Part 2
Documentaries and Film Language
CHAPTER 5 DOCUMENTARY LANGUAGE
Technology and Screen Language
Beginnings (The Lumi è re Brothers’ First Films, 1895 – 1897 [Film])
Birth of the Documentary (Nanook of the North, 1922 [Film])
Naming the Documentary and Facing Its Paradoxes
The Russians Are Coming (Man with the Movie Camera, 1929 [Film])
Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité
Observational Cinema (Salesman, 1969; Checkpoint, 2003 [Film])
Participatory Cinema (Chronicle of a Summer, 1961; Best Boy, 1979 [Film 5])
Longitudinal Study (28 Up, 1986)
Brechtian Protest (Tongues Untied,
1989 [Film])
Documentary Noir (The Thin Blue Line, 1988)
Diary (The Gleaners and I, 2000 [Film])
Ambush and Advocacy (Sicko, 2007 [Film])
Archive-Based Filmmaking (Phantom Limb, 2005 [Film])
CHAPTER 6 ELEMENTS AND GRAMMAR
Covering a Conversation: The Actor and the Acted Upon
Lines of Tension, Scene Axis, and Camera Axis
Duration, Rhythm, and Concentration
This part looks at how documentary language evolved because of its reliance on technology. The film language that emerged from this is as much your heritage as the mother tongue you use every day. Becoming fluent in film language allows you to make films that your audience will long remember. Technology and, with it, film language, are still changing.