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Home , Chronicle of a Summer, Grey Gardens, Leon Gast, Listen to Britain, Louisiana Story, My Best Fiend

The Great Documentaries Instructor: Michael Fox Tuesdays, 2:30-4:00pm, January 19-March 9, 2021 [email protected]

With nonfiction films entrenched as a genre of mainstream movie entertainment, we revisit the pivotal films that established the technique, tone and tenor of the modern documentary. From Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (1967) to ’s (2005), this screening, lecture and discussion class appraises key works of lasting power and influence. The discussion will encompass perennial issues such as the responsibility of the filmmaker to the subject, truth and storytelling, the thin line between observation and activism and our evolving relationship to images.

The Great Documentaries is a historical survey that follows and builds on Documentary Touchstones I and II, which I taught at OLLI a few years ago. I’ve appended a list of those films—if you have never seen them and wish to journey further back in the history of documentaries—and more information at the end of the syllabus. Most of the titles are available to watch for free on YouTube, although the quality of the prints varies.

Jan. 19 Titicut Follies (1967, Frederick Wiseman, 84 min) Kanopy Wiseman’s debut film is a stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Mass, documenting the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers and psychiatrists. “A great work, a near-masterpiece not just of the documentary form but of moviemaking in any category. It's a film that transcends the time and place of its manufacture, and it should be seen not just by documentarians and film students but by anyone interested in the movies as a medium capable of powerfully presenting the human condition.” - Ray Greene, Village View

A Boston native and graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, Frederick Wiseman is in the pantheon of U.S. filmmakers. He has made dozens of documentaries that have aired on PBS, including At Berkeley (2013), and he’s received countless awards. His most recent opus, City Hall (2020), focuses on Boston’s city government.

Jan. 26 (1967, D.A. Pennebaker, 96 min) Criterion Channel, Amazon, HBO Max Bob Dylan is captured on-screen as he never would be again in this groundbreaking film. Pennebaker finds Dylan in England during his 1965 tour, which would be his last as an acoustic artist. Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan and Alan Price. A radically conceived portrait of an icon that has influenced decades of vérité behind-the-scenes documentaries.

D.A. Pennebaker (1925-2019) made numerous music documentaries (including Monterey Pop) as well as the Oscar-nominated The War Room (1993), about Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.

Feb. 2 F For Fake (1975, Orson Welles, 89 min) Criterion Channel, Amazon Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In this free-form sort-of documentary, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous lines between illusion and truth, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of the world- renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes, not the least of whom is Welles himself. Charming and inventive, F For Fake is an inspired prank and a clever examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.

Orson Welles (1915-85) is best known for his fiction films , The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil and several Shakespeare adaptations. His last film, The Other Side of the Wind, completed long after his death, is on Netflix along with a documentary about its production, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.

Feb. 9 (1975, , codirected by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, 95 min) Criterion Channel, Amazon Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, mother and daughter, high-society dropouts and reclusive cousins of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, manage to live (thrive?) together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampton mansion in an eerily ramshackle echo of the American Camelot. This intimate portrait quickly became a cult classic and established Little Edie as a fashion icon and philosopher queen.

The Maysles brothers’ celebrated oeuvre includes Salesman (1969) and Gimme Shelter (1970), which followed the Rolling Stones to Altamont.

Feb. 16 Harlan County USA (1976, Barbara Kopple, 103 min) Criterion Channel An unflinching document of a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, police and company thugs. Featuring a haunting soundtrack with country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning, and Florence Reece, this is a heartbreaking record of the 13-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line.

Few figures have shaped the form of modern documentary storytelling more than Barbara Kopple, who, with the landmark Harlan County USA, fused the techniques of cinema verité with the radical spirit of 1970s political activism to create an electrifying account of an extended strike. Fifteen years later she won a second Oscar for American Dream, another bracing look at union organizing and class struggle that also stands as one of the most trenchant films ever made about labor in the U.S.

Feb. 23 (1996, Leon Gast, 88 min) HBO Max, Amazon An electric, entertaining record of the events surrounding “,” the 1974 heavyweight championship fight in Zaire between and .

Academy Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Leon Gast’s credits include co-directing The Grateful Dead Movie (1974) with Jerry Garcia, directing the paparazzi doc Smash His Camera (2010) and producing The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013).

Mar. 2 Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog, 103 min) Hoopla, Amazon Herzog brings his singular perspective to bear on idealistic activist Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, who lived among grizzly bears in Alaska—for a while.

Werner Herzog shot to prominence in the 1970s as part of the German New Wave of narrative filmmakers with memorable films like Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) and (1982). He has focused primarily on documentaries for the last 30 years, and that extensive body of work include Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Fiend (1999), Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019).

Mar. 9 (2000, Agnès Varda, France) Criterion Channel Varda’s late-career renaissance began with this wonderfully idiosyncratic, self-reflexive exploration of the world of modern-day gleaners: those living on the margins who survive by foraging for what society throws away. Embracing the intimacy and freedom of digital film- making, Varda posits herself as a kind of gleaner of images and ideas, one whose generous, expansive vision makes room for ruminations on everything from aging to the birth of cinema to the beauty of heart-shaped potatoes. By turns playful, philosophical and subtly political, The Gleaners and I is a warmly human reflection on the contradictions of our consumerist world from an artist who, like her subjects, finds richness where few think to look.

Born in Ixelles, Belgium in 1928, Agnès Varda’s long career spanned her narrative debut, (1955)—widely seen as a forerunner of the French New Wave in its location filmmaking and use of non-professional actors—to her final first-person documentary, Varda by Agnès (2019). Her work included fiction and documentary, shorts and features. Her narrative films include the New Wave classics Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and Le Bonheur (1965), the feminist musical One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) and Vagabond (1985). Varda’s docs include (1991) a memoir of the childhood of her husband, filmmaker Jacques Demy, and the Oscar-nominated Faces Places (2017).

Reference books: Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. Erik Barnouw, Oxford University Press, second edition, 1993

Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. Patricia Aufderheide, Oxford University Press, 2007

Touchstone Documentaries: (Robert Flaherty, 1922) An hunter and his family struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay region. Enormously popular upon its release, Nanook remains a milestone for its pioneering use of narrative techniques: a defined central character, structured and shaped scenes, and dramatic pacing (alternating action and calm). www.criterion.com/current/posts/42-nanook-of- the-north

Robert Flaherty (1884-1951), arguably the first documentary filmmaker, also made Moana (1926), (1934) and (1948). The son of a mining engineer, Flaherty became a filmmaker in order to document his travels as an explorer and prospector in the Canadian Arctic. He lived and worked with the Inuit, who served as his guides, companions, technical crew, navigators, dog sled driver and collaborators on many expeditions. He made more than 1,500 photographs of the Inuit from 1908-24, which are now housed in the National Photography Collection in the Public Archives of Canada and the Robert and Frances Flaherty Study Center at Claremont College. www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/flaherty/

Man with a Movie Camera (, Soviet Union, 1929) 68 min A day in the life of a city (though it was actually shot in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and elsewhere) from dawn until dusk. After an opening statement, there are no words (neither voice-over nor titles), just dazzling imagery kinetically edited—a celebration of the modern city with an emphasis on its buildings and machinery. Voted the greatest documentary of all time in Sight & Sound’s 2014 poll.

Dziga Vertov (1896-1954), pseudonym of Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman, developed the kino- glaz (film-eye) theory that the camera is an instrument—much like the human eye—that’s best used to explore the actual happenings of real life. He had an international impact on the development of documentaries and cinema realism during the 1920s. Vertov sought to create a language of cinema, free from theatrical influence and artificial studio staging. As a newsreel cameraman during the Civil War, he filmed events that were the basis for factual films. He was 23 when he formed the Kinoki (Film-Eye Group), which issued a series of manifestos against theatricality in films and in support of his kino-glaz theory, and initiated Kino-pravda (Film Truth), a weekly newsreel that integrated newly shot factual material and older news footage. The subject matter of Vertov’s later features is life itself; form and technique are preeminent. He experimented with slow motion, camera angles, enlarged close-ups and crosscutting for compari- sons; he attached the camera to locomotives, motorcycles and other moving objects; and he held shots for varying lengths of time, a technique that adds to the rhythmic flow of his films. His work and theories were basic to the rediscovery of cinéma vérité, or documentary realism, in the .

A Propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, France, 1930) 25 min A conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town on the French Riviera and its wealthy inhabitants. Jean Vigo (1905-34) made only a handful of poetic films, including Zero for Conduct (1933) and L’Atalante (1934), but they are among the most beloved in all of cinema.

Land Without Bread (Las hurdes) (Luis Bunuel, Spain, 1933) 30 min Bunuel visited a region where the “backwards” peasants struggle to survive without the rudi- mentary basics of “advanced civilization.” A Surrealist with a Jesuit education, Bunuel directed many daring satires including Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).

Triumph of the Will (, 1934) 110 min Employing 30 cameras and 120 assistants, Riefenstahl recorded the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and rally in Nuremberg, depicting Hitler simultaneously as a man of the people and a Wagnerian hero. “Riefenstahl concentrates on cheering crowds, precision marching, military bands and Hitler’s climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated on a scale that makes Griffith and DeMille look like Poverty Row directors.” www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fns07n6.html http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/michaelwalford/entry/triumph_of_the/ http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20080626%2FREVIEWS08%2F9 11177318%2F1023

Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) was a dancer, actress, filmmaker and photographer. won gold medals in Venice (1935) and Paris (1937 World Exhibition). By 1945, however, it was no longer hailed as art but condemned as National Socialist propaganda. For the rest of her life, Riefenstahl maintained that her intentions were artistic, not political. Olympiad, her two-part documentary record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, won the gold medal in Paris (1937), first price in Venice (1938) and the IOC’s Olympic Award (1939).

The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936) and The River (Pare Lorentz, 1938) The Plow That Broke the Plains “is a record of land... of soil rather than people -- a story of the Great Plains; the 400 million acres of wind-swept grass lands that spread from the Texas panhandle to Canada... A high, treeless continent, without rivers, without streams... A country of high winds, and sun... and of little rain... By 1880 we had cleared the Indian, and with him the buffalo, from the Great Plains, and established the last frontier... A half million square miles of natural range... This is a picturization of what we did with it.”

The River describes the importance of the Mississippi to the U.S. It laments the environmental destruction committed in the name of progress, particularly farming and timber practices that caused massive erosion and washed vast amounts of topsoil down the river into the Gulf of Mexico. The film ends with a celebration of the TVA and the use of dams to control the river and prevent flooding. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/film/lorentz/front.html

Born in West Virginia, Pare Lorenz (1905-92) was a film critic in New York when he was asked to set up a Federal film program in 1935 that would effectively highlight the problems of American agriculture. A production unit was formed under the sponsorship of the Resettlement Admini-stration (later it became part of the Dept. of Agriculture), where Lorentz made these artful New Deal propaganda films. www.parelorentzcenter.org/biography/

Night Mail (Harry Watt and Basil Wright, UK, 1936) 27 min This masterpiece of the British Movement, much imitated in commercials and modern short films, depicts a mail train en route from London to Scotland. Benjamin Britten wrote the score and W.H. Auden authored the “verse commentary.” Harry Watt (1906-87) was a Scottish documentary and feature film director who began his career working for John Grierson and Robert Flaherty. Basil Wright (1907-87) was an English documentary filmmaker, film historian, film critic and teacher.

Listen to Britain ( and Stewart McAllister, UK, 1942) 20 min Documentary, public information film, morale booster; propaganda film—these descriptions could be applied to many of the short films that flourished and reached a peak of expression in the 1930s and ‘40s. Humphrey Jennings’ films covered the whole of World War II in Britain. His quiet, emotive style produced some of the most memorable film images of the war; London Can Take It (1940), Listen to Britain (1942) and (1943), for the GPO and , were U.S.-funded and were equally for American and British release. Jennings (1907- 50) was a filmmaker, photographer, literary critic, theatrical designer, poet, painter and theorist of modern art.

Why We Fight: Prelude to War (Frank Capra, USA, 1942) 52 min The first in a series of seven propaganda films commissioned by the Office of War Information (OWI) and George C. Marshall to justify to U.S. soldiers their country's involvement in World War II. They were later shown to the public to likewise marshal support. One of the major directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Frank Capra’s (1897-1991) films include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life.

Night and Fog (, 1956) 32 min Commissioned to mark the 10th anniversary of the liberation of the camps by the Allies, this film remains the most powerful condemnation to emerge from the postwar era. Combining color tracking shots of postwar Auschwitz with black-and-white archival photographs and footage, Resnais links past and present while the chillingly understated narrative, written by survivor Jean Cayrol, raises searching questions about accountability and the suppression of truth. http://criterionreflections.blogspot.com/2010/06/night-and-fog-1955-197.html http://sensesofcinema.com/2015/book-reviews/night-and-fog-a-film-in-history/

Alain Resnais (1922-2014) created some of the most important films of the postwar era. In a career spanning 70 years, Resnais explored the relationship between time and memory, and truth and subjectivity. His films are intellectually rigorous yet buoyed by a lightness of touch and a sheer beauty that expresses the mind’s dreamlike interior. His oeuvre includes (1959), (1961), Providence (1977) and Same Old Song (1997).

Primary (Robert Drew, 1960) 60 min Primary documents JFK and Hubert Humphrey campaigning on the eve of the 1960 Wisconsin primary. HHH is an old-school politician attempting to appeal to voters’ agricultural roots by portraying himself as a champion of the common man. JFK can be perceived as a celebrity adored by urban voters and youth. This was the first film in which the sync-sound movie camera was able to move freely with characters throughout a breaking story. “Had as immense and measureable an impact on nonfiction filmmaking as Birth of a Nation had on fiction filmmaking.”—Matt Zoller Seitz http://www.rogerebert.com/demanders/the-society-of-the-real-how-an-intrepid-group-of- newsreel-cameramen-changed-documentary-film

As an editor at Life magazine, Robert Drew (1924-2014) specialized in the candid still picture essay. As a Nieman Fellow he worked out theories for filmmaking based on candid photography in motion pictures. He assembled a group of journalists and filmmakers that included Richard Leacock, Gregory Shuker and D.A. Pennebaker. Drew managed the engineering of lightweight cameras and recorders and developed editing techniques to allow stories to tell themselves through characters in action. Drew’s documentaries include Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, The Chair and Faces of November. www..com/documentaries/a-president-to-remember-in-the-company-of-john-f- kennedy/interview/interview-with-robert-drew.html?cmpid=ABC177

Chronicle of a Summer ( and Edgar Morin, France, 1961) 85 min As if to forecast, and preempt, the decades-long war to define the precepts of ethnographic nonfiction, Chronicle procedurally does away with dead-end questions of verity, construct and reality, and demonstrates plainly ways to approach equanimity with ‘subjects.’ Rouch and Morin are the architects of a social collaboration and are rigorously open-handed with the materials they’re using. Their loose vox-pop style, beginning each encounter by asking whether the interviewee is happy, disarmingly mixes with scenes that show how cinema, in any regard, must be artificial—employing classic shot-reverse-shot techniques in otherwise uneventful conversational moments.

Chronicle reminds us of a past when almost no one was camera-ready, when the idea of being part of the media (let alone engineering it) was foreign, and when the question of truth in performance was nascent. It doesn’t find innocence, exactly—the conversations are often extremely loaded—but rather a candor, an openness, that cannot be replaced now that we all see ourselves represented on all manner of screens, and can’t help but act with these images in mind.—Rachael Rakes

Jean Rouch (1917-2004) pioneered the , or cinema verite, movement in France, and employed it rigorously in numerous ethnographic films he shot in Africa before filming in Paris and St. Tropez.

The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, USA, 1988) 102 min A reconstruction of and investigation into a 1977 death sentence for the murder of a Texas policeman. We are told that a good prosecutor can convict a guilty suspect but it takes a great one to convict an innocent man. Something similar might be said of this influential probing of a roadside shooting and Randall Adams’ conviction. Demonstrating a miscarriage of justice is impressive, but it’s another thing to undermine the very notion of a stable truth.

The array of interviews makes it clear a raw deal went down. But Morris also includes the contradictions, the backtracking, the oddball asides. Most perversely, he creates a confounding palimpsest of deadpan re-enactments that flirt with the absurd (and find their echo in the iterative Philip Glass score). Close-ups–of sirens, of hurled milkshakes – evoke mystery, or myopia, in the search for meaning. The documentary committee infamously failed to nominate the film, which made dozens of critics’ 10 Best lists.—Nicholas Rapold

Errol Morris (b. 1948) made two low-budget studies of quirky communities, Gates of Heaven (1978) and Vernon, Florida (1981), before breaking out with The Thin Blue Line. His most notable subsequent films are A Brief History of Time with Stephen Hawking, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, : Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara and The Unknown Known with Donald Rumsfeld.