The future of documentary film-making

It is fascinating to see how much and yet paradoxically how little has changed in non-fiction film-making. In some ways, the internet represents film coming in a full circle: the earliest films were short films and now the constraints imposed by download time make short films an ideal form for online exhibition.

On the other hand, the recent success of the documentary genre, and the advent of DVDs, has made documentaries financially viable even without a cinema release. There has been an immense increase in feature-length documentaries on the most obscure subjects, a situation that would have seemed incredible 20 years ago.

The 'window on the world' is wider than ever before. The desire remains for people to tell their own stories and bear witness to others. From the zoo-like spectacle of watching people in reality TV shows, to the campaigning zeal of politically charged film-makers, people still have a desire to engage with real people, talking about real subjects.

In the future it is likely that technology will become more integrated. Digital high definition television will bring multimedia systems closer together. The ability to download programmes will become easier.

There will remain a tension between global media domination and local homegrown programming. The internet has already proved with sites such as MySpace that niche subject areas overlooked in mainstream media coverage can develop into thriving communities. The music industry, for example, now sees how many website 'hits' a particular artist is getting before snapping them up for themselves. In a similar fashion, film-makers will be able to present their work more freely, and perhaps be picked up by a producer.

The challenge for future film-makers will not be too dissimilar from the one facing the early film-making pioneers: to present convincing and compelling films that not only gain the attention of audiences, but also their trust.

Non-fiction film timeline

• 1895: Auguste and Louis Lumière stage the world's first public film screening on December 28, 1895 in the basement lounge of the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.
• 1899: The Kiss in the Tunnel GA Smith and the Bamforth Company in Britain both lay claim to the first edit in a film.
• 1900-1913: Mitchell and Kenyon based in Blackburn in Lancashire make hundreds of actuality films showing everyday life in Edwardian Britain.
• 1916: The War Office commissions The Battle of the Somme for morale-boosting and patriotic purposes. Shot by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell with some staged scenes, it shows a very graphic portrayal of trench warfare, and features actuality material of the battle.
• 1919: Russian film-maker Dziga Vertov insists that the future of cinema depends on reporting the truth. He begins to produce Kino-Pravda, a series of news reportage films.
• 1922: Robert Flaherty films Nanook of the North, generally cited as the first feature-length documentary.
• 1926: John Grierson coins the term 'documentary' in a review of Robert Flaherty's ethnographic film Moana for the New York Sun (February 8, 1926).
• 1920s: Various European experimental film-makers create impressionistic, highly poetic works including various 'city films' such as Walther Ruttmann's Berlin: A Symphony of a Great City (Berlin, die Symphonie der Grosstadt) (1927) and Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures (1926).
• 1928: Dziga Vertov releases Man With The Movie Camera.
• 1928: John Grierson joins the British Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a governmental agency, and organizes the EMB Film Unit.
• 1933: The General Post Office Film Unit is formed in Britain and produces ground-breaking films such as Night Mail (1936) directed by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and the spirit of the Blitz inspired London Can Take It (1940) directed by Humphrey Jennings.
• 1934: German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl films Triumph of the Will a film of the Nazi Party rally of 1934.
• 1934: The Shell Film Unit is created and features a host of personalities from the British documentary movement such as Edgar Anstey, Arthur Elton and Stuart Legg. Its incorporation of graphics and animation typified by Birth of the Robot (1934) directed by Len Lye, typifies the stylistic innovation of the Unit's work.
• 1935: The March Of Time newsreel series is inaugurated in America which aims to bring a popular approach to newsreel presentation.
• 1940: The Crown Film Unit is formed in Britain under the Ministry of Information, with responsibilities for wartime and postwar propaganda. Its output includes Fires Were Started (1943) directed by Humphrey Jennings.
• 1942-1945: Hollywood film director Frank Capra oversees the production of the documentary/propaganda series Why We Fight.
• 1949: The British Transport Commission established a films section to enable it to use film as a tool for internal training and external promotion, and British Transport Films is formed.
• 1952: One of Britain's most substantial and long-lasting industrial film units, the National Coal Board Film Unit is formed.
• 1952: The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II sees a significant rise in the number of Television sets in public use and gains an estimated television audience of 20 million.
• 1953: Panorama starts as a fortnightly magazine programme on BBC television to become as an investigative flagship current affairs programme.
• 1956: The term 'Free Cinema' is coined by critic and film-maker Lindsay Anderson in early 1956 when he, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzetti show a programme of their short films at the National Film Theatre. Five more programmes are shown under the same banner between 1956 and 1959.
• 1959: Whicker's World, featuring travelling journalist Alan Whicker, introduces interviews and reports from around the world.
• 1950-60's: Using newly developed, lightweight, hand-held cameras with synchronised sound, a new generation of film-makers attempts to redefine the nature of the documentary film. Cinéma vérité emerges from France.
• 1960: Drew Associates produces Primary, the first film in which the sync-sound camera is able to move freely with characters throughout a breaking story (John F Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary). Primary is widely regarded as the earliest example of American 'Direct Cinema'.
• 1963: Horizon, a science magazine programme, begins on BBC2.
• 1965: Peter Watkins' controversial drama-documentary about a nuclear attack on Britain, The War Game (1965), is banned by the BBC.
• 1965: Sony introduces the first consumer 1/2-inch video tape recorder. Philips introduces the compact cassette for consumer audio recording and playback on small portable machines.
• 1967: Naturalist David Attenborough starts the long-running natural history series The World About Us on BBC2.
• 1973: Dr Jacob Bronowski presents a major 13-part series called The Ascent of Man exploring great discoveries and the evolution of human thought.
• 1973: The World at War, produced by Thames TV and narrated by Laurence Oliver, features a wealth of dramatic footage and eyewitness interviews from World War II.
• 1974: The Family, a 12-part documentary serial following, fly-on-the-wall style day-to-day life of the Watkins family of Reading is based on the USAn American Family.
• 1980: Sony introduces the first consumer video camcorder.
• 1988: Around the World in 80 Days presents Michael Palin as a latter-day Philieas Fogg with a generally humorous documentary travel programme later reprised in programmes such as Pole to Pole.
• 1989: The revolution in television viewing habits in the UK begins with the launch of the Sky satellite television network. BSB and Sky merge a year later to form British Sky Broadcasting.
• 1991: The Broadcast Act of 1991 introduces increased competition for commercial TV networks. Commentators view this as the beginning of ratings-led programming.
• 1995: The BBC's major series People's Century chronicles the changes of the 20th century as seen from the point of view of ordinary people.
• 2000: Channel 4 launches the first series of Big Brother and the spate of Reality TV programmes soon becomes a reality for TV viewers.
• 2002: Freeview, the digital television service run by the BBC in conjunction with Crown Castle and BSkyB launches after the collapses of OnDigital and ITV Digital.
• 2004: Some 800 Mitchell and Kenyon films are found and then restored by the bfi, creating an unprecedented social record of early 20th-century Britain and forming the basis of the popular BBC series The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon.
• 2004: Michael's Moore's furious attack on the Bush regime Fahrenheit 9/11 becomes the top grossing documentary film of all time, taking $119,194,771 in the USA and £6,049,187 in the UK.
• 2005: Channel 4 launched FourDocs, a broadband channel designed by Channel 4 as a place for users to showcase their documentaries on their website.
• 2005: The trend for successful documentary films continues whenMarch of the Penguins directed by Luc Jacquet takes over £3m at the UK box office.
• 2006: Acclaimed German film-maker Werner Herzog releases Grizzly Man.