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Development of styles and theories
A window on the world
Nanook of the North
Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), set in an Inuit community, is generally cited as the first feature-length documentary. The film included the use of third-person narration and subjective tone and a focus on an indigenous person as the film's hero. However, it also courted some controversy because some sequences, notably those depicting Inuit hunting, had been recreated for the camera.
Nevertheless, Flaherty's 'window on the world' showed audiences real scenes of domestic life within an Inuit community and set a standard for others to follow - a line that can be traced right up to Bush Bikes from this pack, which focuses on a day in the life of four boys from a sleepy aboriginal settlement in central Australia as they resourcefully construct two bicycles out of spare parts.
Reporting
Russian film-maker Dziga Vertov meanwhile, was calling for a purer form of film-making which relied on an honest form of reporting. In 1922 he began producing Kino- Pravda (Film Truth), a series of news reportage films that were the forerunners of newsreels and later documentary styles, including cinéma vérité.
His use of experimental editing techniques culminated in his most famous work, Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s Kinoapparatom) (1929). His aim was to portray 'life caught unawares' by using the power of the camera to inform and enlighten.
Film poems
Experimental film-makers began shaping their work by incorporating styles and techniques that we now consider familiar. It is interesting that some of the influences came from avant-garde cinema (such as montage and abstract narratives). What emerged were impressionistic films, often about quite mundane subjects, but presented in a highly poetic style, such as Manhatta (1921) by Paul Strand and Charles Wheeler, or Emak Bakia (1926) by Man Ray (see also BFI DVDs). Also worth mentioning are the documentary scenes in People on Sunday (1929) (see also BFI DVDs). These types of works are often described as film poems. Two examples of this kind of film are represented in this pack by Blight with its rhythmic, repetitive sound motifs surrounding the demolition of houses in the East End of London, and Ferment (2000), which captures day-in-the-life moments frozen in time producing a multilayered collage of the hustle and bustle of city life.
