Lindsay MAYNARD

written March 19, 2007 for Blake Fitzpatrick (Documentary Studies II Course)

DOCUMENTARY MANIFESTO

1. A documentary must show what can’t be seen.
2. There must be a partnership between the documentary maker(s) and the subject(s).
3. A documentary must be dialogical with its audience.
4. A documentary must be interpretive and reflexive, not simply observatory.
5. Documentaries must not seek the truth, but embrace the quest for truth.
6. The documentary maker must have a connection to their medium(s).
7. A documentary must be a witness of its time.
8. The context and intention of a documentary must be carefully defined.
9. The notion of representation should be integral to the documentary process.
10. Every documentary must have its own unique rules, which break conventions and create new visual languages.

1. Documentaries are a way to bring people, places, issues and perspectives that are unseen and unheard into the light. Reviewer, Jonathan Bordo comments on Edward Burtynsky’s book Manufactured Landscapes, “Spectacular is the only word to describe the initial visual impact of this portfolio of photographs. Consider for example the photograph caption from the third portfolio entitled “Quarries”—in which a whitish and luminous mass appears as an ornament, a golden crown, emerging from a forest verdure, an apparition whispered by the very legend of the caption, “Carrara Italy”” (Bordo 89). Burtynsky shows us the beauty in devastated landscapes. Documentaries not only bring us to far off lands, but they also reveal the familiar in an unfamiliar way. Documentaries are about discoveries.
2. The relationship between the subject and the documentary maker is crucial. The documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty who made Nanook of the North felt that his subjects were also his collaborators. Historian, Erik Barnouw writes, “It was Robert Flaherty, explorer, who took a quite different position. He wanted mainly to reveal wonders he had seen. In introducing his admired Eskimos to the world, he felt it essential that they were collaborators in the revelation, and not be exhibited as explorer’s trophies. He wanted to celebrate, not lead” (Barnouw 348). For Flaherty his subjects were an integral part of the documentary process, achieving more natural behaviour in front of the camera. Not all relationships must be positive; there are negative partnerships that have also worked well, for example Nick Bloomfield’s, The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife. This film is based around the fact that the documentary maker and the subject have a strained relationship.
3. Documentaries must allow their audience to bring part of themselves to the piece. The theorist, Roland Barthes writes, “In the glum desert, suddenly a specific photograph reaches me; it animates me, and I animate it. So that is how I must name the attraction, which makes it exist: an animation. The photograph itself is in no way animated (I do not believe in “lifelike” photographs), but it animates me: this is what creates adventure” (Barthes 20). As Barthes describes, the images says something to him and in turn he brings something back to the image. This is the excitement and the adventure of a documentary. It becomes a “discourse” rather than a “document.”
4. Audiences are continually developing more sophisticated visual languages. Documentaries must use this to their advantage and become more reflexive and interpretative. The critic, Susan Sontag says, “Consumers droop. They need to be stimulated, jump-started, again and again. Content is no more than one of these stimulants. A more reflexive engagement with content would require a certain intensity of awareness—just what is weakened by the expectations brought to images disseminated by the media, whose leaching out of content contributes most to the deadening of feeling” (Sontag 106). Engaging audiences to think beyond the confines of the image is important in stimulating reactions and achieving a successful documentary. It is also important for documentaries to distance itself from the mass media and Hollywood where there is little or no reflexivity.
5. Reality is a construction. In class, Blake Fitzpatrick stated that, “Documentaries are about travelling through other peoples realities.” To obtain reality within a documentary is an impossible goal. Art historian, Frits Gierstberg says, “It is also a step that offers possibilities for getting out of the pointless discussions about the truth and untruth of the photographic (or filmic) image. After all, in most cases these discussions invariably ignore any critical inquiry into the political or social ‘truth’ in which the work in question has come about and functions. Nor does it have to do with how well the photographer, filmmaker or artist is playing a visual game with fact and fiction” (Gierstberg 141-142). When documentaries are defined by the ultimate truth, other important messages are being ignored.
6. The medium must be a part of the documentary maker, as Marshall McLuhan says, an extension of the body. Barthes writes, “For me, the photographers organ is not his eye (which terrifies me) but his finger: what is linked to the trigger of the lens, to the metallic shifting of the plates (when the camera still has such things)…I love these mechanical sounds in an almost voluptuous way, as if, in the Photograph, they were the very thing—and the only thing—to which my desire clings, their abrupt click breaking through the mortiferous layer of the pose” (Barthes 15). Barthes speaks of the connection between the photographer, the camera and the subject. There is an organic and mechanical connection. Documentary makers must explore their medium and use it to it’s full potential in order to say exactly what they need to say. New media is also extremely important in creating new documentaries.
7. Documentary makers should always be aware that they are witnesses of their time. Documentary film professor, Michael Rabiger says, “You and I as common people must not pass silently from life. Future historians must have our testimony as their resource. Documentaries are our grassroots visions, not just what was preserved by an elite and its minions…We can propose the causes, effects, and meanings of the life that we are leading.  We can bear witness to these times, reinterpret history, and prophesy the future” (Rabiger 15). Documentaries are records for the future.
8. The context and intent of documentaries are very important. Who the audience is, where it is being shown, how it is being shown, etc. Sontag says, “The photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have it’s own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it” (Sontag 39).
9. Documentary makers must understand that subjects and audiences know the problems with representation within documentaries and use this to their advantage. Film and television theorist Stella Bruzzi writes, “…and this has the potential to be hugely liberating—filmmakers and spectators alike comprehend the inherent difficulties with representation in the nonfiction film but that this understanding does not invalidate either the documentary film or the documentary pursuit; that a documentary itself is the crucial point at which the factual event, the difficulties of representation and the act of watching a documentary are confronted—if not resolved” (Bruzzi 7).
10. Every documentary should be unique. Bill Nichols, founding theorist in documentary film says, “Every documentary has its own distinct voice. Like every speaking voice, every cinematic voice has a style or ‘grain’ all its own that acts like a signature or fingerprint” (Nichols 99). Nichols’ documentary modes are: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive and performative. He says that documentary makers often use more then one mode or combinations of these modes. However, there are modes that have not yet been discovered. Documentary makers must go beyond these defined parameters and find new ways of telling their story with whatever medium they can.

Edward Burtynsky, Nickel Tailings No. 34, Sudbury, Ontario 1996

Edward Burtynsky, Carrara Marble Quarries # 20, Carrara, Italy, 1993

Bibliography

Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

Bordo, Jonathan. “The Wasteland—An essay on Manufactured Landscapes.” Material Culture Review, 63 (Spring). 2006. 89-95.

Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Gierstberg, Frits. “From realism to reality? Documentary photography in the age of ‘post-media.’” Documentary now! Contemporary strategies in photography, film and visual arts. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2005. 141-142.

Nichols, Bill. “What Types of Documentary are There?” Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2001. 99-138.

Rabiger, Michael. Directing the Documentary. 4^th ed. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Inc., 2004.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003.