Lecture with Picture Illustrations

Still from "Rear Window" (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock

 Grimshaw and Ravez SOCIAL OBSERVERS

observation and documentary film making
cinema vérité (what is "truth-full"?)

​score of/for direct cinema

"Primary" (1960) by Robert Drew

a revolution
(imagining) being there (for real)

what was observed and how the role of the observer is understood by the filmmakers

politics as performance, process, ritual

handheld camera, being able to finally "see"
moments
the imponderabilia of everyday life? (Malinowski)
everydayness as it happens

shift in presence, attentiveness of the observer (with a camera) - framing reality, how?

new "insights"
reading small cues

but: selective observers
when to film and to stop, when not to stop filming

filmmakers close to people, part of the ritual process of politics

consistent sense of openness towards the subjects (camera work)

abandonment of single narrator, ability to "hear voices"

US-America postwar new social contract ------ journalism focused on pictures not text, "crafted performances rather an occasion of formal rhetoric

fleeting encounter between filmmakers and their subjects

authored by whom?
​
"Salesman" by Maysles Brothers

​"drama" doesn't involve action or crisis
descaling (of what is observed)
suburbs
people and their jobs (door-to-door Bibles selling) ---- glimpse of the housewives lives (salesman's prey)

failure
desolation
awkward camaraderie

EVOKING EMOTIONAL TEXTURE

narrow focus - broad questions
"affective landscape of modern America"

durational and close engagement of the filmmakers with each other and their subjects
their presence woven into the film's fabric
alongside the salesmen

camera as a "physical extension of a body"
locating oneself in the existential space of one's subject
refraction through filmmakers own body

human scale 
synchronous sound
revealing of mis-communication(s)
emphatetic connection
persuasive incompleteness 

BUT: the editing done by someone unrelated to the filming process
"norms of the dramatic narrative" + non-synchronous sound (imputing thoughts and feelings on a "protagonist")
montage creates (basis of) meaning

Poster from "Salesman" (1969) by Maysles Brothers

My new neighbors

​"Titicut Follies" by Frederic Wiseman

focus on "institutions and the workings of power"
musical revues by the patients of penitentiary hospital

(Foucault --- Madness and Civilisation)
film as critique of institution 
the nature of madness and its "treatment"

filmmaker as witness (and as director and editor, not a cameraman)
tight frame of the camera - sense of claustrophobia and disorientation
discontinuity and "unusual" juxtapositions
(creating meaning, taking a position? moral judgement, subversion or removal of context)
never seeing things in a perspective (the viewer)
stream of harsh noise (sound-produced affect)

"observation" thought through in a process of editing
establishing a perspective, a POV

watching/showing "beyond any point of decency and respect"
or film as an assault

observing as NOT being with (filmmaker) 
gaining access not developing trust
alliance and betrayal
privileged position (and style)

*something(s) to consider (final project): how editing reflects positions towards subjects, depiction of madness and injustice (what is implied, how is the context present or absent), what marks the violence of (visual) reproduction, how to look otherwise, what else to see?

Still from "The Possibility of Spirits" (2017) Mattijs Van de Port