill Nichols was something of a pioneer here, but he was quickly followed by others. This approach to understanding the 'rhetoric' of the documentary film also dominated documentary film theory in the 1980s and 1990s, often giving such theory a pronounced post-structuralist, postmodern, or relativist orientation. Within these approaches, it is the practical impact that documentary film and theory can have on behalf of the minority, or way in which documentary film deploys a post-colonialist, patriarchal, or heterosexist rhetoric, which is of particular import.

Since the early 1990s, however, the field of documentary film theory has broadened, reflecting the spirit of 'post-theory' in film theory. One crucial question affecting documentary film is the representation of history. Historical work on the documentary film has continued, and includes the work of Ian Aitken, Jack C. Ellis, Lewis Jacobs, Deane Williams, Thomas Waugh, and others. Questions of documentary film theory and history are also explored in the work of Charles Warren, Aitken, Derek Paget, William Rothman, Bert Hogenkamp, Philip Rosen, Vivian Sobchack, Michael Renov, and others. Questions of realism and reality in relation to the documentary film are also explored in works by Rosen, Renov, Winston, Anna Grimshaw, and Linda Williams. However, the issue of documentary film and its relation to questions of truth-value, objectivity and reference are rarely considered, though Winston has done so to some extent, and Aitken does in this Encyclopedia. Many of these writers, together with others such as Julia Lesage, Carl Plantinga, Bill Nichols and Trinh T. Minh-ha and Anna M Lopez, also continue to work in a framework informed by gender and postmodern theory.

Structure of the Encyclopedia
In attempting to achieve the requisite degree of comprehensiveness, this Encyclopedia has sought to encompass a wide range of different classificatory categories. The most common categories to appear in the Encyclopedia are those of individual films and film-makers. Entries here range from short 500 word pieces, to much longer accounts of important films and film-makers, such as Nanook of the North, or Dziga Vertov.

In addition to this category, the Encyclopedia has also attempted to assess more broad-based documentary film-making traditions within nations and regions, or within historical periods. These are, in general, much longer pieces, ranging from 2,000 words to 7,000 words. Such entries attempt to sum up the most important developments in the documentary film in respective nations, regions, or historical periods. These entries may also prove to be particularly important in bringing to light new material and insights, and in providing a rich source of information for future research.

In addition to these two categories, the Encyclopedia also encompasses a variety of theoretical areas. These include areas such as deconstruction or feminism. Finally, a number of categories relating to style, technique, technology, production, distribution, exhibition, and other factors are also included. All of these entries have a pronounced critical dimension: contributors have been encouraged to think hard about their entries and to interpret them insightfully. All entries also contain detailed empirical sections, such as biographies, bibliographies, and filmographies. Many of these are extensive and the product of considerable research.

This Encyclopedia provides a much-needed infrastructural support for the field of documentary film studies, and the material which it contains should provide the basis for many future research projects. The Encyclopedia also enables the field to be considered, and even eventually theorised, as a totality. It is now, and for the first time, possible to make comparative studies of different national and regional documentary film traditions, and to create an overall 'map' of the field. This will prove an invaluable aid to future research.

One of the other functions of the Encyclopedia is to bring neglected authors, films and geographical areas of production back into the light of analysis. English speaking readers will, for example, discover here the names and details of many little-known documentary film-makers from countries such as India, Bosnia, China, and others. In this respect, the Encyclopedia will also play a particularly important role in bringing attention to bear on films and film-makers from the former Soviet bloc of eastern European countries. Still another achievement of the Encyclopedia is to provide the opportunity for many contributors to write about the documentary film. Many contributors to the Encyclopedia are eminent scholars. Others are less well known, the representatives of a new generation of writers in the field. Many of these have produced admirably well-thought and researched entries. Other contributors—a small number—are non-academic, but bring their own personal experience to bear on the subject.

The field of documentary film studies is becoming an increasingly important area of study. Since the 1980s, a growing number of publications have appeared on the subject, and that subject has also begun to enjoy a greater presence within the academy. Standing conferences such as Visible Evidence and others also provide regular international forums for interested scholars to exchange ideas and research findings. The Encyclopedia will aid this process of consolidation and advancement, by making available a substantial corpus of critical writing and data which colleagues can draw upon.

Finally, thanks must be given to the board of advisors of the Encyclopedia……..I would like to thank them for their help and advice during the course of this project.

Ian Aitken