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Cinema Verite : Definitions and Background

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Cinema Verite : Definitions and Background Cinema Verite : Definitions and Background At its very simplest, cinema verite might be defined as a filming method employing hand-held cameras and live, synchronous sound . This description is incomplete , however, in that it emphasizes technology at the expense of filmmaking philosophy. Beyond recording means, cinema verite indicates a position the filmmaker takes in regard to the world he films. The term has been debased through loose critical usage, and the necessary distinction between cinema-verite films and cinema -verite techniques is often lost. The techniques are surely applicable in many filming situations, but our exclusive concern here is for cinema-verite documentaries , as will become clear through further definition. Even granting the many film types within the cinema-verite spectrum (where, for instance, most Warhol films would be placed), it is still possible to speak of cinema verite as an approach divorced from fictional elements. The influence of fictional devices upon cinema-verite documentaries is an important issue, but the two can be spoken of as separate entities. Cinema verite in many forms has been practiced throughout the world , most notably in America , France, and Canada. The term first gained popular currency in the early sixties as a description of Jean Rouch's Chronique d 'un Ete. To embrace the disparate output of Rouch, Marker, Ruspoli, Perrault, Brault, Koenig, Kroi- tor, Jersey, Leacock, and all the others under one banner is to obscure the wide variance in outlook and method that separates American cinema verite from the French or Canadian variety and further to fail to take into account differences within the work of one country or even one filmmaker . Just as Rouch and Marker have distinct approach es, the Marker of Lettre de Siberie is not the Marker of Le Joli Mai. Because cinema verite in all its forms is so varied, we shall concentrate on one relatively distinct branch . The work of Americans Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, the Maysles Brothers, and Frederick Wiseman presents a sufficiently consistent filmmaking philosophy to allow for independent discussion. CinemaVerite : Definitionsand Background 2 Happily, for critical purposes, enough diversity is also present to allow exploration of a range of responses to key cinema-verite questions. But in all ensuing discussion, it should be clear that cinema verite is being employed under deliberately arbitrary circumstances , more in the context of what the American outlook express es and as I envision a certain ideal for this kind of filming than as a universally applicable term . The problem is further confused by terminology . Cinema verite is a pretentious label that few filmmakers and critics have much use for . In America , and to some extent in France, the term direct cinema is preferred, although that too with some reservation. I prefer the French designation if only for its now traditional association with the nonfiction film. Any use of direct cinema in the chapters that follow is intended to be synonymous . Most important , cinema verite is not to be translated literally, for claims to higher truth by proponents of these films will not concern us. The essential element in cinema verite is the act of filming real people in un control led situations. Un control led means that the filmmaker does not function as a "director " nor, for that matter, as a screen writer. In a cinema-verite film, no one is told what to say or how to act. A prepared script, however skimpy, is not permissible , nor are verbal suggestions, gestures, or any form of direct communication from the filmmaker to his subject. The filmmaker should in no way indicate that any action is preferred by him over any other. The filmmaker acts as an observer, attempting not to alter the situations he witness es any more than he must simply by being there (along with, usually, another person recording sound). Cinema verite has a faith in the spontaneous; the unwillingness to assert control goes so far as to refuse to recreate events, to have people repeat actions for the sake of being filmed. Interviews are also not employed, since their use, in effect, is a form of directed behavior. The meaning of the term real people develops from the commitment to un control led shooting . Real indicates not only avoiding the use of professional actors (unless, of course, we see them as CinemaVerite : Definitionsand Background 3 actors) but also not placing nonactors into roles selected by the filmmaker , even to "play" themselves. Cinema verite asks nothing of people beyond their permission to be filmed. The need for portable equipment is a result of the desire to shoot in un control led situations. Instead of having people come to the camera, the camera goes to them. The filmmaker must be free to follow action without dominating it through sheer mechanical presence. Tripods , heavy lights, cables, and the rest of the paraphernalia of studio shooting are eliminated. The filmmaker is a reporter with a camera instead of a notebook . Editing of footage shot in this fashion attempts to re-create events as the filmmaker witnessed them . An outcome of the cinema -verite approach is that it integrates the filmmaking process: selecting a subject, filming it, and editing the raw footage become continuous steps in a single effort and not discretely assignable tasks. The connection between the un control led event and the finished film is enforced by the filmmaker 's functioning as his own editor. The footage shot can then be judged while editing as much by what is missing as by what is present. The idea is that the film will not contradict the events themselves through an ordering of shots, juxtaposition of sequences, or use of other manipulative devices at variance with the filmmaker 's own response as an actual witness. When editing is viewed as an independent function , left to people who did not participate in the filming , a whole new set of priorities and blases, based solely on the footage , can conflict with the commitment not to distort the event itself . Editing, of course, is a selective process and inevitably implies at least some shaping of the material. Use of the word re-create allows for a variety of responses in editing, and a cinema-verite film does bear the selective influence of its creator . However, the respect in shooting for noninterference carries over as the determining force in the form of the final film. Even though reality is filtered through one sensibility, the filmmaker tries not to shape his material on the basis of limiting preconceptions . Cinema Verite: Definitions and Background 4 In line with this commitment , some of the standard devices of fiction film and traditional documentaries fall by the wayside, especially music and narration. The former is never added (one of the few generalities about these films that nearly always applies), and the latter, if necessary at all, should do no more than provide facts essential to following events on the screen. Whatever the filmmaker 's initial interest in the subject, the final film does not try to make the material seem as if it was included for the purpose of proving one specific point. The lack of "mood " music and guiding narration are part of a general outlook that does not try to push the viewer in one direction and one direction only. Room is left for responses as individual and complex as the situation itself. Cinema verite as we are speaking of it, then, is an attempt to strip away the accumulated conventions of traditional cinema in the hope of rediscovering a reality that eludes other forms of filmmaking and reporting . Cinema verite is a strict discipline only because it is in many ways so simple, so "direct." The filmmaker attempts to eliminate as much as possible the barriers between subject and audience. These barriers are technical (large crews, studio sets, tripod-mounted equipment , special lights, costumes, and makeup), procedural (scripting , acting, directing), and structural (standard editing devices, traditional forms of melodrama, suspense, etc.). Cinema verite is a practical working method based upon a faith in unmanipulated reality, a refusal to tamper with life as it presents itself. Any kind of cinema is a process of selection, but there is (or should be) all the difference in the world between the cinema-verite aesthetic and the methods of fictional and traditional documentary film. Unfortunately, some writers have claimed that cinema verite practically makes other film methods obsolete.1 We should view such claims in a dialectical spirit, for while this kind of filming questions many assumptions of fiction films (as well as providing fiction filming with new devices to exploit), it will certainly never displace fiction film any more than photography has replaced DzigaVertov 5 painting. Still, cinema verite is more than a mutant offspring of documentary techniques. It deserves a place of its own as an alternative kind of cinema - neither documentary (as usually practiced ) nor fiction (though often telling a story). Its relative newness (primarily due to the recent development of the necessary equipment) does not necessarily mean it is the wave of the future that will drown all past efforts. Nevertheless, it must be reckoned with as an extension of the present limits of cinema, an independent form raising its own critical questions. Cinema verite did not sprout full-grown in the early sixties. A broad historical approach could locate traces of similar concerns from the beginnings of cinema, and such an approach would give the misleading impression that cinema verite is the culmination of a sixty-year search for a new cinematic form . However, the supposed influences generally depart from cinema verite in crucial areas, and the links are often rather tenuous.
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