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Cinéma Vérité
Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct Cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth. History Ciné ...
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Documentary Film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception hat remainsa practice without clear boundaries". Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories. Some examples are educational, observational and docufiction. Documentaries are very informative, and are often used within schools as a resource to teach various principles. Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be truthful to their vision of the world without intentionally misrepresenting a topic. Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary- film gen ...
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Richard Leacock
Richard Leacock (18 July 192123 March 2011)
The Telegraph (London), 24 March 2011. Retrieved 30 March 2011.
was a British-born documentary film director and one of the pioneers of direct cinema and .


Early life and career

Leacock was born in London on 18 July 1921, the younger brother of film director and producer . Leacock grew up on his father's banana plantation in the
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Titicut Follies
''Titicut Follies'' is a 1967 American direct cinema documentary film produced, written, and directed by Frederick Wiseman and filmed by John Marshall. It deals with the patient-inmates of Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is taken from that of a talent show put on by the hospital staff. Titicut is the Wampanoag name for the nearby Taunton River. The film won accolades in Germany and Italy. Wiseman went on to produce a number of such films examining social institutions (e.g. hospitals, police, schools, etc.) in the United States. In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Synopsis ''Titicut Follies'' portrays the occupants of Bridgewater State Hospital, who are often kept in barren cells and infrequently bathed. It also depicts inmates/ ...
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Portrait Of Jason
''Portrait of Jason'' is a 1967 documentary film directed, produced and edited by Shirley Clarke and starring Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne, 1924-1998). In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Synopsis A gay African-American hustler and aspiring cabaret performer, Jason is the sole on-screen presence in the film. He narrates his troubled life story to the camera, behind which Clarke and her partner at the time, actor Carl Lee, provoke and berate Jason with increasing hostility as the film progresses. The film employs avant-garde and cinéma vérité techniques to reach the tragedy underlying Jason's theatrical, exaggerated persona. Production background Filming for ''Portrait of Jason'' took place in the living room of Clarke's Hotel Chelsea penthouse apartment. The shoot started at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 3, 1966, and e ...
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Dont Look Back
'' Look Back'' is a 1967 American documentary film directed by D. A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour in England. In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In a 2014 ''Sight & Sound'' poll, film critics voted ''Dont Look Back'' the joint ninth best documentary film of all time. Synopsis The opening scene of the film has Dylan displaying and discarding a series of cue cards bearing selected words and phrases from the lyrics to his 1965 song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (including intentional misspellings and puns). This was the first single from his most recent album, ''Bringing It All Back Home'', and a top ten hit in the UK when he filmed it there (a fact discussed in the film). Allen Ginsberg appears in the background having a discussion with Bob Neuwirth. The film features Joan Baez, Donovan and Alan ...
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Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins (born 29 October 1935) is an English film and television director. He was born in Norbiton, Surrey, lived in Sweden, Canada and Lithuania for many years, and now lives in France. He is one of the pioneers of docudrama. His films present pacifist and radical ideas in a nontraditional style. He mainly concentrates his works and ideas around the mass media and our relation/participation to a movie or television documentary. Nearly all of Watkins' films have used a combination of dramatic and documentary elements to dissect historical occurrences or possible near future events. The first of these, '' Culloden'', portrayed the Jacobite uprising of 1745 in a documentary style, as if television reporters were interviewing the participants and accompanying them into battle; a similar device was used in his biographical film ''Edvard Munch''. '' La Commune'' reenacts the Paris Commune days using a large cast of French non-actors. In 2004, he wrote the book '' Media Crisis ...
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Barbara Kopple
Barbara Kopple (born July 30, 1946) is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work. She has won two Academy Awards, the first in 1977 for '' Harlan County, USA'', about a Kentucky miners' strike, /sup> and the second in 1991 for ''American Dream'''','' the story of the 1985–86 Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota. /sup> Consequently, she is the first woman to have won twice in the Oscar's Best Documentary category. Kopple also directed '' Bearing Witness'', a 2005 documentary about five women journalists stationed in combat zones during the Iraq War. She is known for her work with artists, including '' A Conversation With Gregory Peck'' as well as documentaries on Mike Tyson, Woody Allen, and Mariel Hemingway. She was on tour with the Dixie Chicks when lead singer Natalie Maines criticized the Iraq War. The film, ''Shut Up and Sing'', debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. It went on to win a Special Jury Prize at the Chicago Internatio ...
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John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes ( ; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. First known as a television and film actor, Cassavetes also helped pioneer American independent cinema, writing and directing movies financed partly by income from his acting work. AllMovie called him "an iconoclastic maverick",Ankeny, JasonJohn Cassavetes ''AllMovie''. while ''The New Yorker'' suggested in 2013 that he "may be the most influential American director of the last half century."''The New Yorker'', July 1, 2013, p. 17 "On the Horizon: Movies: Wild Man Blues July 6–31" As an actor, Cassavetes starred in notable Hollywood films throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including '' Edge of the City'' (1957), ''The Dirty Dozen'' (1967), and '' Rosemary's Baby'' (1968). He began his directing career with the 1959 independent feature '' Shadows'' and followed with independent productions such as '' Faces'' (1968), '' Husbands'' (1970), '' A Woman Under the I ...
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Frederick Wiseman
Frederick Wiseman (born January 1, 1930) is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theater director. His work is "devoted primarily to exploring American institutions". He has been called "one of the most important and original filmmakers working today". Life and career Wiseman was born to a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Gertrude Leah (née Kotzen) and Jacob Leo Wiseman. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College in 1951, and a Bachelor of Laws from Yale Law School in 1954. He spent 1954 to 1956 serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.FREDERICK WISEMAN’S BASIC TRAINING
. Retrie ...
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Albert And David Maysles
Albert Maysles (November 26, 1926 – March 5, 2015) and his brother David Maysles (January 10, 1931 – January 3, 1987; ) were an American documentary filmmaking team known for their work in the Direct Cinema style. Their best-known films include ''Salesman'' (1969), ''Gimme Shelter'' (1970) and ''Grey Gardens'' (1975). Biography Early lives The brothers were born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, living there until the family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts when Albert was 13. Albert and David's parents, both Jewish, were immigrants to the United States; their father, born in Ukraine, was employed as a postal clerk, while their mother, originally from Poland, was a schoolteacher. The family originally settled in Dorchester to be near relatives (the brothers' great-uncle Josef Maysles and his daughter and son-in-law, Becky and Joe Kandib) who had moved there earlier. Albert originally pursued a career as a psychology professor and researcher. After serving in ...
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Chris Marker
Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are '' La Jetée'' (1962), '' A Grin Without a Cat'' (1977) and ''Sans Soleil'' (1983). Marker is usually associated with the Left Bank subset of the French New Wave that occurred in the late 1950s and 1960s, and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy. His friend and sometime collaborator Alain Resnais called him "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man."Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 2. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1988. 649–654. Film theorist Roy Armes has said of him: "Marker is unclassifiable because he is unique...The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker." Early life Marker was born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve. He was always elusive about his p ...
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Shirley Clarke
Shirley Clarke (née Brimberg; October 2, 1919 – September 23, 1997) was an American filmmaker. Life Born Shirley Brimberg in New York City, she was the daughter of a Polish-immigrant father who made his fortune in manufacturing. Her mother was the daughter of a multimillionaire Jewish manufacturer and inventor. The eldest of three daughters, her sister was the writer Elaine Dundy. Her interest in dance began at an early age, but met with the disapproval of her father, a violent bully.Philip PurseObituary of Clarke's sister, Elaine Dundy ''The Guardian'', 8 May 2008. Clarke attended Stephens College, Johns Hopkins University, Bennington College, and University of North Carolina. As a result of dance lessons at each of these schools, she trained under the Martha Graham technique, the Humphrey-Weidman technique, and the Hanya Holm method of modern dance. She married Bert Clarke to escape her father's control, so she could study dance under the masters in New York City. Their ...
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