The documentary film reader

THE DOCUMENTARY FILM READER

1

T H E

D O C U M E N TA R Y

FILM READER

HISTORY, THEORY, CRITICISM

Edited by

Jonathan Kahana

1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The documentary film reader : history, theory, criticism / edited by Jonathan Kahana.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978–0–19–973964–6 (cloth) — ISBN 978–0–19–973965–3 (pbk.) — ISBN 978–0–19–022654–1 (ebook)

1. Documentary films—History and criticism. I. Kahana, Jonathan, 1966—

PN1995.9.D6D5755 2015

070.1′8—dc23

2015013454

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments xi

charles musser, Foreword xiii

Jonathan Kahana, Editor’s General Introduction 1

I EARLY DOCUMENTARY: FROM THE ILLUSTRATED

LECTURE TO THE FACTUAL FILM 11

1 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section I  13

2 Rick Altman, “From Lecturer’s Prop to Industrial Product:

The Early History of Travel Films” (2006)  16

3 Anonymous, “Burton Holmes Pleases a Large Audience

at the Columbia” (1905)  27

4 Kristen Whissel, “Placing the Spectator on the Scene of History:

Modern Warfare and the Battle Reenactment at the Turn

of the Century” (2008)  29

5 Dai Vaughan, “Let There Be Lumière” (1999)  44

6 Boleslas Matuszewski, “A New Source of History” (1898)  48

7 Tom Gunning, “Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films

and the ‘View’ Aesthetic” (1997)  52

8 Edward S. Curtis et al., “The Continental Film Company” (1912)  64

9 W. Stephen Bush, Review of In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914)  67

10 Catherine Russell, “Playing Primitive” (1999)  69

11 Anonymous, “Movies of Eskimo Life Win Much Appreciation” (1915)  83

12 Anonymous, Review of Nanook of the North (1922) 84

13 John Grierson, “Flaherty’s Poetic Moana” (1926)  86

14 John Grierson, “Flaherty” (1931–32)  88

vi contents

15 Hamid Naficy, “Lured by the East: Ethnographic and Expedition

Films about Nomadic Tribes; The Case of Grass” (2006)  93

16 Béla Balázs, “Compulsive Cameramen” (1925)  110

17 Anonymous, “New Films Make War Seem More Personal” (1916)  112

18 Nicholas Reeves, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and Propaganda: Battle

of the Somme (1916) and Its Contemporary Audience” (1997)  113

II MODERNISMS: STATE, LEFT, AND AVANT-GARDE

DOCUMENTARY BETWEEN THE WARS 133

19 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section II  135

20 Robert Allerton Parker, “The Art of the Camera:

An Experimental “Movie” ” (1921)  138

21 Siegfried Kracauer, “Montage” (1947)  142

22 Annette Michelson, “The Man with the Movie Camera:

From Magician to Epistemologist” (1972)  148

23 Seth Feldman, “Cinema Weekly and Cinema Truth:

Dziga Vertov and the Leninist Proportion” (1973)  163

24 Dziga Vertov, “WE: Variant of a Manifesto” (1922) 171

25 Jay Leyda, “Bridge” (1964)  174

26 Mikhail Iampolsky, “Reality at Second Hand” (1991) 182

27 Joris Ivens, “The Making of Rain” (1969)  192

28 Joris Ivens, “Reflections on the Avant-Garde Documentary” (1931)  196

29 Tom Conley, “Documentary Surrealism: On Land Without Bread” (1986)  199

30 John Grierson, “The Documentary Producer” (1933)  215

31 John Grierson, “First Principles of Documentary” (1932–34)  217

32 Otis Ferguson, “Home Truths from Abroad” (1937)  226

33 Charles Wolfe, “Straight Shots and Crooked Plots: Social

Documentary and the Avant-Garde in the 1930s” (1995)  229

34 Samuel Brody, “The Revolutionary Film: Problem of Form” (1934)  247

35 Leo T. Hurwitz, “The Revolutionary Film: Next Step” (1934)  249

36 Ralph Steiner and Leo T. Hurwitz, “A New Approach

to Film Making” (1935)  252

37 Willard Van Dyke, Letter from Knoxville (1936)  256

38 Ralph Steiner, Letter to Jay Leyda (1935)  258

39 John T. McManus, “Down to Earth in Spain” (1937)  261

40 Charles Wolfe, “Historicizing the “Voice of God”: The Place

of Voice-Over Commentary in Classical Documentary” (1997)  264

contents vii

41 Steve Neale, “Triumph of the Will: Notes on Documentary

and Spectacle” (1979)  281

42 Richard Griffith, “Films at the Fair” (1939)  312

III DOCUMENTARY PROPAGANDA: WORLD WAR II

AND THE POST-WAR CITIZEN  323

43 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section III  325

44 James Agee, Review of Iwo Jima Newsreels (1945)  328

45 James Agee, Review of San Pietro (1945)  330

46 Thomas Cripps and David Culbert, “The Negro Soldier (1944):

Film Propaganda in Black and White” (1979)  332

47 André Bazin, “On Why We Fight: History, Documentation,

and the Newsreel” (1946) 348

48 Jim Leach, “The Poetics of Propaganda: Humphrey Jennings

and Listen to Britain” (1998)  352

49 George C. Stoney, “Documentary in the United States

in the Immediate Post-World War II Years” (1989)  366

50 Zoë Druick, “Documenting Citizenship: Reexamining

the 1950s National Film Board Films about Citizenship” (2000)  368

51 Srirupa Roy, “Moving Pictures: The Films Division of India

and the Visual Practices of the Nation-State” (2007)  383

52 Jennifer Horne, “Experiments in Propaganda: Reintroducing

James Blue’s Colombian Trilogy” (2009)  406

53 Peter Watkins with James Blue and Michael Gill, “Peter Watkins

Discusses His Suppressed Nuclear Film The War Game” (1965)  420

IV AESTHETICS OF LIBERATION: FREE, DIRECT,

AND VÉRITÉ CINEMAS  429

54 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section IV  431

55 Jean Painlevé, “The Castration of Documentary” (1953)  434

56 Jean Cocteau, “On Blood of the Beasts” (1963) 439

57 Lindsay Anderson, “Free Cinema” (1957)  441

58 Tom Whiteside, “The One-Ton Pencil” (1962)  445

59 Edgar Morin, “Chronicle of a Film” (1962)  461

60 Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Radical Humanism and the Coexistence

of Film and Poetry in The House is Black” (2003)  473

viii contents

61 Jean Rouch with Dan Georgakas, Udayan Gupta, and Judy Janda,

“The Politics of Visual Anthropology” (1977)  478

62 Ricky Leacock, “For an Uncontrolled Cinema” (1961)  490

63 Bruce Elder, “On the Candid-Eye Movement” (1977)  492

64 Jonas Mekas, “To Mayor Lindsay / On Film

Journalism and Newsreels” (1966)  501

65 Jeanne Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical

Analysis of Primary” (1991) 503

66 Margaret Mead, “As Significant as the Invention of Drama

or the Novel” (1973)  526

V TALKING BACK: RADICAL VOICES AND VISIONS AFTER 1968 529

67 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section V  531

68 Robert Stam, “Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant Gardes” (1981)  534

69 Juan Carlos Espinosa, Jorge Fraga, Estrella Pantin, “Toward

a Definition of the Didactic Documentary: A Paper Presented

to the First National Congress of Education and Culture” (1978)  545

70 Norm Fruchter, Marilyn Buck, Karen Ross, and Robert Kramer,

“Newsreel” (1969)  550

71 Frederick Wiseman with Alan Westin, “ “You Start Off With a

Bromide”: Conversation with Film Maker Frederick Wiseman” (1974)  556

72 David MacDougall, “Beyond Observational Cinema” (1975)  565

73 Pauline Kael, “Beyond Pirandello” (1970)  571

74 Pearl Bowser, “Pioneers of Black Documentary Film” (1999)  576

75 Michael Chanan, “Rediscovering Documentary: Cultural Context

and Intentionality” (1990)  597

76 Santiago Alvarez with the editors of Cineaste, “ “5 Frames Are

5 Frames, Not 6, But 5”: An Interview with Santiago Alvarez” (1975)  605

77 Abé Mark Nornes, “The Postwar Documentary Trace: Groping

in the Dark” (2002)  609

78 Emile de Antonio with Tanya Neufeld, “An Interview with

Emile de Antonio” (1973)  630

annette michelson, Reply to de Antonio  637

79 Bill Nichols, “The Voice of Documentary” (1983)  639

80 James Roy MacBean, “Two Laws from Australia, One White,

One Black: The Recent Past and the Challenging Future

of Ethnographic Film” (1983)  652

81 Lee Atwell, Review of Word Is Out (1979) 664

contents ix

82 Julia Lesage, “The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist

Documentary Film” (1978)  668

83 E. Ann Kaplan, “Theories and Strategies of the Feminist

Documentary” (1983)  680

84 Jill Godmilow, “Paying Dues: A Personal Experience

with Theatrical Distribution” (1977)  693

85 Coco Fusco, “A Black Avant-Garde? Notes on Black Audio Film

Collective and Sankofa” (1988)  698

86 John Greyson, “Strategic Compromises: AIDS and Alternative

Video Practices” (1990)  708

VI TRUTH NOT GUARANTEED: REFLECTIONS,

REVISIONS, AND RETURNS 721

87 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section VI  723

88 Robert Sklar, “Documentary: Artifice in the Service of Truth” (1975)  726

89 Chick Strand, “Notes on Ethnographic Film by a Film Artist” (1978)  731

90 Jonas Mekas, “The Diary Film: A Lecture on Reminiscences

of a Journey to Lithuania” (1972)  737

91 Michael Renov, “Toward a Poetics of Documentary” (1993)  742

92 Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Mechanical Eye, Electronic Ear and the Lure

of Authenticity” (1984)  758

93 Brian Winston, “The Tradition of the Victim in Griersonian

Documentary” (1988)  763

94 J. Hoberman, “Shoah: The Being of Nothingness” (1985–86) 776

95 Claude Lanzmann with Marc Chevrie and Hervé Le Roux, “Site

and Speech: An Interview with Claude Lanzmann about Shoah” (1985)  784

96 Linda Williams, “Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History,

and the New Documentary” (1993) 794

97 errol morris with Peter Bates, “Truth Not Guaranteed: An Interview

with Errol Morris” (1989) 807

98 michael moore with Harlan Jacobson, “Michael & Me” (1989) 810

99 Thomas Waugh, “ “Acting to Play Oneself”: Notes on Performance in

Documentary” (1990)  815

100 Phillip Brian Harper, “Marlon Riggs: The Subjective Position of

Documentary Video” (1995)  829

101 Paula Rabinowitz, “Melodrama/Male Drama: The Sentimental

Contract of American Labor Films” (2002)  836

x╅╇contents

102 Marsha Orgeron and Devin Orgeron, “Familial Pursuits,

Editorial Acts: Documentaries after the Age of Home Video” (2007) 852

103 Vivian Sobchack, “Inscribing Ethical Space: 10 Propositions

on Death, Representation, and Documentary” (1984)  871

104 Paul Arthur, “Jargons of Authenticity (Three American

Moments)” (1993)  889

VII╇ DOCUMENTARY TRANSFORMED: TRANSNATIONAL

AND TRANSMEDIAL CROSSINGS 911

105 Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section VII  913

106 Harun Farocki and Jill Godmilow with Jennifer Horne and

Jonathan Kahana, “A Perfect Replica: An Interview with

Harun Farocki and Jill Godmilow” (1998)  916

107 Rachel Gabara, “Mixing Impossible Genres: David Achkar

and African Autobiographical Documentary” (2003) 924

108 Jean-Marie Teno, “Writing on Walls: The Future of African

Documentary Cinema” (2010)  938

109 Chris Berry, “Getting Real: Chinese Documentary,

Chinese Postsocialism” (2007)  943

110 Wu Wenguang, “DV: Individual Filmmaking” (2006)  956

111 Richard Porton, “Weapon of Mass Instruction: Michael Moore’s

Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004)  961

112 Scott MacDonald, “Up Close and Political: Three Short Ruminations

on Ideology in the Nature Film” (2006)  969

113 Amy Villarejo, “Bus 174 and the Living Present” (2006)  984

114 Barbara Klinger, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Meditations on 3D” (2012)  989

Permissions Acknowledgments 997

Index 1003

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editorial staff at Oxford University Press

who saw this book through from concep￾tion to production—Shannon MacLachlan,

Stephen Bradley, and, most of all, Brendan

O’Neill—have been patient, persistent, and

encouraging throughout the process, and I

thank them sincerely for their confidence

in such a large and complex project. I am

also very grateful to Natalie Foster and Jayne

Fargnoli for their valuable editorial input at

early stages of the project, when it was still

looking for a home.

In addition to Oxford University Press, a

number of sources provided financial sup￾port toward the costs—especially the fees

paid to copyright owners, in some cases

scandalously high, to reprint previously

published works—of producing this vol￾ume. For their generosity, I thank the Arts

Research Institute in the Division of the

Arts at the University of California, Santa

Cruz (UCSC); Scott Brandt, Vice Chancellor

for Research in the Office of Research at

UCSC; the Office of Sponsored Programs

at New York University (NYU), through

its Research Challenge Fund Emergency

Support Program; and the Department

of Cinema Studies at NYU, which funded

a series of graduate research assistants,

including Ian Hetherington, who provided

various kinds of help. In the Tamiment

Library at NYU, Donna L. Davey and Peter

Meyer Filardo provided access to unpub￾lished papers in the Jay Leyda collection.

Among the many scholars, doctoral

students, and colleagues who have influ￾enced and contributed to this book, Charlie

Musser has my deepest debt of gratitude,

for long, formative, and spirited conversa￾tions early in the process of forming the

table of contents: his impact on my think￾ing about film history is visible throughout.

“Research assistant” is technically correct

but too perfunctory a title to fully describe

the degree and kind of contributions made

to this book by Paul Fileri, who, over several

years, suggested, located, reconsidered, and

trouble-shot so much of the material col￾lected here that I sometimes thought of him

as a co-producer, and equally often as the

book’s intended user. Blind and non-blind

peer reviewers—most thoughtfully, Roger

Hallas, Jeffrey Skoller, Charles Wolfe, and

several anonymous others—shaped and

improved the conception of the book’s

scope, audience, and function. On vari￾ous editorial, archival, administrative, and

linguistic questions I frequently turned

to, and received sage counsel from, col￾leagues around the office and around the

world: Richard Allen, Kees Bakker, Brad

Evans, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Mick

Gidley, Jill Godmilow, Jenny Horne, Dana

Polan, Michael Renov, Marita Sturken,

Steven Ungar, Tom Waugh, Mark Williams,

Tami Williams, Brian Winston, and

Arlene Zimmerle. Masha Salazkina spent

many hours on the translation of some

xii  Acknowledgments

unpublished Eisenstein notes we decided

in the end not to use in this edition.

Some of the excellent doctoral students

at NYU—including Brady Fletcher, Leo

Goldsmith, Anuja Jain, Martin Johnson,

Ohad Landesman, Laliv Melamed, Michael

Talbott, and Jennifer Zwarich—offered

valuable opinions on the material in their

particular areas of expertise. Alex Johnston

assisted with the selection and produc￾tion of illustrations. And I am especially

grateful to those authors who generously

responded to my invitation to rethink sen￾tences originally published years ago. Trust

that any cuts we had to make—to those

selections, and of the scores of others left

on the cutting-room floor—hurt me more

than they hurt you.

FOREWORD

In assembling The Documentary Film Reader:

History, Theory, Criticism, Jonathan Kahana

has undertaken an essential but impossible

task. Documentary is a dynamic and capa￾cious field that resists easy distillation, and

it is hardly surprising that earlier versions of

this undertaking had almost twice the num￾ber of entries. That Kahana has taken up

such a vexing assignment is best understood

in light of his previous book-length study,

Intelligence Work: The Politics of American

Documentary. In this impressive investiga￾tion, Kahana examined crucial moments in

the history of the social issue documentary

as a way to interrogate the very nature of

documentary itself. He is interested in the

process of thinking––of what he calls public

intelligence––that is operative both for film￾makers in the making of these documenta￾ries but also by their spectators. As Kahana

remarks, “when documentary compels our

attention or addresses us in certain ways

… it evokes forms of public subjectivity

and civil interaction that transport viewers

beyond the immediate context of viewing.”1

It can impact and destabilize the social

imaginary such that “an audience comes to

understand itself as an agent of change.”2

If publics are constructed and addressed

by individual films and the critical appara￾tuses that surround them, more sustained

and multi-dimensional publics are often

created around groups of documentaries––

either cycles of films or specific genres such

as the courtroom documentary (from Errol

Morris’s The Thin Blue Line [1988] to, most

recently, Alex Gibney’s “Death Row Stories”

[2014]). Finally, as Kahana has pointed out,

the relationship between individual exam￾ples and broad generalizations, between

individual documentaries and documentary

theory, criticism and practice are crucial.

Each documentary engages a field of ante￾cedents with varying degrees of originality

and transgression. (Errol Morris, for one,

has become a proponent of a “fuck you” the￾ory of art, which is certainly evident in his

films.3

) In this regard, The Documentary Film

Reader performs the critical task of sketch￾ing out the ground against which individual

films or groups of films can be contextual￾ized and new films measured. With all the

necessary qualifications, this collection of

essays and documents inevitably proposes a

canon of films and texts either as a starting

point for further exploration or as a handy

reminder of what one figure in this field of

study finds particularly significant.

To assemble an anthology such as The

Documentary Film Reader at this moment,

when documentary itself is still absorbing

the tremendous impact of the digital revo￾lution, requires a certain audacity. In this

regard, Kahana’s use of the term “film” in

the title is strategic: it limits the reach of his

anthology while enabling him to establish

many of the contours of American docu￾mentary from the early 1900s until almost

xiv Foreword

the present day. Shortly after the debut of

projected motion pictures, exhibitors such

as E. Burton Holmes began to integrate

short films into their illustrated lectures,

which displayed a series of lantern slides

(projected still photographs). Though they

were often labeled travel lectures, these took

on a wide range of subjects, as a Washington

Post review of Holmes’s lecture on the

Russo-Japanese War, Port Arthur: Siege and

Surrender (Fall 1905), underscores. Although

such programs are certainly in the “docu￾mentary tradition,” their mode of produc￾tion and exhibition would make it awkward

and ahistorical to label them documentary

sui generis. Rather, Kahana has gestured

towards a long pre-history that in many

respects is not a pre-history at all. Indeed,

the documentary tradition of audio-visual

programming goes back to the very ori￾gins of the projected moving image in the

1650s and 1660s, when Althanius Kircher

and others presented illustrated accounts of

the life of Christ. By the second half of the

nineteenth century, with the introduction of

the stereopticon or optical lantern (a much

improved magic lantern that was generally

used to show photographic lantern slides),

the illustrated lecture had become a rich

and respected form of audio-visual com￾munication that required the same kind of

intelligence work as later documentaries.

The discussion of this mode of program￾ming that quickly incorporated motion pic￾tures gestures towards this longer tradition

without having to address it directly.

Correspondingly, The Documentary Film

Reader effectively concludes with reflec￾tions on such American documentaries as

Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (2003) and

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).

By this period, documentaries were being

shot almost exclusively with high defini￾tion digital cameras and edited on comput￾ers. Nevertheless, a theatrical release still

required the transfer from digital to 35mm

film. When audiences went to a theater to

see a documentary, they were still seeing

film even though documentaries were much

more likely to be seen on a television screen

or projected from VHS or DVD onto a

screen in the classroom. Over the last ten

years, this practice has disappeared and fes￾tivals and theaters now screen digital for￾mats such as Blu-ray, DigiBeta, and DCPs

(Digital Cinema Packages). The use of “film”

has essentially disappeared, particularly for

documentary, but it remains as a term that

is deeply embedded in our language. “Film”

no longer refers to the physical medium

(film stock) but to well-established cultural

practices that have been more or less trans￾formed by the possibilities of digital media.

The motion picture industry has cleverly

introduced the term “digital cinema” to

refer to motion pictures designed to be

shown in commercial theaters, but the term

“digital film” is a contradiction in terms,

which practitioners have avoided. Will the

term “film” be replaced by some new des￾ignation just as the term “documentary”

emerged to replace the anachronistic term

of “illustrated lecture” some ten to fifteen

years after the lecture had been replaced by

intertitles? Whatever the future may bring,

Kahana’s The Documentary Film Reader

brings us to a point beyond which film per

se has disappeared.

Documentary as a practice and as a field

of scholarly investigation occurs on three

levels beyond that of the biographical: the

local and regional, the national, and the

international. Although grounded in the

American tradition, this anthology is global

in its reach, and it begins by recognizing

that documentary as an emergent forma￾tion was an international phenomenon.

Nanook of the North (1922), which has tra￾ditionally been seen as the “first documen￾tary,” was made by an American in Canada

for French fur company Révillon Frères.

Three of documentary’s founding members

were Europeans who had a major impact

in the United States and worldwide: Dziga

Vertov (the Soviet Union), Joris Ivens (the

Netherlands), John Grierson (Great Britain)