The Documentary

Michael Moore is an American filmmaker who specializes in interactive/ audience participation documentaries. His films (including Fahrenheit 911 and Bowling for Columbine) revolve around America and controversial, topical issues. In his films we can see the Michael Moore has certain trademark styles that work for him by using manipulation of both the audience and his interviewees with tactics like his dress, interview style, sarcasm, dark humor and his ironic use of music. His tactics work for…

United States, is a story about as old as this country. And even though times have changed and slavery is no longer legal, the issues of the past have changed the way African Americans are marginalized. For this history paper, I decided to watch the documentary “The 13th”, directed by Ava DuVernay. Although, slavery may be gone the new major issue to arrive is mass incarceration of African Americans by the thousands, that did not just magically appear but was crafted by hundreds of years of…

Why would the film be different with a different narrator? Gas Land is a documentary film that made by Josh Fox. The issue was being discovered about the gas issue in Delaware River watershed should he and his neighbors sign the letter they go in the mail. The movie is not perfect, but most of the people like it. The movie narrator was the director of the film and the camera man and that too many people important to see the director to explore the issue to the audience. The movie started with…

Documentary and War Photography “Is it in the interest of purity that society should hang its morally stained linens upon its lines to be stared at?” Jacob Riis, a documentary photographer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries asked this very question in an effort to stir the thoughts of documentary photographers around the world, as well as their audiences. Documentary photography can be defined as a type of photography that documents historically relevant events and scenes as well as…

The film F is for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) is a masterpiece that creates its own genre as a documentary essay. The films subject of fakery lies in the precincts of art forgery, charlatanism “magicianship”, the idea of authorships, and experts. The opening of the film, which displayed Welles doing a magic trick suitably set the theme of imitation, and if the audience didn’t catch on Welles even introduced the film as one of trickery. F is for Fake was birthed collectively out the many different…

Irak war and major company closures. His first film, Roger & Me(1989), became the most successful American documentary of all time. .His main documentaries are Fahreneit (2004), Sicko (2007),Capitalism:love story (2009).His film Bowling for Columbine (2002), won an Oscar in 2002 and a prize in Cannes. Moore lives in Traverse City, Michigan. We will analyse one of his most successful documentary film Bowling for Columbine in order…

Dziga Vertov has been credited as the father of documentary film capturing reality and a world that otherwise escapes our preoccupied eyes. Vertov’s 1929 masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera reflects his championed concepts of “life caught unawares” and “film truth” but were these captured in actuality? His ‘fly on the wall’ approach inspired many documentary filmmakers throughout the 20th century resulting in the birth of direct cinema throughout the western world. D.A Pennebaker approaches his…

For the documentary realist tradition, this is quite easily seen in many of the films we discussed over the course of this semester. For example, the film Les Ordres (Brault, 1974) is directed by a Canadian, features Canadian actors, deals with the events surrounding the FLQ and October Crisis in Quebec in 1970, and the setting is, obviously, Canadian as well. The many interview scenes that the film includes feature the documentary realist tradition and the film is definitely…

Implications Films have been seen as windows for everyday people to experience and see new and different things. With ethnographic documentary films, people are able to see real parts of the world that are not always visible in their current, everyday lives. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) and Dead Birds (Robert Gardner, 1963) are both ethnographic documentaries, revered as revolutionary for their times and carry many similarities and differences. However, both films faced negative…

Background of the movie clip This World is a BBC international documentary series program which hosts the programs related to international current affairs documentaries. Aung San Suu Kyi - The Choice by Angus Macqueen is one of the documentary film which is premiered by This World, BBC in September 2012 and also it is being premiered in many international film festivals. In this documentary it captures the movement of Aung San Suu Kyi’s risky step into everyday politics of Burma. This film…