Documentary Touchstones II Instructor: Michael Fox Thursdays, 10am-12 noon, September 28-November 2, 2017 [email protected] The pioneering and innovative films that paved the way for the contemporary documentary are well known yet rarely shown. This screening-and-discussion class surveys several canonical works of lasting power and influence, from Man with a Movie Camera to World War II propaganda films to latter-century hybrids and essay films. The discussion will encompass such perennial issues as the effect of the camera’s presence on the action and people being filmed, the filmmaker as activist (or propagandist), the use of metaphor and poetry, the intersection of reality, truth and storytelling, and our evolving relationship to images. Sept. 28 Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 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. Soviet director 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 the factual films The Anniversary of the October Revolution (1919) and Battle of Tsaritsyn (1920). 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 feature films is life itself; form and technique are preeminent. He experimented with slow motion, camera angles, enlarged close-ups and crosscutting for comparisons; 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 other important pictures are Stride, Soviet!! (1925), A Sixth of the World (1926), The Eleventh (1928), Symphony of the Donbass (1930), and Three Songs of Lenin (1934). His work and theories were basic to the rediscovery of cinéma vérité, or documentary realism, in the 1960s. Oct. 5 A Propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, France, 1930) 25 min + Land Without Bread (Las hurdes) (Luis Bunuel, Spain, 1933) 30 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 visits a region where the “backwards” peasants struggle to survive without the rudimentary basics of “advanced civilization.” Luis Bunuel (1900-83), a Surrealist with a Jesuit education, directed numerous classic satires, including Belle de Jour with Catherine Deneuve (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Oct. 12 Night Mail (Harry Watt and Basil Wright, UK, 1936) 53 min A masterpiece of the British Documentary Film Movement and much imitated in commercials and modern short films, Night Mail 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. Oct. 19 Why We Fight: Prelude to War (Frank Capra, USA, 1942) 52 min + Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister, UK, 1942) 20 min Two contrasting approached to the propaganda film: The American movie is broad and blunt, while the British piece evokes deeper emotions. One of the major directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Frank Capra’s (1897-1991) classic films include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. Suffolk-born Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a filmmaker, photographer, literary critic, theatrical designer, poet, painter and theorist of modern art. Oct. 26 Les maitres fou (The Mad Masters) Jean Rouch, France, 1955) 36 min + The House is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, 1963) 22 min Jean Rouch’s first ethnofiction, a genre he is credited with inventing, depicts the Hauka movement in Africa. Participants used mimicry and dancing to perform the elaborate military ceremonies of their colonial occupiers, but in more of a trance. The Hauka movement, according to some anthropologists, was a form of resistance that began in Niger but spread to other parts of Africa and was largely intended to mock the authorities by stealing their powers. (Another anthropologist argues that the imitation wasn’t about importing colonialism into indigenous culture but a way to gain rights and status in the colonial society. Les maîtres fous offended both colonial authorities and African students, the former because of the Africans' blatant attempts to mimic and mock the “white oppressors” and the latter who felt the film perpetrated an “exotic racism” of the African people. Jean Rouch (1917-2004) pioneered the direct cinema, or cinema verite, movement in France, and employed it rigorously in numerous ethnographic films he shot in Africa. His best-known work, Chronicle of a Summer (1961), however, was filmed in France. The House is Black is an essay film that frankly depicts life and suffering in the Bababaghi Hospice leper colony. Filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad’s narration blends quotes from the Old Testament and the Koran with her own poetry. During the 12 days of shooting, the filmmaker became attached to the child of two lepers and adopted and brought him to live at her mother's house. The sole film Farrokhzad ever made, it placed #19 all-time in Sight & Sound’s 2014 poll. Forough Farrokhzad (1934-67), a divorcee who wrote poetry with a strong feminist perspective in the 1950s and ‘60s, was much-criticized during her career and is now regarded as an important Iranian poet and advocate for women’s liberation and independence. Nov. 2 Rain (Regen) (Joris Ivens, Netherlands, 1929) 12 min + Four Seasons (Artavazd Peleshian, USSR, 1975) 20 min The legendary Joris Ivens’ poetic early short is an influential work in the history of avant-garde cinema. Artavazd Peleshian’s most acclaimed work is an essay film about Armenia’s shepherds, and the relationship between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The Armenian film essayist Artavazd Peleshian (b. 1938) is known for blurring the bounds between documentary and fiction. His signature technique is distance montage, which combines a perception of depth with approaching figures. “Eisenstein's montage was linear, like a chain. Distance montage creates a magnetic field around the film ... Sometimes I don't call my method ‘montage.’ I'm involved in a process of creating unity. In a sense I've eliminated montage: by creating the film through montage, I have destroyed montage. In the totality, in the wholeness of one of my films, there is no montage, no collision, so as a result montage has been destroyed. In Eisenstein every element means something. For me the individual fragments don't mean anything anymore. Only the whole film has the meaning ... For me, distance montage opens up the mysteries of the movement of the universe. I can feel how everything is made and put together; I can sense its rhythmic movement.” .