Act now! A familiar and effective plea in advertising, and as the name of a programme of the Crested Butte Film Festival, it is also the succinct message and goal many people associate with the documentary film. The tag line in their promotional poster1 extends the description of this goal: âpromoting social change through filmââanother preconception many people share about the documentary film. But not all documentary films have activist intentionsâbiographies, nature films, travelogues, for exampleâyet the documentary film is often viewed as a genre of film privileged with the innate ability to serve as a powerful and influential communications tool, an instrument of social change. The ActNow programme description can easily substitute for an introductory definition of the social issue documentary and its activist intentions: â(the program/the documentary) inspires film-goers to become educated and respond immediately to certain films and social issues in a positive and proactive way, inviting social and environmental change.â2
While few would argue this statement, it is important to remember that this is not the sole purpose of a documentary. A documentary with a social issue theme can also entertain (a mockumentary), deceive (propaganda), and train (educational films). The investigation of this book, however, will focus on the documentaryâs ability to communicate and influence for the purpose of achieving positive social change in a new way.
A fair question might be why attempt to change the documentary form in the first place. Does it require repair, or is it insufficient in its current state as an instrument of social change and is in need of an overhaul to better reach and influence those charged with creating policy that yields progressive social change? The answer is no, not entirely. The documentary film is enjoying a renaissance of sorts as many more people are using this communications device to speak truth to power. The documentary is not just for professional filmmakers any more. Amateur filmmakers, communications professionals, and even those in power themselves are taking advantage of the affordances and accessibility of digital technology to make more compelling arguments for their cause with the assistance of the visible evidence the medium provides. But the primary reason for this investigation and proposed reformation of the documentary is to explore news ways of advancing resolutions to our global battle against climate change.
Having served on the front lines of the Arctic and the Antarctica with the soldiers of science, I was able to see first-hand the devastating effects of climate change on the fragile polar regions. Participating in and documenting their research, I bore witness to new data essential in the surveillance of the enemy and in communication of this intel to headquartersâthe international environmental policymakers of the United Nations. In this service, ecocinema is now playing an ever-increasing role, not only informing power, but all the other potential victims of climate change, the people of the world. Documentary activism is a powerful weapon, perhaps more now than ever before, but if there exists an opportunity to build a better weapon, it should be researched, tested in the field, and proposed for use. This is the goal of this book and its proposed new documentary form: the Geo-Doc.
The documentary film has long been associated with social change, and it has been used as an effective and influential tool by filmmakers, activists, and governments alike. But how does it do this? What techniques and technologies are most effective in bolstering the documentary and its claims to truth and effecting change? And once identified, do these specific approaches yield measurable impact, the goal of social issue documentaries?
Specifically, this book addresses the following questions. What methods and technologies are most effective in augmenting the documentary filmâs ability to effect social change and what new and emerging methods and technologies extend that ability? How can the documentary film be remediated3 to incorporate these attributes, and would this new project experience some measure of success in effecting social change when tested in the field?
This book explores the various methods, approaches, and technologies that helped the documentary film develop into an ever-increasingly effective communications tool for social change agents and offers a new remediation of the genre that incorporates many of these proven techniques in a form that satisfies the aims and goals of both filmmaker and changemaker4 in a new way. By incorporating the most evidently successful methods, styles, and digital affordances of the Internet as well as Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies, this book will introduce the Geo-Doc, an altogether new form of the documentary film that hybridizes the proven successful styles and modes of activist filmmaking and the database format afforded by GIS technology to advance the film genreâs contribution to effecting positive social change on a global scale. As well, I will investigate the relationship between the filmmaker and the changemaker as a strategy for maximizing the activist intentions of the documentary film. The binary of this relationship reveals an expedited path to social change when the changemaker-as-audience is engaged directly and when the changemaker collaborates directly with the filmmaker before and during production.
The first chapter examines the history of the non-fiction film and its emergent form as a documentary to provide a foundation of study with respect to how the documentary evolved over its years of use as an instrument of social change. Long believed to be a term coined by documentary pioneer John Grierson in 1926 (and cited as such by several documentary film scholars), the term, in English, was first used in 1907 by Charles Urban in a book he published to promote his educational films, called The Cinematograph in Science, Education , and Matters of State. The word, used as an adjective before it became commonly used as a noun, was first used in French in 1898 by Polish filmmaker and writer BolesĹaw Matuszewski. A review of these early days reveals experimental uses of non-fiction film for purposes of social improvement rather than mere entertainment.
The chapter chronicles the documentary filmâs early use to bring social reform in Canada, dating back to 1897. In particular, an investigation into this period reveals how the early film work of James S. Freer and Richard A. Hardie was instrumental in the government of Canadaâs promotional campaign to stimulate immigration and settlement in a new country. This sets the stage for the direct use by governments worldwide to exercise some measure of control over its citizens. Canada took the lead in this enterprise, establishing state-run film production studios regionally as early as 1914 in Ontario, in 1919 in British Columbia, and in 1920 in Quebec. These early experiments in government-produced documentary production led to national counterparts in the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau in 1923, and eventually the National Film Board of Canada in 1939.
Using the emerging documentary filmmaker as a tool of the state, the film genre and its claims to representing the truth are investigated to determine this period of discovery and how documentary pioneers began carving a new path for film, developing new modes of production, new goals for its filmmakers, and new ways of engaging its audiences. What methods worked and why, and on the flip side of that inquiry, what methods failed and why are questions addressed in this first chapter.
Chapter 2 explores these new advances by examining the numerous theories behind their creation and practice. One of the earliest practitioners of the community-based approach to documentary filmmakingâone in which the profiled community participates in the storytelling processâwas Joris Ivens, as far back as 1932. In his seminal canon of the life and work of this Dutch-born filmmaker, The Conscience of Cinema: The Works of Joris Ivens 1912â1989, Thomas Waugh details Ivensâ achievements with this approach with such films as New Earth (1932), Misère au Borinage (1934), The Spanish Earth (1937), and The 400 Million (1939).
A key issue debated by documentary theorists is the film genreâs claim to representing the truth. John Griersonâs famous definition of the documentary as a âcreative treatment of actualityâ is contested by many scholars. They point to the word âcreativeâ as giving licence to the filmmaker to distort or misrepresent the truth in the name of art. This theoretical investigation targets such classic documentary films as Nanook of the North , revealing scenes that were staged by its filmmaker Robert Flaherty who once famously defended his actions by stating, âSometimes you have to lie in order to tell the truth.â
Cognizant of this contentious issue, Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov adopts an absolutist approach to representing the truth in his documentaries by describing them as kinopravda (film truth). According to documentary film scholar Bill Nichols, Vertov âeschewed all forms of scripting, staging, acting, or re-enacting,â choosing instead to represent reality as the camera captures it without any literary or theatrical structure. Perspectives on this aspect of Vertovâs work are provided to investigate the contribution Vertov made to non-fiction film and his purist approach to representing the truth in documentary projects as an essential strategy to effect social change.
The audience is another focus of this chapter on documentary theory. The key target of audience engagement for documentary filmmakers is often identified as emotion. It is argued that if the film and its messages can reach an audience emotionally, it is likely they can then be moved to take the action the filmmaker wants them to take. In providing context to this aim of the documentary, Michael Renov provides four functions of the documentary film: âto record, reveal, or preserve; to persuade or promote; to analyze or interrogate; to express.â Through an examination of these theories, the documentaryâs other roles as a communications device are identified and explored.
Related to this is Bill Nicholsâ theory on the seven modes of documentary filmmaking: participatory, expository, poetic, observational, reflexive, performative, and interactive. These approaches, Nichols argues, yield different results in their audience engagement and often have goals different from effecting social change, but the mode that seems to be used the most for this specific goal is the participatory mode. Examples of the effective use of this mode are examined through the National Film Board of Canadaâs Newfoundland Project (more commonly known as the Fogo Films), the films of Father Albert Tessier, and the films of George Ferreira, all documentary projects that not only involved their interview subjects in the filmmaking process, but also engaged its audience of changemakers directly.
Is the participatory mode essential for the documentary film ...