Online Response 1 - The Creative Treatment of Actuality

Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera poetically suggests cinema's effect on a nation's perception of its activity and mobilization.

The idea that documentary filmmaking transcends the indexical qualities that make film unique is one perhaps misunderstood by those not familiar with the medium. The interesting reality is that in the development of documentary, it became apparent that actuality could not be captured without some form of creative treatment. In other words, on some level a perspective was assumed by pointing a camera in a certain direction from a certain direction at a certain thing. The perspective was unavoidable. So over time, the documentary medium became gradually employed for various objectives. One example is that of Robert Flaherty, creator of Nanook of the North. One might say that this film is indexical of Inuit culture, but it is more accurate to say this is a Westerner’s perspective on Inuit culture as a grand yet dying phenomenon that deserved to be recreated and recorded. Whether this was an accurate depiction is in some ways beyond the point (because in reality it was hardly an accurate depiction). But the question remains, “What is an accurate depiction?” And in this question lies the transcendental quality of documentary as the creative treatment of actuality. It is an accurate depiction of Flaherty’s perspective.

Another example comes with A Propos de Nice. A city symphony film, it communicates more than merely shots of Nice. The juxtaposition of the city coming to life, people at the beach, the floats and parades, it all builds an emotional idea of what the city is like, as well as an implicit commentary on the sometimes-exuberant life there. The point is that it would be impossible to make a film that did not have an implicit commentary. It’s there whether you control it or not, and that’s where the creative treatment enters. It stems from artists taking control of the implicit commentary to use documentary filmmaking as a tool to effective change or to create awareness. These goals may be as simple as showing the life in a French city, or as complex as mobilizing a nation to war, but regardless, documentary can become a powerful force as the creative treatment is seized by responsible artists everywhere.

Two contrasting examples are Coal Face and Man with a Movie Camera. In Man with a Movie, Vertov employs variable motion and freeze frames to highlight the energy of Soviet life into a kind of visual song that mirrors city symphonies. It celebrates the mobilization of a nation from the perspective of the “all seeing eye”, the movie camera. The rolling camera, the editing, the audience watching all combine to not only show the nation, but to metacognitively propose a question about cinema itself and how perceptions created by cinema shape the attitudes of the nation. In Coal Face, real sounds of machinery are juxtaposed with music that transforms the indexical nature of the coal miners’ work into a rhythmic art that communicates on an emotional level. This connects poetically to the visual juxtaposition of the miners’ work and its place in social hierarchy. This machine and rhythmic poetry drive the entire society. Without these artistic interpretations of reality, the emotional and thematic impacts of these films would not exist, and without those impacts, the meaning behind the communication would be void. Thus, these examples show that the creative treatment of actuality is the crucial heart of documentary filmmaking.

-amh