Everyday Experience, Suggests Edgerton, Like Documentary,

Firstly, it is important to understand how the documentary form is best suited to illustrate the film’s theme. In order to do this, one must have an overview of the documentary style of filmmaking. Documentaries concern themselves with the “exploration of

Documentarians often want to get as close to their subject matter as possible. Some documentarians have an insider perspective which ignites a spark to create a piece that illuminates a specific topic or area of study. There are also documentarians that have no affiliation with said subject matter, but want to explore the topic in question. Finally, there are documentarians that have a foot in both worlds. Insider/outsider is a theory in which a documentarian can be close to a subject, but also possess characteristics or traits that make them distant from the topic in question (Coles, 1998). Such is the case with the directors of both Stranger with a Camera and The House I Live In. Due to their own location, both Eugene Jarecki and Elizabeth Barret exhibit characteristics that make them fall into the insider/outsider roles as directors. Robert Coles defines location by stating, “We notice what we notice because of who we are” (Coles, 1998, p. 7). Included in this is, a person’s education, race, class, and gender. Both directors realize they are outsiders and utilize a lens into a world in which they are not otherwise a part of. Jarecki’s lens comes in the form of Nanny Jeter, his family’s nanny from when he was a child. Barret’s lens for her documentary is the community that she shared with Ison. The two directors enter into a world that they are not a part of because of their location, but forge a connection to the subject matter through means of a lens.

Richardson’s non-interventionist style is a prime example of observational documentary, and works specifically well in capturing and promulgating the subject of death. According to Nichols, observational documentaries started appearing in the 1960’s as result of more mobile and smaller equipment. Furthermore, observational documentary stresses non-intervention, as filmmakers objectively observe indirect speech, candidness in the form of long takes, and create a world out of historical reality not fabricated with

‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’

8). The main point(s) of view presented in the film are that visual media should change as what we see as “normal” in our

When a typical viewer watches a film they place a large amount of trust in the narrator to tell a true story. In both Meshes of an Afternoon and Memento, the narrators depict a distorted reality, going against the viewers assumptions that the narrator will be a reliable source of the truth.

This presentation of these objects especially with the presence of the eye can be seen as the propaganda the is presented to us everyday through technology. These screens___

“Our criminal justice system, on paper, is the best in the world… but we're human, and so we make mistakes. If you execute and execute and execute, at some point you will execute an innocent man.” - Randall Adams Belgian documentary filmmaker Jean-Pierre Dardenne was quoted as saying that “in documentaries, you're confronted with reality; you can not manipulate or move it”. The documentary film genre has always been at the forefront of cinema, providing insight into humanity at its core. The focus of my study is documentary film with the purpose of bringing an injustice to light, in the hopes that the film will help galvanize the masses, particularly in regards to criminal justice.

The concept of image as presence refers to the concept that film can show the world as it truly is. Directors can choose to project the idea of image as presence in multiple ways, through the subjective viewpoints of the characters of the film, through an objective approach in which an omnipresent force that dictates to us about the facts that exist. In contrast, image as text, operates on the understanding that the world cannot be shown as it is, rather there is an understanding that what the viewer is seeing comes from an interpretive perspective. This viewpoint expects the audience to make connections between what they are seeing on the screen and other images that are already known. Making connections is part of the way that

The challenge of accurately representing ethnography, the critical analysis and systematic inspection of everyday life across cultures, has been repeatedly attempted with myriad intentions and has subsequently evolved over time. This paper will examine four iconic anthropological filmmakers in the mid-twentieth century in their individual distinctive endeavors to contribute to and accomplish this goal of developing ethnographic film. From Robert Flaherty 's objective to showcase culture as art, to Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s intent to produce a purely unbiased and scientific cinematic record, to John Marshall’s desire to present works which would engage audiences politically, one can trace the evolving narrative of ethnographic film itself, climaxing in the ultimate quest for reflexivity.

“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to.

Theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin claims that narrative films are mainly a “product of construction” and cautious compilations of “selections of images that have been shot” (Renée).

David Bordwell wrote his article ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film’ in an effort to convey the main idea that “art cinema” can be considered as a distinct mode of film practice, through its definite historical existence alongside other cinematic modes, set of formal conventions, and implicit viewing procedures. Rather than searching for the source of the art, or what drives the art in film, Bordwell compares art cinema to the classical narrative cinema, and highlights the differences in narrative structure. Bordwell makes the assumption that it defined itself against the classical narrative mode; especially with the way it deals with space, time, and the cause and effect link of events.

In the world we live in today, anyone can pick up a handheld video camera and record their son’s soccer game or daughter’s school play, but to really capture the beauty of an event takes true talent. It takes the expertise of a cinematographer or director of photography as they are also known, to capture the true essence of an event and scene. Thomas Edison even once said, “By faithfully reproducing and kind or type of movement, it [cinematography] constitutes man’s most astonishing victory to date over forgetfulness. It retains and restores the things memory alone can’t recover, not to mention its auxiliary agencies: the written page, drawing photography. … Like them, cinematography prevents the things of yesterday that are useful to tomorrow’s progress from sinking into oblivion; amongst these one must count moving things, which only a few years ago were considered impossible to fix in an image” (Neale, 54). A picture, whether it be a photographed image or a filmed image is nothing when it has not been looked at with the proper eyes. When expressed through the proper lens and eye an image can really be worth a thousand words.

We as a responder are able to thoroughly analyze these filmic devices to show the subjectivity of truth and also that in many instances to reveal and confirm truth an external perspective is