CFA: Documentary film styles – history and theory of a genre

From: Andrea Adams <[email protected]>

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CFA: Documentary film styles – history and theory of a genre
Deadline for proposals: February 29th, 2012

The documentary film is a non-fiction film genre that has tried to distance
itself from its counterpart, the narrative movie, since the beginning of
the history of film. Discussions about what they have in common and what
distinguishes them touch on important issues of audiovisual communication
in pluralized media cultures. It seems as if the “the redemption of
physical reality” (Kracauer) is at stake. The discussion on the status of
the documentary film is still ongoing. On one hand there is the question of
how and in which mode the documentary film can be understood as the
historical recording of a physical reality. On the other hand, the
documentary film is interpreted as a documentation of what is happening in
front of the camera at a certain moment.

Fiction and non-fiction films both emerged around 1900 and are closely
related to one another. The history of film distinguishes between the early
studio works of Georges Méliès (“A Trip to the Moon“, 1902) and the
“Actualités” of the Lumière brothers. Méliès worked narratively with
fictional content in an artificial studio, whereas the Lumière brothers
produced images from social reality (“Workers leaving the factory” and
“Arrival of a train in La Ciotat”, 1895). During the 20th century, the
documentary film changed concurrent with technological developments and
historical contexts. During the First World War documentary films were
shown as newsreels (Wochenschauen) for propaganda purposes and were
censored strictly. Documentary sub-genres first developed in the 1920s:
cultural and industrial films, advertising, nature documentaries, and
educational films as well as avant-garde documentary. Early highlights were
created by Russian filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Vsevolod
Pudovkin, and by the German director Walter Ruttmann. Referring to the
ethnographical documentary “Moana” (1926) by Robert Flaherty, the British
documentary filmmaker John Grierson used the term “documentary (value)” for
the first time.

During the Second World War, the documentary film was again adopted for
propaganda purposes. Against the background of the economic crisis and the
danger of war, British documentary filmmaker John Grierson supported the
maintenance and stabilization of Western democracy. He realized that
documentary film was a medium for the masses and he used it for democratic
propaganda. In “Triumph des Willens” (Triumph of the Will, 1935) Leni
Riefenstahl used documentary aesthetics to create an ideological glorified
self-image of the Nazi party. “Der ewige Jude” (“The Eternal Jew”, 1940) by
Fritz Hippler is an illustration of how the format documentary film was
used for the purpose of propaganda. This led to the crisis of the
documentary film after 1945.

The extensive spread of the new leading media, television, in the 1950s
gave rise to the new popularity of documentary films. New documentary
styles developed in the following years as a means of transferring
information and knowledge. These styles were also influenced by new
technologies such as 16mm hand-held cameras and the possibility of
synchronic sound recording. This led to the documentary style “Direct
Cinema” in Germany and the USA in the 1960s and to Cinéma Vérité in France.
Using these new modes, the authentic “redemption of physical reality”
seemed possible, at least approximately.
Due to the privatization of TV in Germany since the middle of the 1980s,
documentary film is no longer limited to an educational function, but also
aims at entertaining viewers. The result has been a new change in
documentary styles. A growing hybridization of documentary styles is
evident, with an increasing blurring of the boundaries between fact and
fiction: reality-TV, docusoaps, docufiction, docudrama, historytainment,
pseudo-docus, live-TV, etc. Generic names are a sign of the new,
differentiated, hybrid forms of the documentary film. References outside
the film are increasingly considered problematic.
The extent to which these developments in the history of film can be
regarded as genealogical formations of different styles of documentary film
is a controversial question. Perhaps fiction, like fact, has always been
inscribed in all films’ history. The following topics therefore come into
question for the special issue in planning:

•    To what extent is the history of documentary film influenced by the
historical context, the zeitgeist, and by technological developments? How
do these influencing factors mutually reinforce each other or appear to be
at conflict with one another?
•    How can documentary styles be positioned between fact and fictions?
•    What is the point of differentiation in genre history from today’s
perspective?
•    How can this be determined with respect to new documentary film styles?
•    What were the historical receptions of documentary film in their
respective temporal contexts?
•    What are the communicative functions of documentary styles, compared
historically?
•    What kind of images about the past do we get from documentary films?
•    What is the historical epistemological value of documentary films?
•    What is the sociological epistemological value of documentary films?


The papers will be published as a special issue of InterDisciplines.
 Journal of History and Sociology
(http://www.inter-disciplines.**de<http://www.inter-disciplines.de>).
As an e-journal, it is also possible to integrate and analyse film
sequences. Please send your proposal to Carsten Heinze (
[email protected]**hamburg.de <[email protected]>)
by 29 February 2012. The deadline for articles will be 30 August 2012. The
special issue will be published at the beginning of 2013.


-- 
Andrea Adams | Managing Editor
Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS)
Bielefeld University | P.O. Box 10 01 31 | 33501 Bielefeld | Germany


Room: K4-123 | Phone: +49 (0)521 106 6523