How to understand the authenticity and documentary nature of documentary?

Generally speaking, the audience's expectation for a documentary is realism, but in fact, only the presence of the camera and photographer can affect the recording.

The rigorous documentary also records the influence of the shooting process on the recorded situation, so that the audience can get a more objective impression. The representativeness of the recorded situation also affects whether a documentary is true or not. For example, many documentaries about animals are often more willing to choose dramatic scenes when editing, and these scenes are not necessarily the typical living habits of these animals.

The personal opinions and comments of documentary photographers may also affect the authenticity of a documentary. For example, in many documentaries about animals, critics like to use anthropomorphic sentences to describe an animal's behavior, but in fact, the animal's behavior may have nothing to do with anthropomorphic description.

It is precisely because the audience often think that documentaries express the facts that documentaries will cause great misunderstanding because of carelessness or deliberate, and therefore documentaries are often used as political propaganda tools. A negative example is Disney's animal documentary White Wilderness, which won the Oscar with 1958. In this film, the audience saw lemmings fall off the cliff, so many people still think that lemmings will commit suicide collectively.

In fact, this shot was taken on a table set with ice and snow. The lemmings in the movie did not fall into the sea, but fell under the table. Although real lemmings occasionally migrate in groups, they don't actually commit suicide in groups.

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history

First, start.

Technically, the earliest films were almost all documentaries. Most of the earliest films directly filmed a scene in life, such as a train entering a railway station or a worker getting off work. 190 1 turn 1906 Austrian folklorist Rudolf Pucci (Rudolf P? Ch) filmed the life of the aborigines in New Guinea, which can be regarded as the pioneer of a real documentary.

Second, 1920s

1922, robert flaherty filmed the first sensational documentary "South Nuuk in the North". However, Flaherty used many acting plots in his films. His films did not reflect the real life situation of Inuit people at that time (for example, the Inuit people used muskets widely at that time, and Flaherty did not allow any muskets to appear in the films).

In Europe, a realistic tradition has been formed, and under this tradition, some documentaries with the theme of the city have been produced, such as "Berlin: Symphony of the City" by Walter Rotman, "Tonight" by alberto cavalcanti and "The Man with the Camera" by Ji Gavel Tofu.

Three. 1930s and 1940s.

In the1930s, many educational documentaries appeared in Germany, which far exceeded the number of German feature films at that time, including the earliest underwater photography and micrography in the world.

In the1930s and1940s, documentaries as a propaganda tool were paid more and more attention. All countries use documentaries as propaganda media in the form of newsreels. As examples, there are real movies of the Soviet Union and frank capra's What Are We Fighting for.

In particular, Nazi Germany used a lot of documentaries as propaganda tools. The most famous works here are Victory of Will by Lenny Rivenstal and The Dead Jew by Fritz Hiepler.

The earliest theory about documentary also appeared in 1930' s, among which John Grierson's The Original Principles of Documentary is important.

Four. After the Second World War

After the war, real movies were made in France and direct cinema was made in the United States. Although they are similar, there are different ways to deal with the photographer's influence on the subject.

Documentary was used as a weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in 1960s, especially in Latin America.

With the popularity of television, documentaries gradually disappeared from cinemas. Only a few documentaries can still be successful in cinemas.

Occasionally, documentaries that are very popular in cinemas include animal films Wonders of the Desert (1953), Migratory Birds (200 1) and Fahrenheit 91by michael moore (2004).

In particular, Fahrenheit 9 1 1 ranked first at the box office, which is unprecedented in the documentary history. By June 5438+February 2004 1 1, it had earned 220 19477 1 USD worldwide, making it the most profitable documentary in the world.