Documentary

A. History of Documentary
A.1. Beginning of Documentary –
During the late 1890s, the films were dominated by the novelty of showing an event.
Moments were captured on a film in a single shot. Examples of these films could be a train
entering a station. These films were called ‘actuality’ films. The initial films were made by
Auguste and Louis Lumiere which were at the most a minute long in length, due to technical
limitations. The films by the Lumiere brothers are more like today’s documentary which
means real things that were happening in the world. A notable film was engaged for more
than one and a half hours, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight directed by Enoch J. Rector used
film looping technology. Rector presented a famous 1897 prize fight in cinema across the
USA.
Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu filmed many science films in his clinic between
1898 and 1901, for example Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy (1898). These short
films were preserved. Professor described his work as a study with the help of a
cinematograph with several consecutive frames that were published in a magazine in Paris. In
1924, Auguste Lumiere realized and recognized Professor Marinescu’s films.
Boleslaw Matuszewski was a polish writer and filmmaker; he was amongst the first few
filmmakers to propose the idea of a Film Archive for collection and keeping the visual
materials safe. He wrote two texts which can be said earliest texts on Cinema called ‘Une
Nouvelle Source de l'histoire’ and ‘La Photographie Animée’, the English translations of
texts were ‘A New Source of History’ and ‘Animated Photography’ respectively. Both these
texts were published in 1898 in French and are amongst early literary works on the historical
and documentary value of a film. The term ‘Documentary’ was coined in 1926.
A.2. Growth of Documentary –

A.3. Status of Documentary Right Now –

B. Examples
B.1. Current Examples –

B.2. Past Examples –

References –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film
https://www.documentary.org/feature/bollywood-long-rich-history-documentary-india
https://transom.org/2014/brief-history-of-documentary-forms/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minimalists#Career_as_The_Minimalists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Desert
Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an avenue for the growth of the
documentary-film genre. These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease-of-
accessibility; thereby enhancing the ability to educate a larger volume of viewers, and
broadening the reach of persons who receive that information.

1900–1920
Documentary filmmakers are increasingly utilizing social impact campaigns with their
films. Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by converting public
awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action, largely by offering the
audience a way to get involved. Examples of such documentaries include Kony 2012, Salam
Neighbour, Gasland, Living on One Dollar, and Girl Rising.
Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the
genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive.
Within the past decade, the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the
broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the
broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided
documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full
advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV
cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.
Films in the documentary form without words have been made. From 1982, the Qatsi
trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to
the images, but no spoken content. Koyaanisqatsi (part of the Qatsi trilogy) consists primarily
of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the
United States. 
The 2004 film Genesis shows animal and plant life in states of expansion, decay, sex, and
death, with some, but little, narration.
On the historic midnight of August 14 and 15, 1947, India became independent from
British rule. First Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's speech, "A Tryst with Destiny,"
was recorded by independent filmmaker Ambles J. Patel with two cameras and sound
equipment. Today India boasts a vibrant independent documentary filmmaking community.
Indian documentary filmmakers have today carved a niche for themselves in the nonfiction
genre world with their creativity and hard-hitting works on subjects ranging from Indian
arts and social concerns to natural history. Films on issues such as human rights,
censorship, gender roles, communal politics, individual liberty and sexual identity form the
new Indian documentary filmmaking community. But the Indian documentary filmmaking
tradition dates back well before independence. In 1888 a short film of wrestlers Pundalik
Dada and Krishna Navi at Bombay's Hanging Gardens was filmed by Harishchandra
Sakharam Bhatwadekar. This was the first recorded documentary film in India. In the
1930s, filmmakers D.G. Tendulkar, who had studied motion pictures in Moscow and
Germany, and K.S. Hirelekar, who had studied culture films in Germany, brought the latest
concepts of documentary film and laid the foundation of the documentary movement in
India.The Films Division became one of the most important sources of public information,
and it tried to reach out to people in the remotest corners of India. Many exciting films
emerged from the Films Division S.N.S. Sastry's I Am 20, Fali Bilimoria's The House That
Ananda Built, Sukhdev's India 1967 and M.F. Husain's Through the Eyes of a Painter. The
Films Division today is Asia's biggest documentary and short film producer, having to its
credit innumerable films that have won laurels at home and abroad during the last 56
years.In 1978, An Encounter with Faces, Vinod Chopra's documentary about Bombay street
children, went all the way to Hollywood, where it was nominated for an Oscar. The film
also earned nine out of 12 awards at the Oberhausen Film Festival, and won the top prizes
at festivals in Milan, Leipzig and Finland. At the International Film Festival of India, it won
the Golden Peacock. The technique of the film was singled out for special mention: direct,
unwavering conversations with children, neither patronizing nor pitying.

The advent of digital video technology has further revolutionized the Indian documentary
technique. Traditionally Indian documentary overwhelmingly favoured the didactic social
documentary, but now filmmakers have moved towards the internationally accepted direct
cinema style, adopting its realist aesthetic and reliance on interviews, while continuing to
retain Griersonian voiceover narration.

Until the advent of the satellite television boom in India in the early 1990s, state
broadcaster Doordarshan's two national terrestrial channels were the only TV networks in
India where documentary films could be screened. The launch of Discovery Channel in
India in August 1995 and the subsequent entry of National Geographic Channel in 1998
created further avenues for Indian filmmakers to screen their work. Discovery Channel has
also launched Animal Planet in India and will add a Lifestyle channel in October 2004.
India's largest TV network, Zee TV, has announced plans to launch a documentary channel
called Khoj in the next few months.

In addition to the broadcasters, the non-profit Public Service Broadcasting Trust was
formed to support the production of independent documentary films. The trust receives its
funding from the Ford Foundation and Doordarshan. PSBT has already produced over 50
films and has started work on a documentary miniseries: The Story of Indian Broadcasting,
which will both evaluate and document the achievements of Public Service Broadcasting in
India. Documentary filmmaking training was pioneered by Anwar Jamal Kidwai,
former secretary of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, who founded the
Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC) in 1983.

Since 1983, about 500 students have graduated with master's degrees in mass
communication, comprising an important media work force in the country today. The
alumni have received national awards like the Chameli Devi Jain Award and international
awards like the prestigious Golden Gate Award in San Francisco, as well as other film and
television awards. Its alumni have also been awarded prestigious scholarships and grants
like the Fulbright and Inlaks scholarships, the Cardiff and Commonwealth fellowships and
the India Foundation for the Arts grants for media research.

The Indian documentary community has presented cinematic gems and has put Indian
images on television screens across the planet. Mike Pandey is the only Asian filmmaker
ever to have won the Green Oscar twice at the Wildscreen Festival in the UK, for his
documentaries Rogue Elephants of India and Shore Whale Sharks in India. The latter film
was shot under extreme conditions and took almost three years to complete. "Shore Whale
Sharks in India aimed towards creating policies to support a ban on the killing and trade of
whale sharks in India as well as finding sustainable alternatives for the fishermen," says
Pandey. The Earth Matters Foundation set up by Pandey to create the preservation of
wildlife in their natural habitat began an awareness campaign to save the whale shark. The
campaign successfully got the hunting of this species banned worldwide.

Besides Pandey, several Indian filmmakers, including Anand Patwardhan, Sanjay Kak,
Amar Kanwar and Rakesh Sharma, have already carved a niche for themselves on the
international documentary stage. Award-winning Patwardhan's latest documentary,  War
and Peace (2002), documents activist movements in South Asia since the 1998 nuclear tests
in India and Pakistan. Patwardhan has been making documentary films for the past 25 years
about human rights issues in India, like street dwellers in Bombay, the rise of religious
fundamentalism and the negative impact of globalization.

Kak has carved out a special niche in the echelon of experimental cinema, and his films
such as Land, My Land, England (1993), A House and a Home (1993), Geeli
Mitti (1985), A Matter of Choice, Harvest of Rain and One Weapon have received awards
as well as critical appreciation at film festivals in Paris, Fribourg, Hawaii and Dhaka. His
documentary In the Forest Hangs a Bridge won the 1999 Margaret Mead Film Festival
Documentary Film Award in the US.

Kanwar, a recipient of a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship, was awarded the Golden Conch-Best
Film Award at the 1998 Mumbai International Documentary Film Festival for his film  A
Season Outside. His next film, A Night of Prophecy (2002), was filmed in several diverse
regions of India and features music and poetry of tragedy and protest performed by regional
artists.

Sharma's Final Solution (2003) graphically documents the changing face of right-wing

politics in India through a study of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. The film was
banned by the Indian censors, even though the film has been acclaimed at international film
festivals.

Other Indian films that have fared well on the international film festival circuit include
Rahul Roy's When Our Friends Meet, a film on male sexuality; Barf Snow, a film by Saba
Dewan, on trekking with slum girls; and Into the Abyss, Vandana Kohli's film on
depression, for which he won the RAPA 2003 award in India for Best Director.

The Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films was
launched in 1990 as a biennial competitive event and is organized by the Films Division, in
close cooperation with the State Government of Maharashtra. In this festival, outstanding
films in various categories are selected by an international jury for Golden and Silver
Conches and hefty cash prizes. The festival aims to serve as a platform where the
filmmakers of the world can meet and exchange ideas, explore the possibility of co-
production and market their films.

In August 2003 over 300 Indian documentary filmmakers came together to protest the
attempt by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to make censor certificates
a mandatory precondition for Indian documentaries entered into the 2004 Mumbai
International Film Festival. The documentary filmmaking community saw through this
apparently innocuous step, recognizing it as a part of a wider structure of control and
repression, where the rights to free speech, dissent and even creative expression are
increasingly coming under threat in India. In an unprecedented display of collective
resistance, filmmakers from across the country organized around the Campaign Against
Censorship, and were successful in forcing the ministry to drop its attempts to introduce
censor certification for the festival. The filmmakers then set-in motion Vikalp—Films for
Freedom, an independent documentary film festival. After a stopover at Bangalore, the
celluloid caravan travelled on to Trivandrum, Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata.

The Indian documentary community is now looking at expanding its horizons. Pandey has
already been invited to be a jurist for the 2004 Wildscreen, where he is also a finalist for the
esteemed Filmmaker for Conservation Award. Vanishing Giants, his film on the elephant
crisis in India, is also a finalist for a Panda Award. Patwardhan was the keynote speaker at
Silverdocs in the US in June, and Sharma picked up the Wolfgang Staudte award at the
Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.

It wasn’t until the 1920s that people started making narrative documentaries. The first two
popular documentaries were “Man with a Movie Camera” (1929) and “Nanook of the North”
(1922) and they are quite different in their approach and style, good examples of different
documentary forms. The idea behind “Man with a Movie Camera” was to document and
promote the success of the proletariat revolution in the new Soviet Union. Vertov realized
that the construction of a story might make the whole thing untrue, not real, so he made up a
set of rules to follow in the editing process how to put one thing with another and then
another in a way that told the truth. He called this method Kino Pravda. It took about 30
years after the invention of the movie camera before the first narrative documentaries were
produced. “Man, with a Movie Camera” eschewed the dramatic arc and tried to present an
objective account of a day in the life of a new country. We want our reality to come packaged
this way, then we know what it means, the moral of the story. We don’t want to look at a
place where everybody is equal and happy and the problems have been solved. The
documentaries of the 30s, 40s, and 50s followed a dramatic arc of some kind, not a new
documentary form, just one perfected along the lines of propaganda. There were two reasons
for the move toward propaganda. One was theoretical — when you make a documentary,
you’re basically trying to convince the audience that this is the one “real” version of reality,
the way things really are. The other was practical — it cost a lot of money to make a movie,
so the people who made them were rich, or in power, in control of the infrastructure
necessary to pull off such a huge economic investment. “Will to Power,” produced by the
Third Reich in 1934, is perhaps the best example of documentary as propaganda, it is the
story of the rise of the Third Reich and its mission from God to take over the world. Things
started to change, however, in 1960 when four men who called themselves the Drew
Associates, working with money from Life Magazine, re-invented both the technology and
theory of documentary production. The reason all documentaries were dull is that they were
lectures, picture illustrations, or interviews, which is the same thing. Real-life never got out
of the film, never came to the television set.
The Drew Associates believed documentaries were boring and so obviously constructed by
the voice of power that the genre was all but dead. They wanted to go back to Vertov’s idea
of documenting natural behavior, natural events, without the heavy-handed propaganda They
realized the one main problem in documenting natural behavior was the film equipment itself
the cameras and tape recorders and lights were too big and heavy to keep up with natural
behavior and events; everybody had to stop what they were doing and wait for the equipment
to get set up and then they were self-conscious because they were obviously on camera, and
self-conscious behavior is just not very interesting, because it’s not really real. They re-
designed the equipment. They developed a lightweight camera with a big view screen so the
cameraman could see the frame without holding the view finder up to his eye. This made
people being filmed more comfortable because they were able to look the cameraman in the
eye and maybe forget about being filmed. Another innovation was wireless sync sound. Up to
then all audio recorders were hooked to the cameras by a hard wire that kept the tape recorder
and film camera running in sync so that the editing process wasn’t a nightmare. The Drew
Associates got rid of the wire and put crystal clocks, nearly perfect, in both the camera and
audio decoder.Their aim was to go into an unfolding scene without interrupting it or changing
the behaviour of the participants: to become invisible or at least ignored. The Drew
Associates Bob Drew, Richard Leacock, the Maysles brothers, and D. A. Pennebaker —
completely changed the world of documentary production. I doubt there’s a documentary
produced today, in any media, that doesn’t derive something from the tools and theory of
Direct Cinema, a.k.a., Cinéma Vérité. In radio the best example of cinéma vérité form is the
work of The Kitchen Sisters. In the realm of photo-essays there’s “Suburbia” by Bill Owens.
There are all different narrative forms, very different from the standard objective news report.
And, when it comes down to it, the standard objective news report is pretty much the voice of
the status quo; those in power tend to stay in power with the help of the media. So now it is
the 21st century and we have a new medium, the Internet, and we’re wondering if it’s going
to develop its own narrative forms, just like film and radio developed their forms, over time.
We’re at the beginning now, waiting to see what will happen and whether we will be able to
make any money at it. Maybe it’s a medium for young people and not for old people, maybe
it’s for people who haven’t even been born yet. Maybe it’s not a new medium at all, just an
amazing transmission system for the old media. So now it is the 21st century and we have a
new medium, the Internet, and we’re wondering if it’s going to develop its own narrative
forms, just like film and radio developed their forms, over time. Most of what’s on YouTube
so far is like Edison and the Lumières’ raw footage — no narration, no context, no meaning.
Smartphones were excellent for documenting and broadcasting the Arab Spring and the
Occupy movements, and the movements would not have been possible without them. “Snow
Fall” by the New York Times and “Firestorm” by the Guardian. Both use a combination of
text, audio, and video, and both allow the viewer to choose the order and pacing of the parts
they’re interactive. Neither was done by individuals with smartphones, each was produced by
a crew of professionals using the best equipment, and I’m sure each cost well over $100,000
to produce.