Reimagining Reality
(Page 3 of 3)
July / August 2006
Annie Nocenti
Says Marshall, 'Audiences aren't going to grow in their ability
to perceive truth in fiction, in real life, or on the screen unless
they are challenged. It's necessary for the heart and mind to
create a more grandiose specimen than what's there. That's how we
fall in love. How documentary film will cross this next
frontier-that's the really important question.'
RELATED CONTENT
Before reimagining our politics, we have to learn to trust one another—at least a little bit....
When we read about the middle-class squeeze, we tend to think blue collar—the machinist who used to...
There's more to life than the pursuit of private splendor...
A visionary California theater company unveils a new kind of calendar...
For more information on the True/False Film Festival, go to
www.truefalse.org.
Further Viewing
Dig deeper into hybrid documentaries by seeking out these
films:
Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922)
is an early anthropological 'documentary' about Inuit Eskimos that
used real settings and nonactors but added a dramatic
narrative.
Open City (1945) by Italian neorealist Roberto
Rossellini is a fictional film grounded in the techniques of
documentary. Other notable neorealist films include Luchino
Visconti's Ossessione (1943) and Vittorio De
Sica's Umberto D. (1952). Italian neorealism is
both a technique and a genre, influencing Dogme '95 films and
filmmakers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Leone, and Sam
Peckinpah.
Orson Welles' F for Fake (1974) is a playful
documentary treatise on the impossibility of truth in film.
Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line (1988) is a
seminal documentary that used stylized reenactments to investigate
a wrongful conviction.
Marc Levin made Slam (1998) in what he dubbed
drama vrit style, using a mix of actors and real convicts, guards,
and poets, set in a real prison.
Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo
(1997), In This World (2002), and most recently
The Road to Guantanamo (2006; see review on page
29) are fiction films so seamlessly constructed out of reality that
it is difficult to tell they are not documentaries.
Cane Toads (1988), What the Bleep!?:
Down the Rabbit Hole (2006), and The American
Ruling Class (2005) are examples of satirical mockumentary
hybrids.
American Splendor (2003) is a narrative film
about the life of comic artist Harvey Pekar that uses the real
Pekar, an actor playing Pekar, and animated versions of
Pekar.
-Annie Nocenti
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 | 3 |