Dawn of the Documentaries

I’m no “old hand” at this – yet you couldn’t say that I’m a “spring chicken” either. I’ve racked up just over 15 years working in documentaries – 17 years if I’m really counting  (because I am). Yup, 17 years of doing the thing. So you can decide where I am on the experiential spectrum. Like any creative endeavour it takes a village and I am but one vital cog in said village machinery. As I sit here on a Tuesday morning sipping my third black coffee during my in-between-jobs freelance hiatus, I find myself reclining into career retrospection. I ask myself (in the words of Talking Heads): how did I get here?? I honestly cannot fathom how my little working class, 2nd gen immigrant ass from deepest darkest Essex got all the way here. So it’s got me thinking – well, writing actually – about this great ‘love’ of my life, this entity that I’ve fed on and in turn been nourished and cultivated by for all of my adult life.

Documentaries, oh documentaries, how you’ve evolved – from the days where you were but a mere stepping stone for many who just wanted to move into scripted films and dramas, and but a wee step up the rung from news and reality TV – to now, finally receiving mainstream recognition with A-list Hollywoodistas and ex-presidents clambering to produce their own documentaries – to creatively, yet factually, nerd out on hidden true stories or special interests of theirs. Documentaries, oh documentaries, how you have catalysed revolutions, rallied the masses, exposed and overturned injustices, satiated curiosities and expanded the world’s consciousness beyond imagination.

Documentaries, oh documentaries… this I write for you.

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Documentaries (also broadly known as ‘unscripted’) are an interesting beast. They sit awkwardly between news journalism which favours information & facts (well, depending on your source!) over editorial creativity and story-telling – and scripted dramas & films which favours editorial creativity and narratives over information & facts. They’re are here to ultimately entertain but for those that are produced for official broadcast they must abide by ‘codes of practice’ – in the UK we’re regulated by OFCOM (give it a google) with guidelines that protect accuracy, impartiality and fairness (to name but a few) and Nat Geo projects around the world must work around a whole Standards & Practices system to ensure that all documentaries are fact-checked line by line. A lot goes into preserving the ‘documentary’ nature of these films and series. Thus, docs have the tricky task of straddling both worlds – inform with factual accuracy yet compel with dramatic flair – but without being afforded the perks of big budgets or the glitzy accolades that dramas receive. We’re the nerdy kid sibling trying to muscle in on the dancefloor with the cool older kids of the silver screen.

It’s only really within the last couple decades, however – decades that I’ve been lucky enough to be part of – that mass appreciation of documentaries has reached stratospheric levels. Audience tastes are growing more sophisticated and they’re consuming docs as much as, if not more, than dramas (thank you Netflix). So, circling back to the apt words of Talking Heads – how did I get here??

DOCUMENT-ARY. What’s In A Name?

A few years later, director Robert Flaherty, goes on to make another documentary film called Moana (1926) which is reviewed by a Scottish film critic named John Grierson (you know, the Grierson Awards guy). In said review, Grierson describes the film as having “documentary value”.

“Document-ary”, you say? Yes, it does document events, doesn’t it. I guess it could have easily been worded as “documentising value” or “documentish value” or “documentant value”.

Nah, let’s go with it. DOCUMENTARY, it is.

Giving something a name gives it power, gives it validity, gives it currency. Thus, a genre of “non-fictional motion-picture intended to document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record" is born.

Grierson, who interestingly read psychology of propaganda at university, moves into actual film making himself and comes to be known as the Father of British Documentary. He works for the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) – a British state-funded organisation set up to promote British colonial power and trade, making his first film Drifters (1929) about North Sea herring fishermen. He recruits many film-makers (more young, middle-class, educated males with liberal political views) during his time at EMB – who collectively become known as the British Documentary Film Movement. Grierson then moves on to head the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit – another state-funded organisation – and it is here that he oversees the making of the seminal documentary information film Night Mail (1936) amongst others. The Documentary film hath arriveth!

Politics and Propaganda

By the 1930s, the geo-political culture wars are boiling post WW1 between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union as fears of the rising red tide of communism ripple around the world – WW2 is around the corner and the unrest is palpable. Establishments realised quickly how documentary films can be utilised as powerful conduits of propaganda. All of Grierson’s early documentary films are essentially British state-sponsored colonial propaganda. And over in the USSR, Soviet filmmakers are literally writing film ideology manifestos favouring social realist documentary films as a cinema for revolution, rejecting fictional cinema as elitist fake reality that are unsympathetic to the Communist movement.

Documentaries had unwittingly been roped into politics by being highly effective in influencing the masses – with films such as Land Without Bread (1933), an early film by Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel, and the iconic Man With A Movie Camera (1929) by veteran Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov, which aims very specifically to dismantle ideologies of the ruling classes.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting for this still relatively new media format. So when does it get… fun?

Then came the Oscars – and New Hollywood

The Academy Awards in the US had been throwing stars in our eyes since 1929 yet it isn’t till 1941 that the Best Documentary category is created. Because if America didn’t think it existed before then, then did it really exist?! Right?? The documentary films that the Academy chooses to formally recognise and award in the 1940s and 1950s reflect the trend of educational, informational and propaganda films made by the likes of the British Ministry of Information or the US Army. Films that, although undoubtedly potent in the moment, also exemplify a lack of artistic flair – watching these stiff pictures 80 years on, let’s face it, they’re ripe for a Month Python spoofing!

But things have a way of finding their rightful path – those earlier radical Soviet films made in the 1930s heavily influence a wave of socially conscious filmmakers around the world who are themselves coming to terms with the Post-war depression in their respective countries. Filmmakers like Luis Bunuel in Spain, Jean Renoir in France and Vittorio De Sica in Italy produce classics such as Un Chien Andalou (1929), The Regle De Jeu (1939) and The Bicycle Thieves (1948) – social-realist and surrealist dramas that compellingly expose & dismantle bourgeois ideologies and institutions of repression such as religion, social class and capitalism. These films will then influence the iconic works of Italian neo-realist filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (also a massive Marxist), French New Wave pioneers Agnès Varda, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa (to name only a few!) into the 1950s.

Back in the US, young, impressionable minds of the boomer generation are moulded – and those minds ripen into the next generation of the kool kids of cinema…

In the 1960s, the New Hollywood movie bros enter the chat – the likes of Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas, Kubrick, Scorsese butterfly from their film school cocoons (oui oui, it’s a big fat fête de la saucisse!) – freshly inspired by their international predecessors and naturally rebellious and quick to reject the rigid Hollywood formats of their yesteryears. Where the old formulaic Hollywood films once provided escapism and focused on melodrama and family values, the New Hollywood films now favour non-traditional and morally ambiguous plots, entrenching itself in realism… by employing – yup, documentary stylistic techniques.

There it is – DOCUMENTARY. We’re back here. **‘Circle of Life’ plays**

A-Changin’ Times & Counter-Culture 

The documentary-inspired techniques adopted by our hot young New Hollywood directors are a radical shift in movie-making and will come to influence all that comes after. Hand-held camerawork, jump cuts, non-linear narratives, playing around with soundscapes and pop music over visuals etc, all become part of our cinematic language that we take for granted to this day. But for the 1960s, the times, they are a-changin’.

With this in mind, the documentaries produced in these subsequent decades, by borrowing back these ‘new’ edgy tropes from these vastly popular New Hollywood films, present us with works that are way more radical and punchy. They’re more emotionally charged and visually epic – visceral even. Gritty films like Bob Dylan’s vignetted rockumentary Don’t Look Back (1967); the controversial Titicut Follies (1967) about life within a “hospital for the Criminally Insane”; and the once-banned 2-part French series The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) about the resisters and collaborators of the WW2 Nazi occupation of France – forge a new path alongside the growing popularity of the left-wing counter-culture movements around the world.  

The 1970s usher in even more anti-establishment sentiments with Woodstock (1970) and the Rolling Stones’ tragic concert film Gimme Shelter (1970); the unapologetically anti-Vietnam War film Hearts & Minds (1974) built entirely of news archive footage; the seminal observational film Grey Gardens (1975) that sees a film crew embedded within the reclusive lives of an upper-class mother daughter duo in their decaying mansion; and the tense Harlan County USA (1976) about the grassroots miner strikes in Kentucky.

Do Not Adjust Your TV Set & The VHS Revolution

Just as the cinema-going masses grow comfortable with their weekly Saturday night double-bills, the VHS revolution in the 1980s lasso them in, keeping people in their homes and glued to their TV sets. This, and the arrival of MTV, brings us a surge in pop culture and serialised made-for-tv documentaries – with live concert classics Urgh! A Music War (1981), Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense (1984) and Penelope Spheeris’ Decline of Western Civilisation series; and Wim Wenders’ whimsical TV movie Chambre 666 (1982) in which he invites a number of influential filmmakers to answer one question: “what is the future of cinema?”.

Parallel to the pop-ness of the 80s, the Cold War is still simmering away, AIDS is tearing its way across the gay community, and Reagan’s ultra conservatism in the US is promising to strike down all the free love and revolution of previous decades. Within this social milieu, we’re presented with Michael Moore’s first politically charged venture Roger & Me (1989) in which he critiques the socio-economic impact of the closure of General Motor factories in his home town; the quintessential OG of true crime drama-documentary film, Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line (1989) which examines law enforcement corruption following the wrongful conviction of a man for the murder of a police officer; and the profoundly moving Common Threads: The Stories from the Quilt (1989) in which the lives of AIDS victims are remembered.

The 1990s shifts. Despite bringing a sense of post-Cold War relief after the fall of the Soviet Union, unrest is still in the air. The AIDS epidemic is still tragically going strong and the controversial murder of Rodney King in the US is keeping minds politically charged. This, and a globalizing and modernising world teetering on edge of the internet revolution brings us more varied and inclusive human stories. Paris is Burning (1990) parachutes us into the NY drag ballroom scene; The Celluloid Closet (1995) shines a light on queer representations in movies; Hoop Dreams (1994) immerses us in the lives of two black highschoolers chasing a pro-basketball dream; and the true-crime film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) takes us into the granular details of a real murder case during the Satanic Panic. 

Y2K, Baby!!

We crash zoom into the 2000s with the internet revolution, the 9/11 ‘war on terror’, late-stage capitalism, climate change and social media on the agenda. It’s all kicking off! So it’s no wonder that the documentaries start to show an emergence of more sophisticated dramatic elements, drawing out more complex twists & turns in stories and subplots in ways that hadn’t been explored before. Documentaries become events that high-schoolers and university students talk about on their break times and in their common rooms… even more so than the latest Hollywood blockbusters. With spectacular high tension stories such as Touching the Void (2003); Man on Wire (2008); and Spellbound (2002). Pop schlocky stunt films such as Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster (2004) and The Bridge (2006). And fist-pumping social justice films such as Bowling for Columbine (2002) spotlighting gun laws in the US; Super Size Me (2004) questioning the fast food industry; and An Inconvenient Truth (2006) on climate change. At this time we also see a reality TV show boom – with the likes of Big Brother (1999) and Survivor (2000) exploding into our popular consciousness and by the mid-late 00s social media is connecting us curious humans in a way that we have never connected before, it provides a platform for consumer-lead viral trends that still feels pretty grassroots-y and raw before the corporate demagogues start with their meddling. This cultural terrain propels us into the next boss level of human curiosities for other humans.

The Streaming Revolution

2007 is the year that Netflix begins to offer a streaming-only plan – to call it a game changer is an understatement. The SVOD (streaming video on demand) revolution is the VHS revolution of the 80s for the digital fibre-optic broadband age. We get to watch what we want, when we want, for as long as we want… anywhere and everywhere that we wish. We’re living and breathing in this cultural space as I write right now in 2023 – the bubble is expanding exponentially as audiences have developed an insatiable hunger for ‘content’ (eurgh, horrible word!) – bigger, faster, better-er!! We’re no longer glued to our TV sets, but our ‘devices’.

Thank you Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, HBO, Hulu, Paramount+, Disney+… **yodels in Alanis**

The difference between our SVOD revolution and the VHS revolution of the 80s – is algorithms. Corporate mutha-fckn algorithms. We’re being watched as we’re watching what we’re being told to watch by the people who are watching us. We are living in a self-perpetuating data loop – as the viewing data synthesises into tangible series/films that are produced then consumed, hashtagged opinions are then aired on social media and feed-back the information cycle – audiences are now format savvy and easily jaded, forcing documentary makers to constantly look at ways of elevating the visual and story-telling devices to impress and intrigue beyond the current boundaries. With the likes of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015) playing with impressionistic dramatic cut-aways and The Act Of Killing (2012) asking contributors to re-enact elements of their story to dramatically reveal aspects that had never been explored before. All the way up to Don’t F*ck With Cats (2019) and The Social Dilemma (2020) and the Alexander McQueen biopic McQueen that allow graphics and visual effects to add a visual narrative layer to the films; and Flee (2021) which uses full animation to accompany the audio interview.

The past decade has seen even more inflammatory social, cultural and economic tectonic shifts around the world – with the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent BLM movement, Trump is elected president, Brexit is, well, bloody Brexit, and the #metoo movement to name a few – audiences are hungry for previously unheard voices and social critiques. We have The White Helmets (2013) and For Sama (2019) bringing stories from war-torn Syria; The 13th (2016) and OJ: Made In America (2016) deconstructed systematic racism in America; and One Child Nation (2019) confronted the painful realities of China’s controversial policy. This era is giving us exciting multi-layered visual essays grounded in issues that invite critical thinking from the viewer. We no longer passively spectate – we’re mobilised and stirred to action, questioning the policies of politicians and  institutions that uphold rigid ideologies that no longer serve the people that they govern.

What’s Going On?

As we emerge from our very own 21st Century prohibition into our roaring post-pandemic 2020s, documentaries are peeling away further from the typical ‘actuality’ tropes (i.e. archive, interviews, drama-reconstructions) to embrace a more esoteric and poetic mode of story-telling such as Todd Haynes’ art-doc The Velvet Underground (2021); the mesmerising, lava-flowing magic realism of Fire of Love (2022); and the sexy screensaver-ness of the Bowie biopic Moonage Daydream (2022).

And we are here. Now. 

Documentary as Art is being defined.

Documentaries are at their peak – soaring – flying higher than an eagle. But might it fall prey to the curse of Icarus (another great doc) by flying too close to the sun, burning its wings and plunging to its dramatic death?? A cautionary fable. With every stratospheric rise… has to come a fall, right? Bubbles burst. Dams bust. (add your visual metaphor in this space). And the future is intangible to us all.

The industry is abuzz right now with conversations about the ethics of documentary filmmaking, the duty of care to subjects of the docs, the gruelling work practises for the production crews, writers strikes, and the lack of diversity and story-telling. All issues that essentially stem from stricter risk-averting financing structures and budgets by funders and broadcasters. The bottom line for many that hold power in this industry: profit. Money is a terrible drug.

Can capitalism and art truly co-exist? Can creativity ever find true agency in a capitalistic world? One for another post!

Yet come the Covid19 pandemic, as collective traumas were percolating, us film & television makers were deemed as “essential key workers” by the UK government alongside nurses and care-home workers – I had to double take that one! Our work was apparently key in helping the country “keep on keeping on” just as John Grierson had dreamt of building national morale through film on his return to the UK after the post-WWI Great Depression. So as the industry rides out the current (as I type in July 2023) fretful lull of commissions/funding and lack of work for documentary film makers, I remain wedded to my jaded optimism for this industry. We got through the credit crunch of 2008 and still produced some of the best work of recent decades. My work and passion for documentaries exist in the material realm of prolonged and absolute immersion – as a freelancer, a gun for hire, I have lived and breathed this world, learnt from it, taken from it, and embraced it fully. When I look back on all that has come before and seeing the truly inspiring work being produced today by my contemporaries that I proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with, I’m in profound awe of the unchartered possibilities yet to be achieved within the documentaries of the future.    

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After thought: I’d like to make a honorary mention of some constant documentary figures who are frankly in a league of their own:- David Attenborough’s natural history beauty; Louis Theroux’s poignant and darkly humorous observations; Adam Curtis’ fin de siècle visual essays; Ken Burns’ comprehensive histories; and Werner Herzog… just being Werner Herzog. Where they lead, we shall follow.

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The films/series that I’ve highlighted are but a few so I hope you’re inspired to seek out more.. do you have any documentary film/series favourites? Let me know by messaging me via my instagram: @dazzaroni_cheese

Published 2023.

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