Lecture 4 – February 15
Documentary for Television: 1958 – 2008 (continued)
Films screened in excerpt today
Drew “Primary” (1960)
Wintonick “CV: Defining the Moment” (1999)
Frontline: “The Jesus Factor (PBS) 2004
See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/
PBS Lewis “China from the Inside” (excerpt part 1 of four parts) 2006
see: http://www.pbs.org/kqed/chinainside/
BBC The New Al Qaeda: Jihad.com (2005) see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/4683403.stm
Channel 4 (on line) DVD copy sought “The Dying Rooms” (1995)
SEE: http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/the_dying_room.html
CNN: “Combat Hospital” 2006
http://insidecable.blogsome.com/2006/10/20/cnn-to-air-iraq-combat-hospital-special/
Alpert/HBO “Baghdad ER” 2006
See: http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/baghdader/index.html
Greenwald “Outfoxed” 2004
We start this week discussing further the work of ROBERT DREW. While his work began in television and he still produces some films for television today, his innovations into the realm of “Cinema Verite”, Direct Cinema, Observational documentary, or as Drew called it “Candid Drama” was too experimental for most American commercial televsion networks. He did however get funding to develop documentaries and new technology for shooting film from Time Inc. ABC, NBC, and parts of his films were actually shown on a famous VARIETY ENTERTAINMENT show of the 1950′s called the “ED SULLIVAN SHOW” on CBS.
Still as for regular - Drew’s innovations never became regular fare on American TV. Most television documentaries remained in a more conventional NARRATIVE form with the narrator spoon feeding the TV viewer.
Drew in a 1961 film said the following about his ideas:
“The Reason many documentaries are dull is because traditionally they have been little more than ILLUSTRATED LECTURES.”
“…Real life never got out of the film. never came to the television set. We [must] drop word logic, find a dramatic logic in which things really happen. If we could do that we would have a whole new basis for a new journalism. It’s hard to define. But it would be a theater without actors. Plays without playwrights. Reporting without summary and opinion. It would be the ability to look in on people’s lives at crucial times from which you could deduce certain things and see a kind of truth that can only be gotten by personal experience. In order to do that we need to re-engineer the equipment and style of film making….”
And although Drew did not say so – so bluntly, he would abolish the genre of NARRATED film or “illustrated lectures.”
After DREW, we continue this week to look at more recent TV documentary film making – largely by independents for
The American Public Broadcasting System (notably Frontline) The BBC, Channel 4 (UK), Discovery Channels, “NGC” National Geographic, HBO, and others as the number of channels around the world offering documentary content increased from a handful to many dozens of channels.
POWERPOINT FOR TODAY’S LECTURE BELOW:
Lecture powerpoint 15 February
Readings two – Bill Nichols Introduction to Documentary pgs 165-167 – noting Nichols formulation of ‘social interest’ versus ‘personal portrait’ documentaries.
Internet reading
Iraq for Sale Website for Robert Greenwald film
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/red/
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickpage.asp?pageid=2923&home=1
NOTE: Assignment: The First critical review/essay was due by e-mail today.
