fied image of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers for
the consumption of non-German audiences before
World War II.
Over a century of documentary innovation has
blurred the distinctions between these four histor-
ical categories. Most documentary movies we
consider worthy of study today are hybrids that
combine qualities of two or more of these founda-
tional approaches to nonfiction filmmaking. This
versatility is one reason that documentary is enjoy-
ing a renaissance unprecedented in the history of
cinema.
Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA(1976) is
an example of the nonfiction filmmaking style
known as direct cinema. While many documen-
taries include on-screen or over-the-shoulder inter-
viewers having conversations with subjects (in the
segments on television’s 60 Minutes, for example),
direct-cinema documentaries eschew interviewers
and even limit the use of narrators. Instead of
having voice-over narration to encourage the audi-
ence’s indignation about the crime, scandal, or cor-
ruption being exposed, direct cinema involves the
placement of small portable cameras and sound-
recording equipment in an important location for
days or weeks, recording events as they occur. The
resulting documentary may never include a ques-
tion from an interviewer; instead, it enables the
audience to overhear conversations and interactions
as they happen. Harlan County USAdocuments a
yearlong Kentucky coal miners’ strike in 1973–74.
Risking her life and the lives of her crew, Kopple
aligned herself with the United Mine Workers of
America, who were intimidated and sometimes
shot at by strikebreakers for the Eastover Mining
Company. During the film, Kopple’s cameras begin
to focus on the coal miners’ wives, who encourage,
cajole, and chastise their men to maintain the strike,Triumph of the WillThe most accomplished (and
notorious) propaganda film of all time, Leni Riefenstahl’s
Triumph of the Will(1935), is studied by both historians
and scholars of film. Much of the blocking of the 1934
Nuremberg Nazi rally was crafted specifically with the
camera in mind. [1] Riefenstahl, wearing a white dress and
helping to push the camera, films a procession during the
rally. [2] Taken from a distant perspective, this shot conveys
many concepts that the filmmaker and the Nazis wanted the
world to see: order, discipline, and magnitude.
12TYPES OF MOVIES 73