Non-narrative film is an aesthetic of cinematic film that does not narrate, or relate "an event, whether real or imaginary". It is usually a form of art film or experimental film , not made for mass entertainment.
104-491: TT3D: Closer to the Edge is a British documentary film by first time director Richard de Aragues. The film is narrated by Jared Leto and charts the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race that takes place on the Isle of Man every year. It follows the leading riders in the 2010 race , most notably Guy Martin and Ian Hutchinson . It was shot in 3D , and charts the racers' dedication and
208-412: A 1963 Canadian short abstract collage film of discarded footage and city street scenes, had a profound influence on Lucas and sound designer/editor Walter Murch . Lucas greatly admired pure cinema and at film school became prolific at making 16mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité, with such titles as Look at Life , Herbie , 1:42.08 , The Emperor , Anyone Lived in
312-584: A Metropolis (dir. Walter Ruttmann , 1927); Man with a Movie Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov , 1929); Douro, Faina Fluvial (dir. Manoel de Oliveira , 1931); and Rhapsody in Two Languages (dir. Gordon Sparling , 1934). A city symphony film, as the name suggests, is most often based around a major metropolitan city area and seeks to capture the life, events and activities of the city. It can use abstract cinematography (Walter Ruttman's Berlin ) or may use Soviet montage theory (Dziga Vertov's, Man with
416-421: A Movie Camera ). Most importantly, a city symphony film is a form of cinepoetry , shot and edited in the style of a " symphony ". The European continental tradition ( See: Realism ) focused on humans within human-made environments, and included the so-called city symphony films such as Walter Ruttmann's, Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (of which Grierson noted in an article that Berlin, represented what
520-548: A Pretty (how) Town , Filmmaker , and 6-18-67 . Lucas's tributes to 21-87 appear in several places in Star Wars , with the phrase, " the Force ", said to have been inspired by 21-87 in part. Lucas throughout his entire career was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to a director, and he loved making abstract visual movies that create emotions purely through cinema. Music
624-429: A Summer ( Jean Rouch ), Dont Look Back ( D. A. Pennebaker ), Grey Gardens ( Albert and David Maysles ), Titicut Follies ( Frederick Wiseman ), Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by Robert Drew ), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple ), Lonely Boy ( Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor ) are all frequently deemed cinéma vérité films. The fundamentals of
728-520: A broader perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave , the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded. Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differences between cinéma vérité ( Jean Rouch ) and
832-452: A cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Early documentary films, originally called " actuality films ", briefly lasted for one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length and to include more categories. Some examples are educational , observational and docufiction . Documentaries are very informative , and are often used within schools as
936-596: A color test of the animated section. He then created An Optical Poem (1937) for MGM , but received no profits because of the way the studio's bookkeeping system worked. Walt Disney had seen Lye's A Colour Box and became interested in producing abstract animation. A first result was the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor section in the "concert film" Fantasia (1940). He hired Oskar Fischinger to collaborate with effects animator Cy Young , but rejected and altered much of their designs, causing Fischinger to leave without credit before
1040-622: A documentary should not be); Alberto Cavalcanti's, Rien que les heures; and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera . These films tend to feature people as products of their environment, and lean towards the avant-garde. Dziga Vertov was central to the Soviet Kino-Pravda (literally, "cinematic truth") newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the camera – with its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion – could render reality more accurately than
1144-497: A dynamic organism, offering a captivating glimpse of New York during its gritty peak. The short-fim maintains a continuous sense of movement, creating an illusion of organic evolution and transformation via time-lapse photography. In this portrayal, the city evolves into a dynamic entity pulsing with energy, vitality, and perpetual regeneration. It embodies a colossal organism, thriving on the life force of those drawn to it, each seeking to conquer its urban landscape. Titled "Organism," it
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#17328918717131248-618: A family of musicians and analysed the elements of painting by reducing it into his "Generalbass der Malerei", a catalogue of typological elements, from which he would create new "orchestrations". In 1918 Viking Eggeling had been engaging in Dada activities in Zürich and befriended Hans Richter. According to Richter, absolute film originated in the scroll sketches that Viking Eggeling made in 1917–1918. On paper rolls up to 15 meters long, Eggeling would draw sketches of variations of small graphic designs, in such
1352-614: A few dozens of short films over the years. The Nazis censorship against so-called " degenerate art " prevented the German abstract animation movement from developing after 1933. The last abstract motion picture screened in the Third Reich was Hans Fischinger 's Tanz der Farben (i.e. Dance of the Colors ) in 1939. The film was reviewed by the Film Review Office and by Georg Anschütz for
1456-528: A film student at USC School of Cinematic Arts , where he saw many more inspiring cinematic works in class, particularly the visual movies coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett 's 21-87 , the Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque 's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles , the work of Norman McLaren , and the visualise cinéma vérité documentaries of Claude Jutra . Lipsett's 21-87 ,
1560-528: A film. Terms such as absolute film , cinéma pur , true cinema and integral cinema have been used for non-narrative films that aimed to create a purer experience of the distinctive qualities of film, like movement, rhythm and changing visual compositions. More narrowly, "absolute film" was used for the works of a group of filmmakers in Germany in the 1920s, that consisted, at least initially, of animated films that were totally abstract. The French term cinéma pur
1664-437: A form of journalism, advocacy, or personal expression. Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. Single-shot moments were captured on film, such as a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumière , were
1768-445: A jumble of objects and reality thrown together at random." Among the proposed methods were: "Cinematic musical researches", "Daily exercises in freeing ourselves from mere photographed logic" and "Linear, plastic, chromatic equivalences, etc., of men, women, events, thoughts, music, feelings, weights, smells, noises (with white lines on black we shall show the inner, physical rhythm of a husband who discovers his wife in adultery and chases
1872-409: A leaflet about it and claimed that many people growing up with the hand-colored films of Georges Méliès and Ferdinand Zecca would try their hand on painting on film at that time. In 1913 Léopold Survage created his Rythmes colorés : over 100 abstract ink wash / watercolor drawings that he wanted to turn into a film. Unable to raise the funds, the film was not realized and Survage only exhibited
1976-426: A longer film. They shot all kinds of material in the street and in a studio, used Murphy's special beveled lenses and crudely animated showroom dummy legs. They chose the title Ballet Mécanique from an image by Francis Picabia that had been published in his New York 391 magazine, which had also featured a poem and art by Man Ray. They ran out of money before they could complete the film. Fernand Léger helped financing
2080-511: A major battle and re-enact scenes to film them. The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most celebrated and controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl 's film Triumph of the Will (1935), which chronicled the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler . Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri Storck directed Borinage (1931) about
2184-437: A minute or less in length, due to technological limitations. Examples can be viewed on YouTube. Films showing many people (for example, leaving a factory) were often made for commercial reasons: the people being filmed were eager to see, for payment, the film showing them. One notable film clocked in at over an hour and a half, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight . Using pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented
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#17328918717132288-420: A more minimal, formal style. The movement also encompasses the work of the feminist critic/cinematic filmmaker Germaine Dulac , particularly Thème et variations (1928), Disque 957 (1928), and Cinegraphic Study of an Arabesque . In these, as well as in her theoretical writing, Dulac's goal was "pure" cinema, free from any influence from literature, the stage, or even the other visual arts. The style of
2392-501: A more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary. Examples of their work include Drifters (John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Fires Were Started , and A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W. H. Auden , composers such as Benjamin Britten , and writers such as J. B. Priestley . Among the best known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face . Calling Mr. Smith (1943)
2496-787: A neutral background with a moving camera. A number of devices can be regarded as early media for abstract animation or visual music, including color organs , chinese fireworks , the kaleidoscope , musical fountains and special animated slides for the magic lantern (like the chromatrope). Some of the earliest animation designs for stroboscopic devices (like the phénakisticope and the zoetrope) were abstract, including one Fantascope disc by inventor Joseph Plateau and many of Simon Stampfer 's Stroboscopische Scheiben (1833). Abstract film concepts were shaped by early 20th century art movements such as Cubism , Expressionism , Dadaism , Suprematism , Futurism , Precisionism and possible others. These art movements were beginning to gain momentum in
2600-577: A new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts for interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance; however, this position is at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov 's credos of provocation to present "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously), and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by
2704-410: A nonfiction film can be constructed as a narrative." Ruttmann's 1927 Berlin: Symphony of a Great City , Dziga Vertov 's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and other cinéma vérité works can be considered as documentaries in the cinéma pur style. Documentary filmmaker, artist, and choreographer Hilary Harris (1929 – 1999) invested 15 years in crafting his time-lapse film portraying Manhattan as
2808-403: A number of narrative characteristics". Narrative film also occasionally uses "visual materials that are not representational". Although many abstract films are clearly devoid of narrative elements, distinction between a narrative film and a non-narrative film can be rather vague and is often open for interpretation. Unconventional imagery, concepts and structuring can obscure the narrativity of
2912-489: A phonograph. In 1927 Kasimir Malevich had created a 3-page scenario in manuscript with explanatory color drawings for an "Artistic-Scientific film" entitled Art and the Problems of Architecture: The Emergence of a New Plastic System of Architecture , an instructional film about the theory, origin and evolution of suprematism . Initially there were plans to have the film animated in a Soviet studio, but Malevich took it along on
3016-428: A resource to teach various principles . Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be truthful to their vision of the world without intentionally misrepresenting a topic. Social media platforms (such as YouTube ) have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary- film genre . These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease-of-accessibility. Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski
3120-526: A teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 1960s, saw many exhilarating and inspiring abstract 16mm movies and nonstory noncharacter 16mm visual tone poems screened at cinematic artist Bruce Baillie 's independent, underground Canyon Cinema shows; along with some of Baillie 's own early visual motion pictures, Lucas became inspired by the work of Jordan Belson , Bruce Conner , Will Hindle , and others. Lucas then went on to enrol as
3224-469: A trip to Berlin and ended up leaving it for Hans Richter after the two had met. The style and colorfulness of Rhythmus 25 had convinced Malevich that Richter should direct the film. Due to circumstances the scenario did not get into the hands of Richter before the end of the 1950s. Richter created storyboards, two rough cuts and at least 120 takes for the film in collaboration with Arnold Eagle since 1971, but it remained incomplete. Richter had wanted to create
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3328-533: A type of color organ. Eggeling happened to die a few days later. Oskar Fischinger met Walter Ruttmann at rehearsals for screenings of Opus I with live music in Frankfurt. In 1921 he started experimenting with abstract animation in wax and clay and with colored liquids. He used such early material in 1926 in multiple-projection performances for Alexander Laszlo 's Colorlightmusic concerts. That same year he released his first abstract animations and would continue with
3432-578: A way that a viewer could follow the changes in the designs when looking at the scroll from beginning to end. For a few years Eggeling and Richter worked together, each on their own projects based on these ides, and created thousands of rhythmic series of simple shapes. In 1920 they started working on film versions of their work. Walter Ruttmann, trained as a musician and painter, gave up painting to devote himself to film. He made his earliest films by painting frames on glass in combination with cutouts and elaborate tinting and hand-coloring. His Lichtspiel: Opus I
3536-503: A wordless meditation on wartime Britain. From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to the images, but no spoken content. Koyaanisqatsi (part of the Qatsi trilogy ) consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. Baraka tries to capture
3640-470: Is a separate area. Pathé was the best-known global manufacturer of such films in the early 20th century. A vivid example is Moscow Clad in Snow (1909). Biographical documentaries appeared during this time, such as the feature Eminescu-Veronica-Creangă (1914) on the relationship between the writers Mihai Eminescu , Veronica Micle and Ion Creangă (all deceased at the time of the production), released by
3744-419: Is an anti-Nazi color film created by Stefan Themerson which is both a documentary and an avant-garde film against war. It was one of the first anti-Nazi films in history. Cinéma vérité (or the closely related direct cinema ) was dependent on some technical advances to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound. Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in
3848-494: Is to say of poetry which is truly cinematographic, has been provided us by some remarkable films, vulgarly called documentaries, particularly Nanook and Moana . According to Timothy Corrigan in The Film Experience , non-narrative film is distinct from nonfiction film, though both forms may overlap in documentary films . In the book Corrigan writes, "A non-narrative film may be entirely or partly fictional; conversely,
3952-600: The Ballets Suédois) and Clair himself. The film showed absurd scenes and used slow motion and reverse playback, superimpositions, radical camera angles, stop motion and other effects. Erik Satie composed a score that was to be performed in sync with certain scenes. Henri Chomette adjusted the film speed and shot from different angles to capture abstract patterns in his 1925 film Jeux des reflets de la vitesse ( The Play of Reflections and Speed ). His 1926 film Cinq minutes du cinéma pur ( Five minutes of Pure Cinema ) reflected
4056-660: The Bucharest chapter of Pathé . Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolor (known for the feature With Our King and Queen Through India (1912)) and Prizma Color (known for Everywhere With Prizma (1919) and the five-reel feature Bali the Unknown (1921)) used travelogues to promote the new color processes. In contrast, Technicolor concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for fiction feature films. Also during this period, Frank Hurley 's feature documentary film, South (1919) about
4160-711: The Film-Kurier . The director Herbert Seggelke was working on the abstract motion picture Strich-Punkt-Ballett (i.e. Ballet of Dots and Dashes) in 1943, but could not finish the film during the war. Mieczysław Szczuka also attempted to create abstract films, but seems never to have realized his plans. Some designs were published in 1924 in the avant-garde magazine block as 5 Moments of an Abstract Film . In 1926 dadaist Marcel Duchamp released Anémic Cinéma , filmed in collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret . It showed early versions of his rotoreliefs, discs that seemed to show an abstract 3-D moving image when rotating on
4264-644: The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was released. The film documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914. With Robert J. Flaherty 's Nanook of the North in 1922, documentary film embraced romanticism . Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic documentary films during this time period, often showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then. For instance, in Nanook of
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4368-479: The National Film Board of Canada 's animation unit in 1941. Direct animation was seen as a way to deviate from cel animation and thus a way to stand out from the many American productions. McLaren's direct animations for NFB include Boogie-Doodle (1941), Hen Hop (1942), Begone Dull Care (1949) and Blinkity Blank (1955). Harry Everett Smith created several direct films, initially by hand-painting abstract animations on celluloid. His Early Abstractions
4472-658: The "Qatsi" trilogy, which includes "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), " Powaqqatsi " (1988), and " Naqoyqatsi " (2002). These films, scored by composer Philip Glass , offer visual experiences that examine the effects of technology, consumerism, and environmental issues on the world. Reggio's work employs techniques such as time-lapse photography and slow motion to prompt reflection on contemporary existence. Following in Reggio's footsteps, his cinematographer Ron Fricke achieved notable milestones within this approach, including "Chronos," " Baraka ," and " Samsara ." Director George Lucas , growing up as
4576-557: The 'Soirée du coeur à barbe" program in Paris. The film consisted mainly of abstract textures, with moving photograms that were created directly on the film strip, abstract forms filmed in motion, and light and shadow on the nude torso of Kiki of Montparnasse ( Alice Prin ). Man Ray later made Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (27 mins, 1929). Dudley Murphy had seen Man Ray's Le Retour à la Raison and proposed to collaborate on
4680-448: The 1910s. Italian Futurists Arnaldo Ginna and his brother Bruno Corra made hand-painted films between 1910 and 1912 that are now lost. In 1916 they published The Futurist Cinema manifesto together with Giacomo Balla , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Remo Chiti and Emilio Settimelli. They proposed a cinema that "being essentially visual, must above all fulfill the evolution of painting, detach itself from reality, from photography, from
4784-884: The 1920s and 1930s. These films were particularly influenced by modern art , namely Cubism , Constructivism , and Impressionism . According to art historian and author Scott MacDonald , city symphony films can be described as, "An intersection between documentary and avant-garde film: an avant-doc "; however, A.L. Rees suggests regarding them as avant-garde films. Early titles produced within this genre include: Manhatta (New York; dir. Paul Strand , 1921); Rien que les heures /Nothing But The Hours ( France ; dir. Alberto Cavalcanti , 1926); Twenty Four Dollar Island (dir. Robert J. Flaherty , 1927); Moscow (dir. Mikhail Kaufman , 1927); Études sur Paris (dir. André Sauvage , 1928); The Bridge (1928) and Rain (1929), both by Joris Ivens ; São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole (dir. Adalberto Kemeny , 1929), Berlin: Symphony of
4888-407: The 2010 races. Bridget understands and accepts that her husband, like many others , died doing something he loved. Despite the near fatal injuries, the film shows how those that survive all want to go back and do it again. Directed by motorsports and commercial director Richard De Aragues, the film utilises a range of archive footage along with 3D technology and high definition equipment to capture
4992-544: The Belgian coal mining region. Luis Buñuel directed a " surrealist " documentary Las Hurdes (1933). Pare Lorentz 's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) and Willard Van Dyke 's The City (1939) are notable New Deal productions, each presenting complex combinations of social and ecological awareness, government propaganda, and leftist viewpoints. Frank Capra 's Why We Fight (1942–1944) series
5096-814: The French cinéma pur artists probably had a strong influence on newer works by Ruttmann and Richter, which would no longer be totally abstract. Richter's Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts before Breakfast) (1928) features some stop motion, but mostly shows live action material with cinematographic effects and visual tricks. It is usually regarded as a dadaist film. The clearest examples of pure cinema are said by essayist and filmmaker Hubert Revol to be documentaries. Documentary must be made by poets. Few of those within French cinema have understood that in our country, we possess innumerable elements and subjects to make, not just insignificant ribbons (of film), but splendid films lively and expressive... The purest demonstration of pure cinema, that
5200-780: The Furnaces , from 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas , influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. Among the many political documentaries produced in the early 1970s was "Chile: A Special Report", public television's first in-depth expository look at the September 1973 overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile by military leaders under Augusto Pinochet , produced by documentarians Ari Martinez and José Garcia. A June 2020 article in The New York Times reviewed
5304-574: The North , Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun, but had them use a harpoon instead. Some of Flaherty's staging, such as building a roofless igloo for interior shots, was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time. Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of Flaherty's Nanook and Moana with two romanticized documentaries, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), both directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack . The " city symphony " sub film genre consisted of avant-garde films during
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#17328918717135408-673: The North American " direct cinema " (or more accurately " cinéma direct "), pioneered by, among others, Canadians Michel Brault , Pierre Perrault and Allan King , and Americans Robert Drew , Richard Leacock , Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles . The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement with their subjects. Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-involvement (or at least no overt involvement), and Perrault, Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary. The films Chronicle of
5512-460: The Penguins , and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable. The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 30 years from the cinéma vérité style introduced in the 1960s in which
5616-571: The Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in his neurology clinic in Bucharest : Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy (1898), The Walking Troubles of Organic Paraplegies (1899), A Case of Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis (1899), The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion Ataxy (1900), and Illnesses of the Muscles (1901). All these short films have been preserved. The professor called his works "studies with
5720-625: The UFA-Palast theater at the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin. Its 900 seats soon sold out and the program was repeated a week later. Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale , Richter's Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23 , Walter Ruttmann's Opus II , Opus III and Opus IV were all shown publicly for the first time in Germany, along with the two French dadaist cinéma pur films Ballet Mécanique and René Clair's Entr'acte , and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack 's performance with
5824-485: The advantage of documentaries lies in introducing new perspectives which may not be prevalent in traditional media such as written publications and school curricula. Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries. Documentary filmmaking can be used as
5928-474: The camera). The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as "a factual film which is dramatic." Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, and a specific message, along with the facts it presents. Scholar Betsy McLane asserted that documentaries are for filmmakers to convey their views about historical events, people, and places which they find significant. Therefore,
6032-498: The colourful Rhythmus 25 followed similar principles, with noticeable suprematist influence of Kasimir Malevich 's work. Rhythmus 25 is considered lost. Eggeling debuted his Horizontal-vertikalorchester in 1923. The film is now considered lost. In November 1924 Eggeling was able to present his new finished film Symphonie diagonale in a private screening. On 3 May 1925 the Sunday matinee program Der absolute Film took place in
6136-450: The completion and contributed a cubist Charlie Chaplin image that was jerkily animated for the film. It is unclear if Léger contributed anything else, but he got to distribute the film in Europe and took sole credit for the film. Ray had backed out of the project before completion and did not want his name to be used. Murphy had gone back to the U.S.A. shortly after editing the final version, with
6240-492: The creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials. The word "documentary" was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty 's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for Grierson). Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in
6344-434: The creation of an absolute language of form, a desire common to early abstract art. Ruttmann wrote of his film work as "painting in time". Absolute filmmakers used rudimentary handicraft, techniques, and language in their short motion pictures that refuted the reproduction of the natural world, instead, focusing on light and form in the dimension of time, impossible to represent in static visual arts. Viking Eggeling came from
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#17328918717136448-436: The deal that he could distribute the film there. Avant-garde artist Francis Picabia and composer Erik Satie asked René Clair to make a short film to be shown as the entr'acte of their Dadaist ballet Relâche for Ballets suédois . The result became known as Entr'acte (1924) and featured cameo appearances by Francis Picabia, Erik Satie, Man Ray , Marcel Duchamp, composer Georges Auric , Jean Borlin (director of
6552-429: The development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The "making-of" documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary. Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has
6656-407: The director. The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as " mondo films " or "docu-ganda." However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to
6760-448: The dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes ' Voices of Iraq , where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves. Films in the documentary form without words have been made. Listen to Britain , directed by Humphrey Jennings and Stuart McAllister in 1942, is
6864-526: The early part of the 20th century. They were often referred to by distributors as "scenics". Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time. An important early film which moved beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), which embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of Native Americans . Contemplation
6968-471: The entirety of a famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States. In May 1896, Bolesław Matuszewski recorded on film a few surgical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen invited Matuszewski and Clément Maurice to record his surgical operations. They started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898. Until 1906,
7072-562: The film 4 stars out of 5 and stated that the Isle of Man TT is pure cinema . Philip French of The Observer gave the film a positive review and wrote, "the speeds on such narrow, winding public roads are hair-raising and superbly photographed, the crashes spectacular and the riders far more likable than anyone involved in Formula One ." Anthony Quinn of The Independent gave the film 5 stars out of 5 and wrote that "De Aragues never loses sight of
7176-527: The film a 4 out of 5, and called it "a thrilling, funny and moving human drama for pretty much everyone, not just biking enthusiasts." Graham Young of the Birmingham Post praised the film and wrote, "with history offering a fatality for every corner and more than five per mile, your heart will be in your mouth watching the likes of maverick rider Guy Martin go hell for leather in search of his dream of winning just one race." Philip De Semlyen of Empire gave
7280-516: The film totally in Malevich's spirit, but concluded that in the end he could not discern how much of his own creativity withheld him from executing the scenario properly. Mary Ellen Bute started making experimental films in 1933, mostly with abstract images visualizing music. Occasionally she applied animation techniques in her films. Len Lye made the first publicly released direct animation entitled A Colour Box in 1935. The colorful production
7384-513: The films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits. Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs , Showman , Salesman , Near Death , and The Children Were Watching . In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often regarded as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing society. La Hora de los hornos ( The Hour of
7488-533: The form due to problematic ontological foundations. Documentary filmmakers are increasingly using social impact campaigns with their films. Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by converting public awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action, largely by offering the audience a way to get involved. Examples of such documentaries include Kony 2012 , Salam Neighbor , Gasland , Living on One Dollar , and Girl Rising . Although documentaries are financially more viable with
7592-515: The graceful and solemn. It must become antigraceful, deforming, impressionistic, synthetic, dynamic, free-wording." "The most varied elements will enter into the Futurist film as expressive means: from the slice of life to the streak of color, from the conventional line to words-in-freedom, from chromatic and plastic music to the music of objects. In other words it will be painting, architecture, sculpture, words-in-freedom, music of colors, lines, and forms,
7696-434: The great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies. Bodysong was made in 2003 and won a British Independent Film Award for "Best British Documentary." Cin%C3%A9ma pur Narrative film is the dominant aesthetic, though non-narrative film is not fully distinct from that aesthetic. While the non-narrative film avoids "certain traits" of the narrative film, it "still retains
7800-694: The help of the cinematograph," and published the results, along with several consecutive frames, in issues of La Semaine Médicale magazine from Paris, between 1899 and 1902. In 1924, Auguste Lumière recognized the merits of Marinescu's science films: "I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving La Semaine Médicale , but back then I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological studies. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me. Unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way." Travelogue films were very popular in
7904-428: The human eye, and created a film philosophy from it. The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film. Newsreels at this time were sometimes staged but were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after
8008-468: The increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive. Within the past decade, the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source. Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with
8112-656: The landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize : America's Civil Rights Years (1986 – Part 1 and 1989 – Part 2) by Henry Hampton, 4 Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee , The Civil War by Ken Burns , and UNESCO-awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later , express not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views. Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporate stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore 's Roger & Me place far more interpretive control with
8216-458: The lover – rhythm of soul and rhythm of legs)." About a month later the short film Vita Futurista was released, directed by Ginna in collaboration with Corra, Balla and Marinetti. Only a few frames of the film remain and little else of any Futurist Cinema work seems to have been made or preserved. Around 1911 Hans Lorenz Stoltenberg also experimented with direct animation, rhythmically piecing together tinted film in different colors. He published
8320-757: The medium to its elemental origins" of "vision and movement". It declares cinema to be its own independent art form that should not borrow from literature or stage. As such, "pure cinema" is made up of nonstory, noncharacter films that convey abstract emotional experiences through unique cinematic devices such as camera movement and camera angles, close-ups, dolly shots, lens distortions, sound-visual relationships, split-screen imagery, super-impositions, time-lapse photography , slow motion , trick shots , stop-action, montage (the Kuleshov effect , flexible montage of time and space), rhythm through exact repetition or dynamic cutting and visual composition. Cinéma pur started around
8424-406: The pictures separately. Mary Hallock-Greenewalt used templates and aerosol sprays to create repeating geometrical patterns on hand-painted films. These extant films were probably made around 1916 for her Sarabet color organ, for which she filed 11 patents between 1919 and 1926. The films were not projected, but one viewer at a time could look down into the machine at the film itself. The Sarabet
8528-738: The piece was completed. Fischinger's two commissions from The Museum of Non-Objective Painting did not really allow him the creative freedom that he desired. Frustrated with all the trouble with filmmaking he experienced in America, Fischinger did not make many films afterwards. Apart from some commercials, the only exception was Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949. Norman McLaren , having carefully studied Lye's A Colour Box , founded
8632-513: The political documentary And She Could Be Next , directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia. The Times described the documentary not only as focusing on women in politics, but more specifically on women of color, their communities, and the significant changes they have wrought upon America. Box office analysts have noted that the documentary film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 , Super Size Me , Food, Inc. , Earth , March of
8736-547: The races. The director explained, "The TT has been filmed before, however, not until now have the tools existed that could do justice to those that have competed over the 37¾ miles that make up the legendary Mountain Circuit." TT3D: Closer To The Edge was produced by CinemaNX, the film production and distribution company backed by the Isle of Man Government . It was filmed in the Isle of Man , Northern Ireland , England , New Zealand and Los Angeles , California . In March 2011, it
8840-625: The risks involved in their bid to become King of the Mountain. The film was released to the public in 2011 to critical acclaim and was a financial success. Grossing $ 2 million, it is the seventh highest-grossing documentary in the United Kingdom. The film charts the build up to the 2010 races, and then documents each of the races and their results. These take place along public roads through the Isle of Man , covering 37.73 miles of terrain, and packed with thousands of spectators who have come from all over
8944-514: The same period with the same goals as the absolute film movement and both mainly concerned dadaists. Although the terms have been used interchangeably, or to differentiate between the German and the French filmmakers, a very noticeable difference is that very few of the French cinéma pur films were totally non-figurative or contained traditional (drawn) animation, instead mainly using radical types of cinematography, special effects , editing, visual effects and occasionally some stop motion . The term
9048-428: The sport's high-risk stakes, where a mechanical glitch or tiny error of judgment might be the difference between life and death." Documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record ". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice,
9152-530: The style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80 to one. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movement – such as Werner Nold , Charlotte Zwerin , Muffie Meyer , Susan Froemke , and Ellen Hovde – are often overlooked, but their input to
9256-552: The top of the British Superstock Championship . The film reveals how, for more than 100 years, riders have come to the Isle of Man to compete. The narration suggests that the TT has always called for a commitment far beyond any other racing event, and since the race began over 200 people have died in the races. The second half of the film introduces Bridget Dobbs, mother of two and widow of Paul Dobbs ("Dobsy") who died in
9360-470: The unique qualities of motion, rhythm, light and composition inherent in the technical medium of cinema to create emotional experiences. Many abstract films have been made with animation techniques. The distinction between animation and other techniques can be rather unclear in some films, for instance when moving objects could either be animated with stop motion techniques, recorded during their actual movement, or appear to move due to being filmed against
9464-432: The use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as Marlon Riggs 's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials. Historical documentaries, such as
9568-579: The world. Using 3D technology, Closer to the Edge captures the 2010 races and attempts to show what motivates the racers. The film features several racers, including Guy Martin , John McGuinness , Conor Cummins , and Ian Hutchinson . McGuinness is the most successful living TT rider, having won the TT fifteen times. In 2009 Hutchinson won two TT's in one day, another road race, the North West 200 , in Northern Ireland as well as competing every week at
9672-494: The year of his last film, Doyen recorded more than 60 operations. Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of. For scientific purposes, after 1906, Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations, two of which survive, the six-film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulées (1906), and the four-film Les Opérations sur la cavité crânienne (1911). These and five other of Doyen's films survive. Between July 1898 and 1901,
9776-661: Was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. Constance Bennett and her husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature-length documentaries, Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali , and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) filmed in Indochina . In Canada, the Film Board , set up by John Grierson,
9880-426: Was among those who identified the mode of documentary film. He wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema, Une nouvelle source de l'histoire ("A New Source of History") and La photographie animée ("Animated photography"). Both were published in 1898 in French and were among the earliest written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film. Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose
9984-458: Was announced that Jared Leto would narrate the film. TT3D: Closer to the Edge was universally acclaimed by critics, with a 100% fresh critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews as of February 2012. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 4 stars out of 5 and stated that "It's a saturnalia of excitement, saturated with thrills and a sense of danger that is almost spiritual." Catherine Bray, writing for Film4 , also gave
10088-593: Was coined by filmmaker Henri Chomette , brother of filmmaker René Clair . The cinéma pur film movement included Dada artists, such as Man Ray , René Clair and Marcel Duchamp . The Dadaists saw in cinema an opportunity to transcend "story", to ridicule "character," "setting," and "plot" as bourgeois conventions, to slaughter causality by using the innate dynamism of the motion picture film medium to overturn conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space. Man Ray's Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins) premiered in July 1923 at
10192-550: Was coined to describe the style of several filmmakers in France in the 1920s, whose work was non-narrative, but hardly ever non-figurative. Much of surrealist cinema can be regarded as non-narrative films and partly overlaps with the dadaist cinéma pur movement. Abstract film or absolute film is a subgenre of experimental film and a form of abstract art . Abstract films are non-narrative, contain no acting and do not attempt to reference reality or concrete subjects. They rely on
10296-487: Was commissioned to promote the General Post Office . Oskar Fischinger moved to Hollywood in 1936 when he had a lucrative agreement to work for Paramount Pictures . A first film, eventually entitled Allegretto , was planned for inclusion in the musical comedy The Big Broadcast of 1937 . Paramount had failed to communicate that it would be in black and white, so Fischinger left when the studio refused to even consider
10400-408: Was compiled around 1964 and contains early works that may have been created since 1939, 1941 or 1946 until 1952, 1956 or 1957. Smith was not very concerned about keeping documentation about his oeuvre and frequently re-edited his works. Cinéma pur ( French: [sinema pyʁ] ; lit. ' pure cinema ' ) was an avant-garde film movement of French filmmakers, who "wanted to return
10504-499: Was finalised in 1975 and is recognised as a precursor to Godfrey Reggio 's " Koyaanisqatsi " (1982). Very little had been said about the importance of this short film. Nevertheless, it was the spark from which a visual revolution occurred in documentary filmmaking. The non-linear and not-narrative documentary current found its world recognition with Godfrey Reggio. He is a filmmaker known for his exploration of various themes related to human life and society. Amongst his works stand out
10608-470: Was first publicly demonstrated at John Wanamaker's New York department store in 1922. Some of the earliest abstract motion pictures known to survive are those produced by a group of artists working in Germany in the early 1920s: Walter Ruttmann , Hans Richter , Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger . Absolute film pioneers sought to create short length and breathtaking films with different approaches to abstraction-in-motion: as an analogue to music, or as
10712-778: Was first screened in March 1921 in Frankfurt. Hans Richter finished his first film Rhythmus 21 (a.k.a. Film ist Rhythmus ) in 1921, but kept changing elements until he first presented the work on 7 July 1923 in Paris at the dadaist Soirée du coeur à barbe program in Théâtre Michel . It was an abstract animation of rectangular shapes, partly inspired by his connections with De Stijl . Founder Theo van Doesburg had visited Richter and Eggeling in December 1920 and reported on their film works in his magazine De Stijl in May and July 1921. Rhytmus 23 and
10816-599: Was set up for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels . In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They became known as the Documentary Film Movement . Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti , Harry Watt , Basil Wright , and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda, information, and education with
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