Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant Garde
Autor : Nichols, Bill
How is it that the most formal and, often, the most abstract of films and the most political, and sometimes, didactic of films arise, fruitfully intermingle, and then separate in a common historical moment? What motivated this separation and to what extent did it both succeed and fail? Our understanding of the relationship between documentary film and the modernist avant-garde requires revision. Specifically, we need to recon sider the prevalent story of documentary’s “birth” in early cinema (1895- 1905). How does this account, inscribed in almost all of our film histories, disguise this act of separation? What alternative account does it prevent? Ostensibly, the origin of documentary film has long been settled. Louis Lumie’re’s first films of 1895 demonstrated film’s capacity to docu- ment the world around us. Here, at the start of cinema, is the birth of a documentary tradition.
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