History of

documentaries
{ Megan Ward
 A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended
to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes
of education or maintaining a historical record.
"Documentary" has been described as a "filmmaking practice,
a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" that is
continually evolving and is without clear boundaries. This can
be seen due to the many different modes of documentary.
John Grierson , a Scottish teacher who studied mass
communication in the 1920s, was the first to use the term
Documentary from the French word documentaire. The
style of film making of documenting events can be found as
far back as 1917-18 when the communist rebellion in Russian
was filmed and used as propaganda later on.

Definition of a
Documentary
 The first example of documentaries were produced
by Lumiere brothers in 1895.
Their films were unedited clips of life around them.
They tried to capture reality by using a camera of
their own invention. The camera only held 50 feet of
film.
Their most famous work Un Train Arrivee
produced in 1895 was just a clip of a train pulling
into a station, However, the audiences at the time
were fascinated by the moving images captured by
the Lumiere brothers. As before this no moving
images had been filmed on a camera.

Actualites
1895
 Documentary format ,as we know it today,
began with Robert Fahertys Nanook of the
North in 1922. This was the first feature length
documentary. It was only a creative
interpretation of reality described by John
Grierson , so was the scenes were staged to
make the film more interesting. Grierson
invented the word documentary to define this
film.

Nanook
of
the North-
1922
 For example, Harlan County, USA is a 1976
Oscar-winning documentary film covering the
"Brookside Strike", an effort of 180 coal miners and
their wives against the Duke Power Company-
owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine
and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast
Kentucky in 1973. It was an attempt to unseat Tony
Boyle. The documentary is regarded as one of the
most important documentaries of all time because
the presence of the camera crew meant that the
authorities withheld from aggressive violence. After
the murder of one of the miners, the camera crew
filmed the strikes themselves knowing the police
would not attack any other miners when they were
being filmed.

Harlan County, USA -

1976
 Voices of Iraq is a 2004 documentary film
about Iraq, created by distributing cameras to
the subjects of a film, thus enabling subjects to
film themselves. The goal of the filmmaker was
to give the Iraqi people a voice. For years they
felt that the world only had heard only the
American medias version of what Iraq and its
people were like. They decided that since Iraq
was such a major issue in the U.S., it was time
to hear their story first-hand. As Iraqis had
been silenced for over 24 years, living in fear of
Saddam Hussein and his regime.

Voices of Iraq - 2004

 To investigate the fast food industry the presenter
Morgan Spurlock explores the effects on his health
when he eats a diet of only McDonalds for a month.
The documentary was produce to highlight the
obesity crisis in America and how harmful fast food
can be for our health. After the documentary was
released McDonalds removed the Super Size
option on its menu. In addition, McDonalds printed
nutrition information for its food and included
healthier alternatives on their menus. The fast food
chain changed its children's meal Happy Meals to
be healthier as well.

Super Size Me
- 2004
 This Oscar-winning documentary was a factual
retelling of the case of O.J Simpson for the
murder of his Ex-Wife and her partner. It raises
the issues surrounding the racial tensions in
America in the 1990s about how many felt the
law system was corrupt. The documentary did
not use any narration or present but instead
accounts told by friends, family, lawyers,
detectives, even jury members at O.Js trail.

O.J.: Made in America

2016
 Researching the history of documentaries has allow me
to under the many different forms and styles of
documentaries there are. The way documentaries
change to fit with the times like the Voices of Iraq
was filmed by the subjects themselves with video
cameras. I have learnt that the transformative practice
of making documentaries is useful to understand
what the audiences response to. The O.J: Made In
America Documentary succeed at retelling the event
through interviews ,without the need of a presenter
,making the end product fast paced and more
personal. This is a technique that I would like to adapt
into our documentary.

I have learnt