Notes from 8/25

Lovechild (Virtual Life HBO)

Documentary Camera - What is at Stake

(Honna) William Greeves - Questions about Reality.
Hybrid Fiction/Documentary

Animated Minds (Downing)
Fish on hook
Transform stories about mentally ill patients into animation

What is at stake with how we look through documentary?

Drew - Framing movement
Two filmmakers approaching it in different ways

Fred Wiseman - not concerned w/ reality
Story he could tell through his footage.

The Observer & Catalyst
London > 1956
People talking about free cinema
-reacting to public relations
 - new technology and movement
toward listening & watching
- Fascination w/ sound and thythms of speech
- poked into places society inclined to keep hidden

Directors - Voice of God

Wisemen > Berkely>
Titicut Follies
Didn't show for 25 years
He charmed the institution - structural change

Talking People

 - obsession of popular speech
 - docs before 40's - it rarely featured talking peoples
 - new technology helped make sync sound happen
- spontaneous talk takes interpetear control from Director
- (who has control)
mode of production
hides ideological ways of producing.

Film Movements
Sync Sound Helped
 - birth & womo?
- Direct Cinema (observer)
-Cinema Verite (catalyst)
trying to participate
-Kino Eye C?? what would film suggest

--
Technical Prophets
 - Group of filmmakers in US attempting to overcome limitations and changes...
- Richard Leacock
Robert Drew (Time Magazine)
DA Pennybaker
Maisle Brothers?
Frederick Wiseman - Lawyer turned producer

Frederick Wiseman
-observation/critique
-goal is to show citizens the institutions they fund and support
-how is wiseman using the observational camera as form of critique

Titicut Follies (1967)
Whats at stake
mode of production
how is critique being formed
(notes from movie)

Mental Insitituion
They look like cops
criminal institution
..Why is the shrink getting so sexually detailed with the pedophile... what was the point..

Lyman School
What kind of therapy was this. Is it for the cameras?
Didn't he get hired to make educational video?

-Camera intently looking at inmates - one by one

-prophet... racist?nazi

Follow prisoners to places with no privacy

-Prison allows trumpet? shows trumpet call - focuses on only other african american

- Brings characters back in focus (the ...?)

- singing men off tempo

Inmates stare at camera...menacing or not even knowing why

--
the guards laughing and smiling... why... racist...

totally antagonizing posterity... why dont...

Do they even have beds?

Jim keeps looking at camera... aware of the ruckuys.. knows what he is doing looking...is this observation.

--- What gas.. the music interlude is odd but understandable

-- Prisoner... why is he in there schizophrenia.
I really hate how they tease the prisoners.

Showing the giards roaming the camera yet they make...

--- Guy talking about nuclear war... he's right 50 years ago...
crazy... same today...
goes from schizophrenic to another

How many are vets
Forcing food on inmates.. tube feeding is highly disturbing. I hate watching this scene.
They talk about everyday things (the guards) while force feeding....

Death to birthday---trying to ham again for cameras, the nursery. Head guard singing with inmates?
paranoid schizophrenia.
--
Everyday talk with disgusting scenes...

What religion... Is everyone christian?
-----

Notes from Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment

What is this movement?
Cinema Verite / Free Cinema/ Direct Cinema
Opposite of scripted.
Taking history as it comes.
Asking for audience to identify with everyday life.


Major Films
Mama Don't Allow
We Are the Lambeth Boys (Sync Sound)
Eddie
Primary (I have seen this before... amazing)
Jazz Dance
Magazine X
La Lutte Wrestling
The Candid Eye
Lonely Boy (Paul Anka) - this is what I will focus on)
Emergency Ward

Major filmmakers
Wolf Koening

• 40s Farm Boy
• Joined NFB
• Camera/Open to moments to stuff you can't reveal

Henri Boessin
Karl Riesz

Richard Leacock

• Searching to make films more personal/less digital
• obsession of "feeling of being there"
• Look, Look and Look again

Bob Drew (his vision created cinema verite)

• Time magazine helped fund Cinema Verite
• Took about a year to get the camera, etc useable for the field

William Greece

• early 60s - brought his skills to the civil rights movement

James Lipscomg/Hope Ryden?

• Drama/Conflict
• quote - "How could I get involved if I wasn't emotionally involved"

Doug Leiterman

• Backdoor to Cinema Verite Through Jounralism
• Sent female reporter
• Meryl Fox

Pierre Perrault

• Canadian
• Radio Producer to Film
• "Life was the Director"
• "I became a participant, a partner"

Albert Maysles

• "Uncontrolled Cinema"
• "Great about it was the process of discovery"
• Give your subject empathy

Fred Wiseman

• Pompus french term that has no meaning
• "imapct... ordinary experience"

Barbara Kopple

• Allow life to unfold
• Harlan County USA 1976
• http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/harlan_county_usa
• 
  

Technological Innovations
Kino Pravda
Mobile Camera
Sync sound
No Tripod - Just Shoot
New Cinemativ Language
Quartz Based Sync Metronome
Handheld Cameras

Major Themes
Capture Human Emotion Spontaneously
History on the Run
Worldwide movement - quickly spread
the revolution was shot and heard around the world.


What was at stake?
Truth
Reality
Moment in time (primary film)