Documentary Notes: Sellebrity

This film looks at the increasing concern of Paparazzi in celebrities lives and also the consumption of media.  It is directed by Kevin Mazur, who is a famous event/celebrity phtoographer.

In the beginning of the movie, Kevin makes the distinction of his style of photography to one of a paparazzi. He shows a scene from a recent awards gala where he is situated directly on the red carpet. Stars come up to him, and are genuinely happy to get their photo taken by him. Meanwhile, across the red carpet, penned up like wild boars are the "paparazzi". It looks like hundreds of photographers who call out to celebrities trying to get them to look directly at them for a photograph.

The film tries to take a critical look at the world of paparazzi, talking with the first photographer who can be credited with the phrase paparazzi. However, the film fails to take a true critical look at the world. The director blames everyone including TMZ, the gossip magazines and even the general public for buying into it. He fails to look at his own involvement in this as well. His photographs are just as much feeding into the celebrity madness. Yes, his photos may still be considered different because they may be in studios, but he is still gaining notoriety by taking photos of a certain class of people.

In regards to the technical aspects of the documentary, it definitely tries to feed into that paparazzi style effect. The cuts are fast and flashy... the interviews with a-list celebrities are lit like they are in an interview for Entertainment Tonight. Sofgt

Documentary Notes: Gasland

Gasland was an emotional and informative documentary about the issues surrounding Natural Gas in the US.  The documentary should be viewed in the mode of Activist Documentary. Josh Fox, the director is also in the film as a "character" as he travels across the country to gather stories from people who have already been exposed to the dangerous repercussions of this industry.

This was the first documentary film that Josh Fox ever made.  The film feels like it borders on the edges of experimental, essay and traditional doc practices. It is experimental and essay in the way of specific scenes (especially when he is in the forest near his home). It's also essay-like because while Josh is seeking out the information from other people, this is really his journey as well.

It felt like the film was going to be one person taking on this big project at first, but early on, I noticed a second camera. This is because we saw Josh change from a small consumer camera to something that looked like a more professional rig. Josh was also in the scenes, so obviously, he had help. This came from a second cinematographer, Matt Sanchez (who also edited the film).

At first, it reminded me of the  aesthetic of Tarnation a bit. It had some experimental tinges to it, however as it moved into the bulk of the story, it changed into a traditional documentary. The movie seemed scattered in the sense that it didn't really know what it wanted to be. A Hybrid? The fancy graphics threw me off because it didn't seem like something that would be in this documentary. However, I think that the graphics did allow the audience (who may not know what fracking is) a deeper understanding of why this film and this topic is so important.

We didn't get to finish the film in class, but I do want to go back and check out the last half hour. How much more of the story can there be? I thought the committee meeting would be a great ending.

Reading Notes: Interactive Documentary and Remix Culture

Digital Distribution, Participatory Culture and the Transmedia documentary.

Robert Greenwald - Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq war.

Movie depicted prominent intellegence experts taking Bush's team to task about the war in Iraq.

Greenwald made it successful by his partnership with online organizations such as MoveOn.Org and AlterNet - they created house parties for people to discuss.

This allowed Greenwald to make more films with this distribution plan. Outfoxed and Iraq for Salew.

From Tyron:

 Greenwald helped to give form to what I am calling the transmedia documentary, a set of nonfiction films that use the participatory culture of the web to enhance the possibilities for both a vibrant public sphere cultivated around important political issues and an activist culture invested in social and political change. 

This concept of transmedia documentary builds upon and partially reworks the nonfictional modes of representation that Bill Nichols (1991: p. 3) has associated with “the discourses of sobriety,” which operate under the assumption that non-fiction films

“can and should alter the world itself, they can effect action and entail consequences.”

More;

Although these new forms of participatory culture are often treated as revolutionary, they are grounded in a much longer history of activist media. In fact, as Michael Renov (2004: p. 10) points out, media activists in the 1960s, such as Newsreel, sought to solicit involvement from their viewers, creating texts that “were active and intended as participatory,” leading to wholesale re-evaluations of normal film and television techniques in order to equip viewers with the means of engaging in their own media criticism. Newsreel also took advantage of alternative distribution techniques, placing advertisements in alternative weeklies and holding screenings that served as fundraisers for organizations such as New York-based community radio station, 


more:
Despite these forms of documentary activism, it is less than clear what happens once these films engage viewers. In fact, a number of critics, including Micah White (2010), have argued that online petitions, what he calls “clicktivism,” have short-circuited more demanding forms of political activity, breeding passivity rather than producing active political participants. Although the transmedia documentary opens itself up to this risk, projects such as Zeiger’s and Greenwald’s help illustrate the potential for filmmakers to direct attention to a specific issue.

Films to think about :

An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc, Murderball, The Age of Stupid, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, I want Your Money (ALL Follow this distribution model).

Documentary Notes: Bible Quiz

Bible Quiz is a documentary about a group of teenagers who are competing to win the National Bible Quiz Championship.  The film documents focuses on Mikayla, who is very interested in winning the competition, is more interested in gaining the affections of her bible quiz captain, JP.

The beginning of the movie brings us into the Bible Quiz world. The audience learns about how the Bible Quiz works and we are introduced to the main characters, Mikayla and JP. They are part of a team of kids whose life seems to revolve around their church and this competition.

The film reminds me of a coming-of-age narrative at times. The film captures teenage romance as Mikalya looks at JP in a way that many of us can remember from those days. While the director may have intended to document this team, it seems that her honing on these particular characters is what really drives the story.

To be honest, there were parts in the film that I wasn't comfortable with. It may have been the cringe-worthy scenes like the girls who tried to protheletize to a local street artist in Seattle. It made me feel a bit better knowing that Mikalya didn't think this was necessary. I warmed up to her "character" after that.

Reading Notes: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide By Henry Jenkins. P. 1-25

Jenkins starts off with a story about Dino Ignacio, a high school student who created an uproar by remixing photos of Osama Bin Laden and Bert (from Sesame Street). A publisher from Pakistan didn't know who Bert was but liked the photo so started printing posters up. Childrens Television Network saw it on CNN and threatened legal action, but they weren't sure who they would sue... the high school student, the publisher... etc.

This was one of the earliest pieces of Convergence...

From the pdf:

The term, participatory culture contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship. Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands. Not all participants are created equal. Corporations—and even individuals within corporate media—still exert greater power than any individual consumer or even the aggregate of consumers. And some consumers have greater abilities to participate in this emerging culture than others. 

Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others. Each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives. 


----
Rok Sako To Rok Lo in India... people were able to access this entire film via a mobile phone...

More notes from the book:

A best seller in 1990, Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital, drew a sharp contrast between “passive old media” and “interactive new media,” predicting the collapse of broadcast networks in favor of an era of narrowcasting and niche media on demand: “What will happen to broadcast television over the next five years is so phenomenal that it’s difficult to comprehend.”3 At one point, he suggests that no government regulation will be necessary to shatter the media conglomerates: “The monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries.... Media barons of today will be grasping

to hold onto their centralized empires tomorrow.... The combined forces of technology and human nature will ultimately take a stronger hand in plurality than any laws Congress can invent.” 


--- 
More thoughts - - a lot of this was coopted by captalist society... advertisers and companies saw the writing on the wall and began new relationships... video games and traditional media was one. 

From Jenkins:

1. Convergence is coming and you had better be ready.
   
2. Convergenceisharderthanitsounds.
   
3. Everyone will survive if everyone works together. (Unfortunately, that was the one thing
   nobody knew how to do.)
   

----

IN this article, Jenkins also points out that nobody can be in a silo anymore. In one company, the print and web sections had to work with each other. This didn't happen before. It changed the way companies ran. 

More article:

Yet, history teaches us that old media never die— and they don’t even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content—the 8-track, the Beta tape. These are what media scholars call delivery technologies. Most of what Sterling’s project lists falls under this category. Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced; media, on the other hand, evolve. Recorded sound is the medium. CDs, MP3 files, and 8-track cassettes are delivery technologies. 

Reading Notes: The Intersectionality of Labor and Memory

Readings: Rabinowitz, Paula. “Wreckage upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory.” History and Theory 32 (1993): 119-137.

Rabinowitz's thesis claims that documentary cinema can be "intimately tied" to historical memory. It can "reconstruct historical narrative. . . but often functions as an historical document itself"  (This reminds me of Oliver Stone movies for example)

1945 - Footage pulled together by British Ministry of information into film, Memory of the Camps - it was never released because of the graphic images. 

The british govt supprised it. It was recovered in the 1980s and was on television for Frontline

Shocking moment when the "blond children play before a bavarian cottage. . and the "camera pans through the trees to reveal barbed wire and piles of flesh and bones"

The documentary was supposed to help keep this in the public's memory. It was supposed to "freeze time" so we could remember later. 

The relationship between documentary and history and memory - - 

history relies on documents to support its narrative

documentary is mean tot instruct through evidence

poses truth as a moral imperative (p. 121)

P. 123 

Documentary crosses the boundry into anthropology  - - Nanook of the North

 Anthropologists are meant to just observe, but Flaherty intervened... so much that we learn to discover later that he set up scenes. 

--

Cinema Verite... "critiques fired at the direct cinema movment was its lack of social context - it's naturalizing of the viewing process" (. 125)

1960 s Primary - - "Solanas and Getino Advocated a cinema which intervened in history"  

"Battle of Chile - - infamous sequence ending the first section. Argentianean camerman films his own death after refusing to heed commands of an army officer to cease shooting" 

"The distinction between history and its representation in the documentary vanishes"

1985 release of Claude Lanzmans 9 hour and 23 minute documentary of rememrance, Shoah.  What? Woa.  He insisted his film is art despite it wrecking any boundry or previous instance of documentary film.  Reading Roger Ebert's review of the film gutted me. I need to see this film. 

 - documentary "sought to re-present reality - through the precise selection of objects surveyed by the camera and the sounds recorded by the microphone

P. 130

Two modes of presenting the real

 - the survey of objects

- the disclosure of subjectibity

Malcom X - spike lee begins film with credit sequence that intercuts Rodney King videotape with Malcom X's rhetoric. 

The Real is intermixed with the "fictionalised"... confusing to some. 

Another example - Madonna Truth or Dare"  

Uses "conventions of documentary", but the "Verite is not the truth, but Madonna's truth. She is "always performing"

-- Political docs - 

Historical doc, "not only tells us about the past, but asks us to do something as well. 

Examples - The Civil War... show's us the horror of war but wanrs us to remember too. 

Back to Lanzmann - - He "refused to use the cliched images of camps by the ss" - he asked the rough questions... 

Class Notes - 11/3/14

Documentary as a challenge to history

Capital H history> official, institutional
sanctioned, documented

Little H history - undocumented, offer oral renegade, in its impulse to speak truth to power, handled down and unsancteous.

Documentary as Critical Art fact as history.

Documentary cinema is intimately tied to historical memory
- not only does it seek to reconstruct historical narrative, but often functions as an historical document itself
 - different uses of documentary results in a wide variety of formal strategies

To persuade audience of films truth
these stratgies are based on a desire to enlist the audience in the process of historical reconstruction

---
Documentary Form

documentary film differentiates itself from narrative cinema by claiming its status as a truth-telling mode

The documentary calls upon audience to participate in historical remembering by presenting an intimate view of ...

It relies on cinematic seimosis
- to convince its audience of its validity and truth
Through cinematic devices such as montage, voice-over in intertitles + long takes, documentary provokes its audience to new ....

Matt's Presentation----

Watched Paris is Burning
Drag Culture - what about issues about the film?

Subverting hegemonic ideal

Hooks argues that Livingston is too far ensconsed in white hegemonic power structures to do this accurately.

Camera changes behavior

"Observer effect"

Issue representative of "whiteneing" of class w/ film

Bell hooks says Livingston uses Venus Xtravaganza as "spectacle"
Film pays more attention to her life as a sex worker than her murder
no scenes of grief is shown

--Referencing Linda Alcoff's Speaking for others essay

- Speaking from within is speaking directly from experience
- first hand knowledge of culture problems, etc
 - passionate about group/cause

- speaking from outside is to speak from observation
-detached look
- perhaps access to resources outside of group (money, equipment, etc)

Criteria for legitmacy
- Awareness of hegemonic hierachy

Hooks positions Paris is Burning

- Speaking to rather than FOR
- Embrace of dicservice role
rather than rejection
accept and acknowledge position.
- Do not pressure authority over group
 - Accept the possibility of the group to produce their own counter-narrative

-When going to speak - figure out where you are going to speak from
Who is being represented in the documentary
Whose interest does the representation serve
who controls the means of documentary representation.

Documentary Notes: The Source Family

First off, I think I am seeing a pattern here. I'm attracted to documentaries about music or weird people. That seems to be the running theme. . .

Now on to The Source Family.

This is a feature length documentary about a "cult" back in the early 1970's called The Source Family. They were a group of young, hip, beautiful people living the life in Los Angeles. It was started by a man named Jim Baker who created his own hedonistic brand of religion. The film documents the beginnings of the group and the awful death of this leader.

The director obviously had "ins" with the members of the group that are on camera. It seems for the most part a giant fluff piece about this history. However, through the second half of the film, it unwinds a bit and you begin to see the dark and creepy parts which led a lot of people to call them a cult.

One of the most remarkable things about this film is the amount of documentation that is available. They had an in-house filmmaker/photographer throughout the entire time of its existence. Also, Jim Baker and other members of the household were also musicians. There are hundreds of audio tapes from meditations and records from the band that was formed from "family members".

The director uses Jim Bakers voice through these recordings to engage the viewer with his personality. A viewer can somewhat understand why these people were drawn to this man. He was a very charismatic person who for those looking for alternative spiritual guidance could easily be swayed by his tone and discourse.

As I mentioned before, towards the end of the movie you begin to understand why this cult unraveled. One woman who was officially Jim Baker's 1st wife (until he declared that Polygamy was the way of their people) was hurt by his actions. He began to treat her horribly and eventually she left the family...

---
I will write more soon. . . need to digest this a little more.

Notes from class - 10/27/2014

Watched student film, Master of the Brewniverse

•  Lots of talking heads
• Not a lot of broll
• good interviews
• nice throwback to Laverne and Shirley
• good use of music
• photos
• Change in music for intensity
• lots of good change...
• interesting way that the director took letters and created montage. 

Reading notes: History Authority and the Documentary Form

“English-Language Documentary in the 1990s and Beyond—Reality Bytes” in New History of Documentary Film (2011) by Ellis and McLane


Essay Film

Paul Arthur: "The essay has emerged as the leading nonfiction form for both intellectual and artistic innovation" (2003)...

"Existing schoral contributions - - suggest it is a hybrid form, which crosses boundaries and rests somewhere in between fiction and nonfiction cinema"

Reading Notes: Lane, Jim. (2002) “The Convergence of Autobiography and Documentary: — Historical Connections” The autobiographical documentary in America, Chapter 1

• 1993 - PBS POV shows Silverlake Life: The View from Here - an autobiographical documentary. 
• Autobiographical documentaries are "about oneself and one's family" and "the subject of the film and filmmaker often begins with a level of trust and intimacy never achieved or strived for in other films (John Stuart Katz and Judith Milstein Katz
• Three influential characteristics mark the movement
• "these works reveal how documentary can be a site of autobiographical subjectibity"
• "the rigorous placing of the self in the work complicates how nonfiction film and video represent and make references to the real world"
• " in more than thirty years since the form was established in the 1960s, autiobiographical docs have revealed an array of formal possibilities)
• They changed the way we as viewers look at documentary. 
• Authors of auto-docs are not celebs. Average everyday people
• It allows for underrepresented voices to be heard
• they produce an "unofficial" history
• They share a change in literature as well... I think around this time memoirs became popular as well.. (by non-celebs)
• The access to new media (video cameras,etc) has allowed "documentarists to reverse the homogonizing effects of mass technology and mediation"
• These docs provide alternative discourse to ones who have funding... 
• "Before the late 1960s - the dominant form of autobiographical documentaries was observational
• ---According to Bill Nichols, Voice is crucial to understanding autobiographical doc. "The viewer perceives autobio voice as the organizing force behind the doc's presentation"
• 
  

Documentary Notes: The Punk Singer

Synopsis: The Punk Singer is a 2013 documentary film directed by filmmaker Sini Anderson and produced by Anderson and Tamra Davis. The film is about feminist singer Kathleen Hanna who fronted the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, and who was a central figure in the riot grrrl movement. 

My Notes:

I remember when this film was first campaigning for money through Kickstarter. I knew of Sini Anderson through her involvement with Queer spoken word groups in San Francisco. The campaign was successful, she made the movie, and everything should have been great after IFC bought the movie. However, she had a lot of issues with supporters from Kickstarter when she didn't send out the rewards beyond the first tier (lesson to be learned... budget!) 

The Film:

Like the previous film that I reviewed, The Punk Singer was a documentary about an important figure in the 90's music scene (and beyond). Kathleen Hannah was the lead singer of Riot Grrl band - Bikini Kill and electro-pop feminist band, Le Tigre.  

The film was well edited with music and performances bringing you and in and out of interviews. Like the Hit So Hard documentary, it was a who's who of feminist rock idols... Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, Carrie Brownstein and more women were interviewed and discussed their admiration and the important way that Kathleen made it possible for women to feel safe at rock shows. Women up front was a constant call at Le Tigre shows and men were ushered out the door if they didn't comply. 

I keep comparing this film to Hit So Hard because it has so many of the same elements. The interviews, the way that performance footage is intermixed with intimate interviews with the subjects themselves. . .

In the middle of the doc, there was even a great segment about the history of feminism. 1800s, 2nd wave, 3rd wave, Rebecca walker speech. 

1992 - Feminism was supposedly dead according to Time magazine, and has someone said, Kathleen was this angry bisexual grrl who used her sexuality and power to make people listen. 

There was also a great clip from an interview in Bust magazine with Kathleen Hanna and Gloria Steinem.  They talked about how women were always pitted against each other in the media. How the media twisted feminism. There was so much hate towards Kathleen. Again, this is pre social networking. I can't even imagine what would happen if Bikini Kill happened today. Would she get death threats and other crap that feminists have to deal with today?

The film takes a severe turn into depressing events. . .

Throughout the movie we had music backing up every interview. . . 

Then... the music stops... and Kathleen starts crying. 

Before this we saw Kathleen getting sick from something, but nobody knew what it was. 

She finally figured it out. She had late stage lyme disease. 

She finally had doctors who took the time to figure it out. 

There is a really amazing scene later on when she takes her medicine and has her husband (Beastie Boys' Adam Horoviz) film her while her body is reacting to the medicine. It was one of the most uncomfortable scenes that I have ever watched. It was so raw. . .and sad... 

The film ended up on a high note as she performed (after feeling better) in NYC at a benefit. 

Overall, yes, I was very interested in the topic, and yes, Sini Anderson had ACCESS. I don't think this film could have had any chance of being as interesting if she didn't have access to the subjects. It could have been a nice history lesson on Riot Grrl Culture, but without the interviews with Kathleen, especially, this film couldn't have been made. 

Class Notes: 10/6/2014

Documentary Notes: Hava Nagila The Movie

Synopsis: Hava Nagila (The Movie) is a documentary romp through the history, mystery and meaning of the great Jewish standard. Featuring interviews with Harry Belafonte, Leonard Nimoy, Connie Francis, Glen Campbell, Regina Spektor and more, the film follows the ubiquitous party song on its fascinating journey from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the kibbutzim of Palestine to the cul-de-sacs of America. High on fun and entertainment, Hava Nagila (The Movie) is also surprisingly profound, tapping into universal themes about the importance of joy, the power of music and the resilient spirit of a people.

My Notes: 

I picked this film because of my interest in cultural Judaism. I thought that this would give me a lot of ideas for my own piece. Boy, was I not into this documentary, at all. 

First, it was interesting during the first part of the film. The director provided personal anecdotes about the song and growing up as a Jew on the east coast. However, it turned from this personal narrative into a dry, "history" lesson. 

She lost me when she went into the history. I would normally be interested in history about jewish culture, but this documentary seemed to need a good editor. She kept interviews in that went on and on and when she did cut to the "history", she did it in a tone that wasn't funny. I think she thought she was being humorous, but it wasn't interesting at all. 

It makes me think. . . am I too young to watch this documentary? Is this something that my grandparents would have loved? Were the pop culture references too outdated for someone my age? If that is the case, then this documentary was made for the baby boomers and above. I don't see a wide release for this film. ..

Class Notes: 9/22/2014

Pare Lorentz

Triumph of the will

Reading Response...
Advocate
Filmmakers
Historical Event.s

Advicate - Flatherty - Grierson, Leni Weisenthal

Holocaust Nazi WWII
Joseph Goebbels

Prosecutor---
Thorndike
Major use of archive footage
Pioneered freeze frame of super infrared arrows
Akira - Wosaki
Aftermath footage of atomic bombs.

Docmentary Notes: Hit So Hard

Synopsis (Wikipedia)
Hit So Hard is a 2011 American documentary film directed by P. David Ebersole. The film details the life and near death story of Patty Schemel, drummer of the seminal '90s alternative rock band Hole, and charts her early life, music career, and spiral into crack cocaine addiction.^[1] The film weaves together Hi8 video footage Schemel recorded while on Hole's 1994-95 world tour with contemporary interviews with her, bandmates Courtney Love,Eric Erlandson, and Melissa Auf der Maur, as well as her family members. The film also features interviews with other female drummers and musicians, including Nina Gordon, Kate Schellenbach, Gina Schock, Debbi Peterson, and Phranc.

Notes:

This is a fantastic documentary that follows drummer Patty Schemel through personal videos, and interviews (both past and future) with people who have been connected to her throughout her life. Patty was the drummer for the 90s band, Hole and also someone who has struggled with drug addiction.

The film gives a behind-the-scenes look at what the music scene was like in the early 90s. Schemel was obviously close with Courtney Love, but she was also close to her late husband, Kurt Cobain. The film provides viewers with extremely intimate videos of Kurt and Courtney when their daughter was first born. I was shocked by the video, because this was unlike any footage I had ever seen before. They seemed "normal" (or as normal as you can be). Patty was determined to get through life, but drug addiction kept her spiraling for many years.

While I was very interested in the documentary because of the fact I was a big fan of those bands in the early 90's, I wonder if this would be interesting to others who aren't fans of Hole or Nirvana. It was a "who's who" of interviews in terms of the alternative music scene. I enjoyed it for the intimate interviews, but it did feel at times like a VH1 special.

I feel that this film could have felt even more personal if Patty was behind the scenes more. It felt like someone was doing "This is Your Life" with her own personal affects. It was Patty who shot most of the broll that shows Hole on the road, etc. I felt that if the director worked closer with her they could have built a different, more intimate piece.

Class Notes: Monday, Sept 15

Documentary>Short Histort
Creative Assignment> Finish 2 paragraphs.
Sept 29 - No Clas


Doc series of technical movements.

What is documentary?
-Docs are about real life but not real life
-Portraits of real life using real life as raw material
-Constructed by Artist & Technicians who make subjective decisions about what story to tell and to whom and for what purpose
stray about real life with claims to truthfulness

Nature of the beast
-Doc shifts over time w/ business and market pressures
technological and formal innovations
-genre always has two crtitical elements that are in tension
representation and reality
throughout history, makers, critics, and viewers about what constitutes trustworthy storytelling.
The early conventions of the genre often arose from the need to convince views of authenticity.

Many journalists came to documentary... a lot from news depts.

early docs had to convince views of authenticity.

Emerging From History
----
Emerged awkwardly out of early practice in the form of educationals, actualities, interest films, travel films
- Documentary is the creative treatment of reality - John Grierson
-Documentary was always imagined as having civic potential and tied to the public.
Documentary is grand in real life & makes claims telling us something worth knowing

-Why should I spent 10-15 min looking at your film. What are you telling me about the human condition?

--Documentary Movements

--- The Prophet: early inventors of cinema; included every of from showmen to scientist. who felt the need to document some phenomenon or action. 1880 and beyond. "Poetry of the ordinary"
Lumiere.
-- The explorer: Robert Flaherty, new worlds, beyond our access... Nannook of the north
"The cheerful happy go lucky  Eskimo"

-- The reporter: Dziego Vertov "Man with a Movie Camera" heavily influenced by futuris...

stressed construvtion in montage
 - The Painter - 1920s artist infiltrated film world. Interested in light and texture
cineclubs
Berlin Symphony an example.
-usually played with live music - didn't always have the same music.
"Possible birth of poetic documentary"
-- The Advocate - - John Grierson/Father of ...
Documentary has civic potential. Art as hammer.

---
Workers + Film + Photo League
Pare Lorentz - Voice of God Narration
Clip - Drifters - early 1920s

George Stoney - trying to get people to support the new deal.

The River ... respond to technical demand ..

VO narration was style...
Very few had location sound.

What wats/what aesthetic contend
Influencesthis film.

Documentary Notes: Monterey Pop

Synopsis from Wikipedia:
Monterey Pop is a 1968 concert film by D. A. Pennebaker that documents the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967. Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit, and Bob Neuwirth, who figured prominently in Pennebaker's Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back, acted as stage manager. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin,Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, The Mamas & the Papas, The Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing".

Interesting article: https://www.scribd.com/doc/149392592/Monterey-Pop-home-video-D-A-Pennebaker-interview

_____
I watched this on the way to STL with the MFAs. It was something that kept everyone quiet on the 2 hours.  ... 

Notes from the documentary. 
----
The colors are gorgeous. Lots of load in to the festival.
Long shots of the people coming into the festival. It's a great slice of history because it was one of the first large festivals of music in the US. The clothes. . .the performers...
How many cameras did they have for each performance? The Mamas and the Papas.
Was this filmed in 16mm?

They definitely captured the intensity of the concert.
Long shots of the crowd enjoying the music.
I like the different sequence of edits... the different crowd shots... heads bopping... feet tapping.

-----
Afterwards

I really appreciate the way that Pennebaker produced this documentary. It is truly a moment in time. I feel that this concert film/documentary is one that many people have looked towards in regards to concert films. I think about one of the first music docs that I ever watched was Truth or Dare when I was younger. It was a "behind the scenes" look at Madonna and her world tour. In that film she provided a behind the scenes look at her tour and the way that she relates with her dancers and others in her world.  While Pennebaker's doc wasn't quite the same, it feels that it could have been an influence to this film.

Documentary Notes: Paradise Lost 3

Synopsis (From Wikipedia):

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is a 2011 documentary film and sequel to the films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. The three films chronicle the arrest, 18-year imprisonment, and eventual release of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, otherwise known as the West Memphis Three. The films, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, are considered to play a substantial role in generating publicity, awareness, and support for the innocence of the West Memphis 3.^[1]

My notes:

Intense beginning. Bringing people up to speed.

First part of the movie reminds people of the story. How does this compare?

Traditional documentary.

Lots of talking heads.

Interesting how the filmmakers stayed with this story for over 20 years.

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Also interesting commentary on media… and what the role of media is in this situation. Hysteria about cults and Satanism

How could these kids get a fair trial.

Interesting use of multiple codecs. 4X3 media was shown inside a black box.

--Talked to people who did stuff…activists… foundation to raise money for west Memphis 3.

This film is really interesting.. . especially how the filmmakers followed the story for 20+ years. They gathered a lot of interest in the story with their documentaries and it started a grassroots campaign to get the kids help. However, over the last year after the Memphis 3 were released, another movie was made.  West of Memphis: http://www.sonyclassics.com/westofmemphis/

This was with the help of Peter Jackson and his wife, Fran Lewis. They produced a movie with Damien Echels (one of the Memphis 3) and his wife Lorri Davis (who he met while in jail). She found out about him through the Paradise Lost documentaries.

While I haven’t watched the film, West of Memphis, I watched the trailer and was shocked by how much this movie lifted off of the Paradise Lost trilogy. Using footage from PL, they craft their narrative about what “really happened”. I am having issues with this film because it felt like Peter Jackson used this film on the backs of Paradise Lost. Why create another film about this? I can understand that Damien Echels might want to tell his story. That makes sense, but lifting footage directly from Paradise Lost, and also other somewhat unethical tactics that were used in this documentary is what is keeping me from watching this.  It would be interesting to pursue this further about the ethics of documentary. . . to be dealt with at a later date.