Direct Cinema

897 Words2 Pages

Direct Cinema

The term 'direct cinema' was coined by American director Albert

Maysles, to describe the style of documentary that he and his

contemporaries were making in the 1960s as a result of a lightweight,

portable 16mm camera and high quality lightweight audio recorders

becoming available. The introduction of these, together with

film-stock which was sensitive enough to give a good quality close-up

monochrome picture under most lighting conditions

(Including hand-held lights) led to a revolution in Documentary

filmmaking, allowing film crews to be much more flexible. Gone were

the days of bulky, virtually immobile 35mm cameras; now manufacturers

improved their 16mm stock and accepted it as a professional format.

In 1959 a group comprising graduates from Drew Associates, a company

formed by Robert Drew (an ex journalist) and Richard Leacock, joined

forces. Their ethos was to record events as they happened, without

interfering and in an attempt to transfer the style of photojournalism

to their filmmaking. The group - comprising Pennebaker, Leacock and

Maysles - was a key feature of American direct cinema throughout the

1960s and the 1970s. Together with Drew they made a total of nineteen

pioneering films for television, beginning in 1960 with Primary. In

this documentary, for the first time, the audience was able to follow

a person (in this case presidential hopefuls John F. Kennedy and

Hubert Humphrey) moving from a car, through a corridor, into a hall

where he is about to give a speech and all in one shot! Drew saw

direct cinema as a 'theatre without actors' and so the group

concentrated on subjects who were so absorbed ...

... middle of paper ...

... a human eye and it also had a better memory. This led to

what he called 'cinema-sincerity' in that filmmakers were asking their

audience to have faith in their work and the evidence being presented

to them.

'[You] say to the audience, this is what I saw. I didn't fake it, this

is what happened. I didn't pay anyone to fight, I didn't change

anyone's behaviour. I looked at what happened with my subjective eye

and this is what I believe took place. ' Jean Rouch

Few filmmakers practised cinema verite in its most pure form. However,

its influence can be seen in the work of several contemporary

documentarists, such as Molly Dineen and Nick Broomfield. These days

'cinema-verite' is frequently used as a blanket term to describe the

documentary film-making style rather than the principles of the

film-makers themselves.

More about Direct Cinema

Open Document