Nonfiction Film Research Articles

Portuguese cinema and its discontents: a view from the film archive

ABSTRACT The article revisits the main arguments and underlying premises of the protracted debate on ‘national art cinema’ that has shaped Portuguese film studies for many decades. Drawing on international scholarly work on national cinemas and on my own experience as a researcher in the National Archive of the Moving Images (ANIM) of the Portuguese Cinematheque (Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema), I argue for a definition of ‘Portuguese cinema’ that takes into account the vast collections of non-fiction films that have been excluded from this debate. My proposal entails a shift away from prescriptive to descriptive understandings of Portuguese cinema, thus recognising its diversity, in the past as well as in the present. I therefore endorse a conception of national cinema that takes heed of wider and deeper historical processes, international ‘constellations’ and other (often contested or unacknowledged) traditions and practices. The argument builds on the analysis of Adriano Ramos Pinto – Vinho do Porto (attributed title), a short non-fiction utility film made in the late 1930s that belongs to ANIM’s holdings.

The Body of the Voice: Orality as Sound and Performative Expression in Non-Fiction Film

The Body of the Voice: Orality as Sound and Performative Expression in Non-Fiction Film

Creating nonfiction film in our mother tongue: Samoan, Tongan, Punjabi

Creating nonfiction film in our mother tongue: Samoan, Tongan, Punjabi

Presenter in Modern Documentary Cinema: On and Off Screen

The purpose of the article is to analyse the specifics of the presenter's work in documentary cinema and to outline the duties he/she performs on and off screen; to determine the impact of the presenter's work on the viewer; to explore the artistic means of searching for truth in contemporary non-fiction cinema; to determine the feasibility of using artistic reconstruction of events in a non-fiction film and identify the consequences of the use of false information by the media. The research methodology is based on the use of theoretical and empirical methods of material analysis (to study scientific works by foreign authors, information sources, as well as contemporary documentaries). On the basis of the collected information, the author analyses the trends in the use of artistic reconstruction and comprehends the role of the presenter in the frame. The difference in the work on artistic reconstruction in the past and now is also traced. Theoretically, the collected information was analysed based on my own experience, as well as reviewing and analysing previously created films. The scientific novelty is that for the first time, the specifics of the presenter's work in the documentary genre are analysed and the roles that he/she can combine are identified. The influence of the presenter's work on the viewer is determined. The artistic means of searching for truth in contemporary non-fiction cinema are studied. A detailed analysis of the use of the method of artistic reconstruction in the documentary genre is carried out. The ethical issue of disseminating false information and its consequences is investigated. The author analyses how propagandists use information for their own benefit. The social significance of raising historically resonant topics in the media is established. Conclusions. The necessity of using reconstruction and other artistic means in documentaries as a way to hold the viewer's attention is substantiated. The significance of the presenter as the main communicator with the audience is explored, and the roles and functions that he or she can perform in this genre are identified. The importance of transmitting reliable data in the media and the consequences of not doing so are analysed.

Generic overlap as a mode of (social) production in Portuguese silent non-fiction film: the case of A Covilhã Industrial, Pitoresca e seus Arredores (1921)

ABSTRACT The article offers a contribution to the international debate on non-fiction film genres in the silent period by proposing a historically and socially informed analysis of ‘generic overlap’ in the Portuguese documentary A Covilhã Industrial, Pitoresca e Seus Arredores (1921) [Industrial and Picturesque Covilhã, and Its Outskirts]. Made by Artur Costa de Macedo (1894–1966) for Invicta Film, a short-lived but prolific production company based in the North of Portugal, the film is a composite of different genres, such as the travelogue, the scenic view, the actuality, the industrial process film, and the local film. While in keeping with well-established international film practices, this kind of generic overlap also reflects the specific set of constraints and opportunities that the filmmaker encountered (and, respectively, sought to overcome and take advantage of) when he took on this film commission. Local newspaper research, though selective and incomplete, was crucial for gaining a deeper knowledge of this film’s local and regional underpinnings. The article also discusses the film’s 2002 restoration in light of its generic overlap, considering how genre-bound and genre-blind decisions resulted in a ‘new version’ and a ‘new original’ that sought to address a new set of concerns and scale configuration. It concludes that filmic genre has played (and continues to play) an active role in creating and sustaining social goals and relations in both silent filmmaking and film restoration projects.

The heroic character, the neo-liberal productive citizen, and the feminist filmmaker

ABSTRACT I recut an observational documentary about a woman called Bekti into a more conventional hero’s journey for a broadcaster. The hero’s journey narrative requires large obstacles to be overcome by the hero in their search for their ego. In this documentary the obstacle is connecting experimental science with communities with the aim to reduce dengue fever, and the hero’s ‘ego’ is to be an effective communicator. Using the hero’s journey style of narrative reduced the importance of the domestic aspects of Bekti’s life because these scenes did not contribute to overcoming obstacles or finding ego. To explore these changes use feminist critique of the influence of the hero’s journey on narrative structure and character creation. Alongside this, I use a decolonising lens to challenge the universality of the monomyth. I then bring into this debate work on value in the economy to explore how the hero’s journey used in the recut documentary corresponds to neoliberal values. This critique adds to the current debates around heroic characters and story structures in non-fiction films via rethinking story in practice.

Useful Bodies, Socialist Commodification and Everyday Culture: Promoting Albanian and Yugoslav Industrial Production Through Non-Fiction Films

In this paper, we discuss how documentaries were used for the promotion of industrial production in socialist Albania and Yugoslavia through a discussion of two short non-fiction films, Në turnet e natës/The Night Shift (1970, Albania) and 25 Godina. Jugoplastika/25th Anniversary of Jugoplastika (1977, Yugoslavia). The discourse of Albanian and Yugoslavian socialist ideologies of modernisation and industrial production, and the notion of everyday socialism are constructed and visible in the films’ representational strategies. The analysis of the two previously overlooked archival films along with the press, and non-film materials and documents from film and state archives allow us to compare and contrast the similarities and differences of Albanian and Yugoslav socialist ideologies toward industrial production, labour and gender relations. In doing so, we aim to better understand the complexities of the state socialist discourse vis-à-vis Western capitalism and consumerist ethics during the Cold War period.

A Future Archive of Identity. Stories and Tropes of Contemporary Slovak Nonfiction Cinema

The study focuses on cinematic reflection of the post-1989 history of Slovakia as the most recent layer of communicative memory closely related to the formation of the country’s modern identity. Its aim is to explore what image nonfiction films create for the future of the present reality. Therefore, it examines what rhetorical and narrative tropes documentary filmmakers use to construct knowledge about the socio-political reality.

Projecting Creative Processes: Art Films and Art Education in Post-war Britain

The relationship between film and art education has received little scholarly attention. This paper describes and discusses one instance in the long and multifaceted history of this relationship: the educational uses of nonfiction films about art and artists in post-Second World War Britain, known then invariably either as ‘films on art’ or ‘art films.’ As a new international genre (backed by UNESCO’s educational distribution schemes), it gained particular momentum in the UK with the Arts Council of Great Britain, a public body, set up after the war with a mission ‘to increase the accessibility of the fine arts.’ And one of the ways it did was via 16mm projection. Alongside building a substantial film library, in 1950 the Council, in collaboration with the British Film Institute (BFI), started a new mobile cinema scheme, the Art Film Tour, to directly engage with the nontheatrical cinema sector, especially its educational venues. By drawing on my research in the Arts Council Archive, I propose to adopt a ‘historical pragmatics’ perspective and to study the Art Film Tour’s media configuration as a dispositif (Kessler, 2018). In the 1950s, with an increasing number of art films dedicated to artists at work, art students encountered cinematic renderings of the creative process by renowned modern artists, such as Picasso, Henry Moore and Jackson Pollock. And therefore, I make a case for an inductive analysis of ‘showing making’ on screen and its implications within historicised art education contexts.

From Ruptures to Continuities: Czechoslovak Cultural Heritage in Non-Fiction Cinema 1948-1956

The article examines the post-war trajectory of the Czechoslovak politics of cultural heritage, its public presentation and circulation through the medium of non-fiction film. Specifically, it investigates the genres of ethnographic, geographic, and art films released after the political transformation in 1948 that brought the country under the direct influence of the Soviet Union. It describes the professional infrastructure and networks within which the fields of cultural heritage preservation and non-fiction cinema were operating and analyses their interactions in the realm of film production. Through the analysis of the film production background, audio-visual content itself, and related period visual ­culture, it finds a set of different narrative strategies used for public presentation of cultural heritage. These narratives are then placed in the context of the official cultural ideology. It exposes continuities that can be traced between the communist cultural politics introduced after the communist takeover in 1948 and the pre-WWII Czechoslovak cultural politics. The analysis shows the diversity within the film production whose primary goal was to celebrate and represent the national cultural heritage in and outside the country, and therefore understands these films as important tools of national and international cultural politics.

What Did the Haji Jawa See in Mecca? A film from 1928 as Primary Source

This article discusses Het Groote Mekka-Feest (The Great Mecca Festival), a non-fiction film produced by a Dutch-Indo filmmaker G.E.A. Krugers about Indonesian pilgrims making the hajj journey in 1928. In addressing this unique primary source, the article scrutinises how the film complements and corroborates accounts of the hajj from the early twentieth century and elaborates on how it provides the viewer with an experiential sense of travel as encountered by the pilgrims. Acknowledging the access of digital source material now offered by many archives, this rich visual document is both discussed within the existing literature, and set apart from it, in an attempt to exhume it from early non-fiction film archives of colonial Indonesia relegated to the slow lane of historical research.

Medical propaganda as enabling device of the surveillance apparatus – decolonizing and anarchiving non-fiction at the eye film museum archive

ABSTRACT The Western gaze instituted by the cinematographic apparatus constructs racialized subjects and supports processes of dispossession. My present transmedial artistic research project engages with the biopolitics of representation in archival film material, from a decolonial perspective. By drawing from academic and non-academic sources on relations between colonialism, capitalism, and technologies of control, this paper studies manifestations of surveillance in non-fiction film, to analyze the sub-genre of medical propaganda in former European colonies. Moreover, it proposes to scrutinize the long-term impact colonial cinema and its structures of representation had and still have on processes of subjectification, haunting present-day gender and race-determined profiling by mainstream film, CCTV, and drones.

The image of the creation of plastic artists in the moldovan nonfiction film

Art, having in its center the human being – the creator and his work, has always been in the attention of filmmakers, imposing itself in the evolution of cinema through complex subjects inspired by all the genres of art. In 1970, at the studio „Moldova-Film” was launched the first nonfiction film dedicated to the plastic artists – „Alexandru Plămădeală” directed by Anatol Codru. Then, followed the release of several films in this category, signed by different directors: ”Obsession” (director V. Druc, 1983), „Gleb” (director V. Jereghi, 1983), ”Confession” (1985), ”Mihai Grecu. Beyond Color” – both directed by M. Chistrugă, „Mihai Beţianu” (director Igor Isac, 1992) and others. We will try to elucidate how cinematic art currently serves the arts, which generated it, supporting them and capitalizing on them through its cinematic language.

The documentary film – means of education of the young generation

Every time you watch a soap opera, a documentary dies,” says a character in the Italian comedy “Tuttelovogliono” (2015). The context in which this character makes the statement highlights the educational role of documentaries, compared to the first genre of film production. But first of all, what is a documentary? The special nature of this kind of film in general, as well as the use of photographic images and sound recordings in particular, have proven difficult to conceptualize by reference to the distinction fiction film/non-fiction film. There is also terminological confusion caused by different uses of the term “documentary” and the phrase “non-fiction film”. “Latosensu”, we can attest to instructional non-fiction films, product promotion films, historical documentaries or biographical films.

Features of Perception of Pre-revolutionary Non-fiction Films

The purpose of this work is to reveal the peculiarities of perception of historical archival newsreels on the example of pre-revolutionary non-fiction films. The objective of the study is to identify the qualities of pre-revolutionary newsreels that influenced the mass audience before the revolution and compare them with those qualities that come out on top when perceived by modern viewers. In the work, an analytical approach is used as a method, which is based on theoretical provisions arising from the consideration of the specifics of newsreels as a special type of cinematography. The formation of Russian non-fiction cinema at an early stage is also considered, the techniques used in its development are revealed, and the extant evidence of the perception of newsreels in the first cinemas is studied. Films considered are : "The Sovereign Emperor, the Empress Empress and the Heir Tsarevich are pleased to taste sailor food on the imperial yacht "Standard" during their stay in the Skerries in 1908" (1908), "Asbestos mining in the Urals" (1911) and "The opening of the bridge across the Volga in the center of Rzhev" (1911). The results of the study confirm the influence of the so-called visual turn that occurred and indicate a fundamental difference in the perception of visual information compared to verbal. When analyzing the preserved film materials, including documentaries, it is noticeable that now these ephemeral screen images convey the breath of authentic life, and we look at the screen not to learn any story, but to feel the atmosphere of being of those people. The novelty of the undertaken research lies in the development of a model of perception of pre-revolutionary newsreels both in general terms and from the point of view of a specific audience before and now.

Review: Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars, by Jill Godmilow

Review: <i>Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars</i>, by Jill Godmilow

From Performance to Literature and Cinema: Adivasi Art and Activism, with a Focus on Eastern India

Activist art is a rather recent development within contemporary art, articulating reflections on artistic expression, art commodification, and political criticism. When it comes to Adivasi arts, however, one tends to think of dances or of Gond and Warli paintings of trees and animals. This article seeks to explore the confluence between Adivasi art and activism, while addressing what could be referred to as the “triple bond” of Adivasi artists. Contemporary Indian artists already face a sort of double bond in the sense that they tend to be recognized either as “contemporary artists” or as “Indian artists.” The position of Adivasi artists is further complicated (Rousseleau 2017) by the fact that they belong to an economically disadvantaged cultural minority within India (Scheduled Tribes). Inasmuch as they tend to be labeled according to their origins, Adivasi artists find themselves caught between stigma, an ascribed identity and their self-conception, thus facing three key issues: moral judgement, folklorization and appropriation, and identity conflicts. This article portrays the complex situation of contemporary Adivasi artists, drawing both on historic landmarks in developments in the way Adivasi arts—that is dancing and singing, theater, painting, literature, fiction and non-fiction films—are received, and on artists’ assertion of cultural and political identity.

Sexuality and Discourses of Care in Feminist Documentary

This essay explores forms of feminist screen media that produce political desires about sexual liberation. I focus on key works, especially from the 1970s, that visualize women’s pleasure in conversation with the language of documentary, that is, on projects committed to matters of truth, agency, education, autonomy, and self-care—terms that began to shape sexual politics in the context of 1970s feminism. Political claims about sex and pleasure exist in a range of nonfiction films from the period, including experimental and realist documentaries, although there is as much to learn from what is clearly absent from the history of women’s documentaries about sexuality. I conclude with rare examples of feminist media projects about sexuality and orgasm that explore the connective tissue between the orgasmically radical as well as the social and the material conditions of women’s lives that affect their access to, and even need for, care and pleasure.

Dynamics of changes in the image of Ukraine in the audiovisual art of the XXI century

The article reviews some of the established stereotypes and new trends in the image of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the world audiovisual art. Traditionally, all nations rely primarily on stereotypes in their attitudes towards others. Most of the time, in the screen arts (especially when it comes to American films, television programmes, etc.), Ukrainians, russians, or Belarusians are portrayed as either «russians» or «Slavs» with a russian-centric identity. Cases of positive cinematic representation of Ukrainians in the twentieth century were an exception, the most notable of which was the film «The Fisherman’s Boots» (1968) by British director M. Anderson. The prototype of the protagonist, Cyril Lakota, the Archbishop of Lviv, who, after 20 years in a Siberian hard labour camp Gulag, is unexpectedly released and allowed to move to Rome, was Josyf Slipyj. After 1986, the theme of the Chornobyl tragedy became widespread in audiovisual artworks dedicated to Ukraine and Ukrainians. The disaster at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant was perceived by the international community primarily as a real threat of a total nature, about which it is necessary to know as much as possible in order to protect the lives and health of the population of different countries. At the same time, the study of the psychological aspect of the tragedy, its impact on the minds of the direct participants, and the change in attitudes towards Chornobyl over time became a subject of particular artistic interest. In the twenty-first century, the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, and the Ukrainian-russian war finally put an end to the interpretation of Ukrainian characters in world cinema as marginal representatives of the Russian screen narrative. A number of fiction and non-fiction films and TV series were released about various aspects of the lives of Ukrainians, who are now clearly identified by their nationality and citizenship. A special role in this process is played by thematic programmes with historical content developed and implemented by T. Snyder.

The concept of “artistic system” in visual culture and the movie poster as a phenomenon of social and cultural communication: Before posing a problem

In the article, using the example of studying a movie poster for a non-fiction movie, it is proposed to pose the problem (in general) of forming an artistic system of social and cultural communication as a basic model of creating an expressive visual and meaningful message. It is shown that the flow of visual information (“street art”) within a short period of time gains popularity, attracts attention, and is able to influence the formation of certain features of a person’s daily and artistic outlook. Embodied mainly in the form of a poster, which with the help of digital technologies acquires new features of visual impact, this information attracts a certain audience with intriguing images, witty messages and fresh visual ideas in the chain: “poster — consumer”, “consumer — society”. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to reveal an approach to the formation of a holistic view of the nature and theoretical foundations of the formation of advertising posters for non-fiction films in the context of modern visual culture considering their social and cultural role. The research is based on the methodological principles of the general humanitarian analytical-synthetic approach to clarifying the interaction between the visual and socio-cultural, between the objective form and its subjective perception.