What Is the History of Documentary Films?

Movies have been entertaining audiences for generations. There are many different types of films and many different genres. One such type of film is the documentary. These documentaries, though not often big box-office successes, have become really popular, popular with critic and most audiences. Some have even been deemed some of the greatest films of all time and have endured for years.

A documentary film is a movie that attempts to documents reality. Documentary films are “nonfiction ‘slice of life’ actual works of art” (Dirk). It tells of certain events or chain of events that have or is unfolding as the movie goes on. The scenes in the movie are not scripted and the people in the movie are not actors. A documentary often includes a commentary over the images or includes interviews. Documentaries are important because they are a documentation of human life and history, leaving an important lasting document that everyone will remember. Documentaries are important because they usually contain important and serious messages that impact people’s lives and affect their decisions.

Documentary films are just as old as the medium of film itself. The earliest films could be considered documentaries, which featured a short, one shot of actual events (Hawkins and Bronwyn). The first example of documentaries can be traced back to the Lumiere Brothers, who filmed people doing various things, for example, factory workers leaving a plant (Dirk). The earliest known documentaries were usually short newsreels.    There was no narrative structure to these newsreels (Dirk). What these newsreels were was travelogues and they only showed the current events.

There are many different types of documentaries.  In the 1920s, European filmmakers made a series of city symphonies.  City symphonies were documentaries that would document the everyday lives of the people in that particular city; realist films that focused on human-made environments (Documentary Archive). City symphonies would lead the way for experimental and avante garde films.

An example of a city symphony would be the experimental documentary Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which predicts daily life in several Soviet cities (Dirk). Man with a Movie Camera has had an important impact of filmmaking in general. It has become the first documentary to be in the top ten of the Sight & Sound magazine poll of the greatest films of all time in 2012 because of how it “shunned theatrical conventions” (Bradshaw), its technique and its inspiration on numerous imitators through the years.

 This movie was directed by Dziga Vertov, who was part of the Kino-Pravda newsreel series. He believed that the camera could render more reality than the human eye could (Documentary Archive). Vertov also helped influence a style of documentary called cinema verite.

Cinema verite is described as “film truth” and basically means an attempt to give an unbiased look at the stories being told (Porter). This is one of the many style of documentary filmmaking, which includes docudrama and observational documentation. Cinema verite was a film style popular with many 1960s French documentary filmmakers, who were influenced by the newsreels of Vertov (Porter). In observation documentation the subject is unaware its being filmed, while in cinema verite, it is the exact opposite (Porter). This poses the question on whether or not these documentaries “pure truth”.

In the 1930s, most documentaries either focused on the Great Depression or were propaganda films made the Axis powers. Propaganda films are films that are made by a political group in order or change the opinion of the masses or to make an ideology known. The most well-known propaganda film is Triumph of the Will (1935), a film which uses “superb cinematography and editing” (Dirk) to promote an

overwhelmingly positive image of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The movie was directed by German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, one of the first well-known female directors. Riefenstahl also directed Olympia (1938), which documented the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The movie was meant to show off the “Aryan athletes in competition” (Dirk) in order to show off Aryan superiority to other races. 

After World War II, many documentaries came out about the Holocaust. Night and Fog (1955) criticized the Nazis for “inflicting the horrors of the Holocaust on the world (Dirk).” This film is among other films on the subject of the Holocaust, such as Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity (1971). One of the most notable documentaries about the Holocaust is Shoah (1985); shoah in Hebrew is “annihilation” (Dirk). Directed by Claude Lanzmann, the movie is of an epic length, 570 minutes or about 9 hours. The movie features interviews from Holocaust survivors and even surviving Nazi officials, whom he underhandedly filmed by secretly hiding his camera (Ebert). The movie does not make use of archive footage from the 40s. The production lasted about 11 years and was filmed in 14 countries.

Mr. Lanzmann is very proud of the film, agreeing with critics in that it has become a benchmark to all movies or any other visual representation of the Holocaust (Rohter). Well-known critic Roger Ebert proclaimed, “I had seen a memory of the most debased chapter in human history… There is no proper response to this film. It is an enormous fact, a 550-minute howl of pain and anger in the face of genocide. It is one of the noblest films ever made (Ebert).” Shoah is also considered one of the greatest films of all time.

Some documentaries are about an actual person, rather than an event. These are biographical documentaries. Some well-known ones are Crumb (1994), an incite into the world of bizarre, underground comic book artist Robert Crumb and When We Were Kings (1996), which follows Mohammad Ali during the “Rumble in the Jungle”, the fight for heavyweight champion against George Forman.

An interesting series of documentaries are the Up Documentaries. Starting in 1963, the Up Series has followed a group of about 14 individuals over a period of seven years (Dirk). Each cast member started the series at the age of 7. There are currently eight installments.

One of the most acclaimed documentaries is Hoop Dreams (1994). The film was directed by Steve James. Just like the Up Documentaries, the film follows several individuals of a period of time. In this instance, its two teenagers over a period of six years. Hoop Dreams follows two, African-American, inner city, high school athletes as the try to escape their poverty and struggle in their life and strive to become professional basketball players (Dirk). Upon its release in 1994, the film was proclaimed the best movie of the year by more critics than another movie released that year, even more acclaimed than the Academy Award winner Forrest Gump (1994) and other favorites such as The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

Some of the most well-known documentaries are music related or document music concerts and events. The first example of music documentaries is Don’t Look Back (1967), which is a look behind the scenes of a Bob Dylan concert. Another famous documentary is Gimme Shelter (1970), which is about the Rolling Stones’ USA tour and the infamous concert at Altamont Speedway. Other music documentaries include The Beatles’ Let It Be (1970), The Song Remains the Same (1976) featuring Led Zeppelin and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978), a film about The Band.

The most well-known documentary probably is Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (1970), which is a look at the famous rock and roll concert held in upper New York in 1969 (Dirk). The movie not only shows some of the performances from the event, it also showcases the hippie counter-culture. The film won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards that year.

One hot topic of documentary discussion is those related to nature. Many show the beauty in nature (the documentary series Planet Earth (2006-) or the fan-favorite March of the Penguins (2005), which features the survival of Emperor penguins (Dirk)) other are more focused on a political aspect. An example of this would be the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvient Truth, which documents ex-Vice President Al Gore’s presentations on global warming, which has changed various minds on the state of the Earth and became one of the highest grossing political documentaries (Dirk) at that time. 

The most thought-provoking documentaries are usually ones that provide social and political exposes. One that usually comes into the public conscience is Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004). In the film, Morgan Spurlock almost does your basic dare; eat McDonald’s fast food for a whole month, in order to show the after effects of eating unhealthy foods. The movie also examined the reasons of obesity in the United States (Dirk) and the marketing ploys the big companies use to attract customers. This is only one example of social exposes.

Another well-known expose is the Academy Award winner Harlan County, USA (1976). The film is about Kentucky coal miners who went on strike against their company the Eastover Mining Company (Dirk). This was due to the worker who tried to join a union, which the company then refused them to do. Many of the workers were in poverty, gained little wages and were in fear of dying in disasters. The director of this documentary, Barbara Kopple, would later win Oscar for another movie about labor struggles.

One subject that has been featured in many documentaries is homosexuality. One award winning documentary on the topic of homosexuality is the biopic The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), about the first openly-gay man elected for a political office in California (Dirk) and his later assassination. This is just one of the many documentaries about homosexuality made by Robert Epstein and Jeffery Friedman. Their topics include homosexuals battling AIDs (Common Threads (1989)) and the portal of gays in the history of film (The Celluloid Closet (1995)). Transgendered individuals are also featured in documentaries. One such example is Paris is Burning (1991), which takes a look at drag balls in New York City (Dirk) and its Latino and black competitors.

One film director who constantly attacks political issues is Michael Moore, an independent and sardonic journalist. His films usually combine dark comedy with scathing commentary. The first film that launched his career was Roger & Me (1989), which talked about the effects of the ’86 closing of automobile factories in Michigan (Dirk). All this was claimed to be the responsibility of GM’s former CEO Roger Smith, who, throughout the film, Moore tries to contact, most of the time to no avail.

Another of Moore’s most famous films is Bowling for Columbine (2002), which is about the United States’ obsession with guns and violence. Moore uses the massacre at Columbine High School as a starting point for the film. The movie was critically acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival and became the highest grossing documentary of all time until his next film.

Moore’s nest film was Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). The film attacked President George W. Bush and his handling of terrorist attacks. The film also exposes the connections between the Bush family and the family of Osama Bin Laden (Dirk), Al-Qaeda leader and constructor of the attacks on September 11^th, 2001. The film “rips” on Bush’s administration and the war on terror. Moore also goes into talking about corruption in government. This film caused much controversy, and public notoriety made Moore one of highest grossing documentary filmmakers of all time.

Another famous documentary filmmaker is Errol Morris. His film style is described as unique and very investigative. Some of his films are of unusual subject matter (Dirk). An example of this “unusual” subject is Gates of Heaven (1978) which is about the closing of a pet cemetery in North California and the reaction from pet owners.

Morris’ most well-known movie is The Thin Blue Line (1988). The movie is about the 1976 murder of a Texas cop and the incarceration of the innocent Randall Adams. This movie tries to prove that Randall was wrongfully accused of this crime. The movie was actually successful in saving Adams from a death sentence (Schneider). What is unique about this film is that is uses reconstructions of the crime of various other events. 

 Another one of the most famous documentary filmmakers is Ken Burns. Ken Burns is best known for making PBS specials and historical documentaries which have been well received. Some examples of these are The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994) and Jazz (2001). Ken Burns has had so much influence that the style of his documentaries was named after him (Hawkins and Bronwyn). The “Ken Burns” style includes narration of historical documents and makes use of music and images in order to “help the past come alive for the audience (Hawkins and Bronwyn)”. Burns has won several awards including twelve Emmys and has garnered two Oscar nominations (Ken Burns). In 2002, a poll was conducted by the Real Screen Magazine which named Ken Burns the second most influential documentary filmmakers of all time (Ken Burns), second to Robert Flaherty.

As with some movies, there are documentaries that either does not fit into the genres mentioned or fit into multiple categories. Salesman (1969) is one example of this. This documentary follows Bible salesmen (Dirk). This film was directed by David and Albert Maysles. They also directed the well-known film Grey Garden (1976) about the mother daughter relationship (Dirk) of the eccentric relatives of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Another documentary worth of mention is the HBO film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996). The film documents a fascinating criminal case (Dirk); the arrest and the trails of the West Memphis Three, three teenagers who were accused of brutally murdering three eight year old boys in 1993, though they proclaim their innocence. The film was directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Dirk) who would go on to make two sequels to this film, which showed new evidence and appeal cases, which eventually leads to their freedom from an Alford plea in 2011. All these various documentaries prove that these types of films have a wide range of themes and stories.

There is no doubt that documentaries are important. They play an immense importance because it presents a story or situation and have the viewers create an opinion based on what the film gives to the audience. Its can be an extremely great tool. It can mold mass opinion towards one way or create an excellent story. Though not as big as your fiction film, the documentary film is still significant and will continue to enthrall audiences. 

Works Cited

 Bradshaw, Nick. "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time." British Film Institute. British Film Institute, 1 Aug. 2012. Web. 31 Jan. 2013. 

"CHELOVEK S KINOAPPARATOM." Explore Film... British Film Institute, Aug. 2012. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.

"Documentary Archive." Documentary Film History. EpiGenesis, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

"Ken Burns." FLORENTINE FILMS. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2012.

Dirk, Tim. "Documentary Films." Documentary Films. AMC Network Entertainment LLC, n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.

Harvey, Adam. "Organic/Mechanic." OrganicMechanic RSS. N.p., 29 Sept. 2006. Web. 19 Dec. 2012.

Hawkins, Kathy, and Bronwyn Harris. "What Is a Documentary Film." WiseGeek. Conjecture, 29 Aug. 2012. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

Porter, H. Wolfgang. "Cinema verite documentary: documentary filmmaking is as old as the motion picture format itself. There has always been a desire for film and video directors to 'tell the story as it happens'." Videomaker May 2011: 41+. General OneFile. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

Rohter, Larry. "Maker of ‘Shoah’ Stresses Its Lasting Value." The New York Times. N.p., 6 Dec. 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.