History of Documentaries
The
term ‘Documentary’ was initially used by the documentary maker- John Grierson
in 1926 as he felt that the ‘origional actor’ and ‘origional scene’ were better
at representing the real world than any fictions films. He also described a documentary as a
‘creative treatment of actuality’.
Pre-
1900: the only snippets of film were short takes of simple moments such as a
train departing from a station or a group of people leaving work. These were called ‘actuality’ films. However
between 1898- 1901 ‘actuality’ films
were predominantly for medical use. In 1898, Eugène-Louis Doyen, created a number of films showing
surgical procedures in order to demonstrate his surgical errors. Romanian professor,
Gheorghe Marinescu also created a series of films about the
study of neurological illnesses.
As technology
developed, more films for entertainment and information emerged and between
1900- 1920 travelogue films became very popular, as they introduced people to
places and countries they had not been able to see before. Early colour motion
picture processes were heavily used in travelogue films as they used these types
of films to promote colour film.
In the late 1920’s Romanticism was the main focus of documentaries
as they represented people as products of their environment. The style of
romanticism documentaries was slightly avant-garde as the romanticism movement
tended to over emphasise the emotions put across.
Documentaries in the 1920’s-1940’s was dominated by
propaganda, focusing particularly on the second world war as the main purpose
of propaganda is to persuade people to agree or disagree with a certain view
point, which became a big part of the war.
From 1950-1970 a popular style of documentary was the French
movement - Cinéma-vérité
(or truth cinema). It focused on showing people in their true environment with
real conversations and situations. It became popular as the documentary makers
could take advantage of the new smaller hand-held cameras and synchronous sound
recording equipment to create a more authentic film.
At the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st
documentaries became a lot more successful when released in cinemas which
widened the target audiences as they became widely known for example, ‘March of the Penguins’ (2005) or ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ (2006). More controversial
documentaries also became increasingly popular as the documentary makers tried
to put there point across and get the audience to agree with it, directors such
as Michael Moore demonstrate this in Films such as ‘Roger and Me’ (1989) or ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ (2004), which
became the highest grossing documentary of all time.
Another particularly interesting style of
film that developed in the early 21st century is- ‘reality documentary’
examples of this are shows such as ‘The
only way is Essex’ and ‘Made in
Chelsea’. These types of
documentaries or ‘docu-soaps’ follow people’s lives and conversations however
have been accused of being staged and set-up so are less realistic.
As documentaries have developed and technology quality has increased, documentary
popularity has significantly increased over times, particularly demonstrated by
the success of documentaries shown in cinemas. Not to mention the $119 million
success of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ by Michael Moore suggests the willingness of the
viewer to watch a film that, as John Grierson said, show creative treatment of
actuality’ and educate and represent to a point the ‘real world’.
