Five Modes of Documentary Representation The Interactive Mode of Documentary

Table of Contents 1) The Interactive Mode of Documentary Representation 2) Cinéma Vérité 3) Ethical Questions

Interactive Mode ‘Interactive documentary … arose from the … desire to make the filmmaker’s perspective more evident. Interview styles and interventionalist tactics arose, allowing the film maker to participate more actively in present events. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 33

Interactive Mode The prominence of film maker’s presence Interaction with people through interviews People express their opinions and the filmmaker juxtapose them with contrary opinions and combine with filmed images or/and archival footage.

Interactive Mode Documentary as oral history The viewer as a witness to the historical world as presented by one who inhabits it

Interactive Mode Medium and close-up shots of interviewees Long takes Synchronous sound recording (Inter-cutting interviews with other interviews, recorded images, newsreel or/and archival footage)

Interactive Mode Jean Rouch and Cinéma Vérité Anthropologist, film maker, civil engineer and explorer ( )

Cinéma Vérité Civil engineer turned ethnographer. First recorded rites, rituals and communities in West Africa, Niger and Cote D’Ivoire

Cinéma Vérité Chronique d’un eté (Chronicle of a Summer, 1960) Ground-breaking documentary with Edgar Morin

Cinéma Vérité Two women sent to streets in Paris to interview passersby Starting with a simple question, ‘Are you happy?’, the interviews delve into the lives of the interviewees. Marceline, a Holocaust survivor; Angelo, who works in a Renault factory; Landry, a student from the Ivory-Coast; and Mari-Lou, a young, beautiful Italian immigrant. Interviewer interviews, discusses, and provokes.

Cinéma Vérité As the film progresses, the initially casual interviews give away to intimate revelations and hotly contested political arguments. Using the camera as their tool and the film-making process as a means to explore their subject’s preoccupations and true feeling otherwise hidden inside them.

The Véritè Tradition Relying on interviews, involving filmmakers interventions and making interviewers prominent, Marcel Ophuls’ Le Chagrin and le pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity, 1969) integrates the documentary approach developed by Cinéma Véritè.

The Véritè Tradition The film reveals the extensive collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during WWII, by interviewing a German officer, former French Nazi collaborators, Anthony Eden, and resistance fighters.

The Véritè Tradition The percentage of the Jewish survivors in France was corrected by the interviewer The claim of a French woman that she was falsely arrested and tortured was questioned by the interviewer. ch. 14

Cinéma Vérité Claude Lanzmann, Shoah (1985) 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage. Interviews with survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis Shoah in Poland Part IIShoah in PolandPart II

Ethical Questions How genuine are reactions shown by an interviewee? Does interaction between a film maker and his subjects always bring out truth?

Ethical Questions The manners in which the filmmaker presents the interviews: The ways in which filmmaker prompts the interviewee; The film maker as provocateur; Whether the film maker allows interviewees to put their case fully or not; The manners the film maker edits the interviews for his documentary. ARE INTERVIEWS CARRIED OUT FAIRLY?

Ethical Questions Michael Moore, Roger and Me (1990) About the negative economic impact of General Motors COE, Roger Smith’s action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan costing 40,000 people their jobs.

Ethical Questions Yawning gap between the rich and the poor; the disintegration of a one-time prosperous community Criticisms - Moore did talk to Roger Smith but the footage was not included in the film

Ethical Questions The eviction at the end of the film took place on the day different from Smith’s speech. Manipulation and tampering facts and interviews Satire; scepticism; social comment