Cinma Vrit /Direct Cinema

Cinma Vrit: Defining the Moment

(Peter Wintonik, National Film Board of Canada,1999) 103 min.
 Week 10 Study Questions: November 22

Bruzzi, 67 74; Lioult, Framing the Unexpected www.ejumpcut.org

1. How does Lioult convince you that there is a problem with the staged-unstaged
dichotomy that has historically defined documentary practice?
2. How can a documentary scene be understood as both spontaneous and arranged?
3. Why does Lioult need to add the category framing the unexpected to
Ponechs Type I flexible plans and Type II more restrictive plans as
strategies for documentary practice?

1. According to Bruzzi, Nicholss position on observational cinema is that it comes at the

expense of loss of voice? If Nichols has seen voice
style plus, what is at stake here? What else is lost? List.
2. Consider the 4 different direct quotes Bruzzi attributes to U.S. direct cinema makers
about their documentary practice. How have these statements been construed?
What are other possibilities for interpreting these statements?
3. What are 3 practical aspects of basic film and/or video making that make the ideal of
pure cinema impossible for makers to sustain?
4. How would direct cinema makers (for instance, the Maysles in Salesman) defend the
manipulation of events to suggest a story?
5. Bruzzi says that observational cinema has been mis-defined, mostly by observational
filmmakers. What new definition does she offer? Does this definition apply to all
documentary films?
 I. American direct cinema:
the models
Primary (Richard Leacock and Robert Drew [Drew Associates], 1969)
Dont Look Back, 1967 ( D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)

Salesman (Albert and David Maysles, 1969)

Problem: discrepancies:

Stated ideals vs. cinema practice

D.A. Pennebaker: It is possible to go to a situation and simply film what
You see there, what happens there, what goes on.And whats a film?
It is just a window someone peeps through
 2. American direct cinema =
observational cinema
1. lightweight equipment
2. follow, do not lead the action
3. shoot/edit in chronological order
4. events must be revealed untouched
5. all music must have diegetic source;
no non-diegetic music can be used
6. no juxtapositions/no Kuleshov effect
7. the story must be found in the material

A) 3rd meaning produced from juxtaposition of 2 shots

CU Mozzhukhin + shot of cherry trees =

CU Mozzhukhin + shot of bowl of soup =
CU Mozzhukhin + shot of baby in casket =
Marion Crane stopped by cop shower sequence

A) Shot/Reverse Shot
B) With absence of
establishing shot, viewer
infers shots in same space

establishing shots

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

 3. direct cinema
A. the paradox :
documentary strives to give us unmanipulated
reality
totally unmanipulated or untouched reality is ultimately
impossible

B. the problem:
the hierarchy of direct cinema style (documentary codes)
pure = no narration, no interviews, no non-diegetic music
less pure = non-diegetic music, interviews, voice-over narration
least pure = self-reflexive camera,
sound recording
 4. French Cinma Vrit =
new cinema truth
Chronicle of a Summer/ Chronique dun t
(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960)

1. The truth in lies: anticipates faux documentary

Rouch: film technique as lying intermediary; more real
than the truth. (telling the truth by lying)
2. characters: the truth of their lies and fictions
produces of a new reality that would not have existed
3. cutting style: shots give impression that there is
no space between the beginning of the end of one shot
and start of another.

4. documentary of encounter: characters & camera

Chronicle of a Summer/ Chronique dun t
(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960)

Post-WW II Nagra tape recorder +

16mm Bolex camera = Cinma Vrit

camera as confessional accelerator: subjects must be provoked

Characters:
Marceline
Jean-Pierre (philosophy student)
Marilou Italian living in Paris
Angelo Renault worker
Landry African
Jean Rouch filmmaker
Edgar Morin - filmmaker/sociologist
Chronicle of a Summer/Chronique dun t, Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1960
 5. The legacy of direct cinema
Frederick Wiseman: Basic Training, 1970; Primate, 1974; The Store, 1983; Zoo; Hospital;
Welfare

Michael Moore: Roger and Me, 1989; Bowling for Columbine

Fahrenheit 911 (2003); Sicko (2006), Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Nick Broomfield: Soldier Girls (1981); Chicken Ranch (1983)

Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, 1995), Ghosts (2007)
Common features:

Other directors/films: - interest in the quotidian (ordinariness)

Harlan County, U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976) - people as subjects
Shermans March (Ross McElwee, 1985) - following vs. leading subjects
Cannibal Tours (Dennis ORourke, 1987)
Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, 1988)
Truth or Dare (Alex Keshishian, 1991)
The War Room (D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, 1993)
Hoop Dreams (Steve James, Frederick Marx, Peter Gilbert, 1994)
 6. The false comparison:
Cinma Vrit (France) Direct Cinema (U.S.)
camera provokes subject passive camera: no provocation
new reality produced in the reality pre-exists & must be
making of the film respected

Jean Rouch: No difference between either:

presence of the camera alone (automatically) provokes

Cinma Vrit: Defining the Moment

(Peter Wintonik, National Film Board of Canada,1999) 103 min.
ER: The Live Episode
 Foreign letters