Chapter 6 Recording and Presenting Reality 229Subject Matter
When selecting subject matter, fi lmmakers are oft en drawn to topics that
hold great personal interest. Th ey might wish to expose an issue to the public.
Th ey could fi lm a memoir or topic concerning a family member or friend.
Th ey might want to craft an artistic or intellectual statement using real-life
footage as their source. Much of the creation of documentary fi lms has been
undertaken far from the realm of major studio production and the large
budgets of fi ction features, so the history of non-fi ction fi lmmaking is fi lled
with stories of projects that are developed and nurtured by an individual or
small group of collaborators.
Having just discussed the technical complexity of Baraka, let us return to
the simplest fi lms of all: the fi rst non-fi ction movies of the Lumières. Th ere are
lessons that can be learned from these single shot fi lms. Th ese fi rst fi lms serve as
documents of their time and place, and most of their interest to us today stems
from the choice that is typically the fi rst in the creation of a non-fi ction fi lm:
subject matter. It was the decision faced by Louis Lumière when he proceeded
to use his new cinematograph: What is the camera going to record?
Among the most compelling of these early fi lms are the ones in which
we see interesting human activity and behavior. Films such as Demolition
of a Wall, Feeding Baby, Snowball Fight in Lyon, Woodcutters in Paris, and
An Arab Knife Grinder at Work are particularly appealing because of their
depiction of human interaction or the achievement of a task. By contrast,
many of the fi lms featuring famous fi gures such as royalty or religious fi gures
are far less engaging because of their static nature. Th ey are seen standing,Figure 6-19 Prom Night
in Mississippi, depicts the
fi rst prom in Charleston,
Mississippi attended by both
white and black students.
(Courtesy of Return to Mississippi
Productions, copyright Photo
by Catherine Farquharson/Paul
Saltzman, All right Reserved)Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).