Unscripted: The Art of Direct Cinema
Program 1 Sparks: The American Precursors
Program 2 Precursors: The Canadian Connection
Program 3 1960: Everything Changes
Program 4 The Crisis Structure
Program 5 The Everyday Turn
Program 6 Musical Marriage
Program 7 Power and Policing
Program 8 Eyes on Institutions
Program 9 Fixed Point Observation
Program 10 Reel Happenings
Program 11 Aquarius Ends Here
Program 12 Camelot Lost
Program 13 Hard Ground
Program 14 Rituals of Bearing Witness
Program 15 Too Real for TV
Program 16 From Innovation to Institution
Special Program
• With the exception of Program 2, all films were produced in the United States and are in English.
A Feeling in the Air that Cinema is Only Just Beginning
In 1960, global image culture was rocked by the emergence of a new documentary style that would prove relatively ephemeral in its pure form, but quite durable through its absorption into other modes of nonfiction filmmaking. In a remarkable instance of synchronicity the late 1950s saw filmmakers in Canada, France and the United States—driven by a desire to represent the world in new ways—puzzling through a set of technical problems that swiftly led to the emergence of what came to be called Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité. This was a global event, but the epicenters for these approaches were America and France, with Canada playing a crucial role in both contexts. This program presents a deep dive into the American Direct Cinema and its aesthetic, political and cultural contexts.
By the 1950s, documentary had hardened into a form based on screenwriting, formal interviews, Voice-of-God narration, and fictional reenactments. However, in the course of that decade a number of films hinted at powerful new approaches to documentary that eschewed detailed planning for spontaneity: from the feature films of British Free Cinema, to Canadian National Film Board productions, to shorts that were in their day experimental in nature (in particular, Young Fighter [1953], Jazz Dance [1954] and On the Bowery [1956]). In these films the camera seemed to be liberated from the shackles of convention, pointing to a new world of possibilities for documentary.
But the massive cameras and tape recorders—not to mention slow film speeds requiring careful lighting—were barriers to their ambitions. Engineers in France, the United States and other countries began jury-rigging their equipment for portability. In the States, D.A. Pennebaker and the staff at the newly established Drew Associates stripped an Auricon 16mm camera of all its excess, adding a handle for shooting from the shoulder. This enabled them to liberate the camera from the tripod and handhold it into everyday American life. Their first effort, Primary (1960) electrified audiences. For example, Jonas Mekas wrote:
The techniques of Primary indicate that we are entering a longawaited era . . . when a filmmaker can shoot his film, with sound, alone and by himself and unobtrusively, almost the same way as a poet observing a scene. Thus, heralded by Primary, we see another turning point in cinema. There is a feeling in the air that cinema is only just beginning.
From here the American Direct Cinema spread across the nation and its impact was felt around the world. Direct Cinema filmmakers eschewed scripts, narration and interviews. They never reenacted scenes, but rather discreetly followed their subjects until they began ignoring the camera. More often than not, their camerawork was handheld. This was the birth of the so-called “Fly-on-the-Wall” approach, or “observational cinema.” Audiences were impressed by the way they captured life unawares, from schools to hospitals to rock concerts to the Oval Office. The intimacy of Direct Cinema style seemed to put audiences in the presence of usually unreachable historical figures like JFK, Marlon Brando and Dylan.
This epochal shift was more than a technical problem, as evidenced by filmmakers in other parts of the world using similarly portable equipment. The most famous example is France, where the filmmakers chose interventional strategies to provoke revelatory situations, or the more poetic observational cinema of the Canadians. Perhaps it’s no wonder that these Americans chose a distanced, observational approach, considering the core figures were originally trained in journalism (Robert Drew), engineering (D.A. Pennebaker), physics (Richard Leacock), psychology (Albert and David Maysles) and law (Frederick Wiseman)—all “discourses of sobriety,” as Bill Nichols has argued.
This aesthetic revolution was connected to larger currents in American culture. Their faith in individual perception, discovery of the profound in everyday reality and authentic nonconformity is in tune with American pragmatism and transcendentalism. At the same time, the imprint of the budding counterculture is palpable in nearly every film. The early filmmakers were inspired by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who is seen praying behind Dylan in the famous opening of Dont Look Back [1967]). The very first Direct Cinema film, Primary records the massive shift about to take place by focusing on the Wisconsin presidential primary, contrasting folksy Hubert Humphrey and the magnetic, youthful John F. Kennedy. Two years later the same filmmakers were granted access to both JFK and RFK as they negotiated with George Wallace as he attempted to block two black students from entering the University of Alabama, one of the key moments in the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to these political concerns, Direct Cinema’s filmmakers were interested in freedom of form in all the arts; their canonical works include intimate portraits of people like Igor Stravinsky, the Rolling Stones, Ono Yoko and Marlon Brando at work.
Despite observational style’s rejection of narration and scripting, its “direct” representation of our world enabled filmmakers to indirectly deal with the most pressing problems of modern life, including democracy, voting rights, immigration, refugee rights, poverty, violence, race and diversity. As scholar Dave Saunders has pointed out, this body of films “engages in a substantial and compelling dialogue with America, about America in an epoch best defined by upheaval.” This is the context for returning to American Direct cinema to think about the present day, no matter where audience members come from.