Distortion Of Film

A famous filmmaker and documentarian, Frederick Wiseman, once stated, “Of course there’s conscious manipulation! Everything about a movie is manipulation ... If you like it, it’s an interpretation. If you don’t like it, it’s a lie — but everything about these movies is a distortion.” There are many definitions for a documentary, but one thing is for sure: a documentary film is a representation of the world we already occupy. It stands for a particular view of the world, one we may never have encountered before even if the aspects of the world that is represented are familiar to us. John Grierson, a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, is credited with coining the term “documentary” in 1926 (Lake and Curthoys 151). Grierson’s principles of

Hegel stated that “True reality lies beyond immediate sensation and the objects we see every day. Only what exists in itself is real.” According to “Introduction to Documentary” by Bill Nichols, every film is a documentary. Even the most imaginative of fictions gives evidence of the culture that created it and replicates the likenesses of the people who perform within it. Although the sense of an accurate story depicted within documentaries is sometimes reflected, documentaries are always skewed and incomplete. This is partly because of the way individuals mentally organize perceptions, and partly the agenda of the film itself presented by the author’s inherent bias. Filmmakers impart themes through imagery which lies in the way the audience makes sense out of what it sees through its own bias, history of myths, and the mechanics that affect the workings of the sense of Gestalt’s

Gestalt is a psychology term which means unified whole. A tree trunk, branches, leaves and an apple are each separate objects. Yet all of these individual objects are components of an apple tree. However, when one thinks of an apple tree, they do not automatically think of those individual parts. Instead, the person is aware of the overall concept of an apple tree. Gestalt therapist believes that absolute and certain knowledge is a myth. When we realize the multiordinality of existence, we see that no things are exactly like other things. Everything is different in some unique ways from every other thing. Perceptions of similarity and comparison are invented. Comparison does not exist outside the human framework, and without comparison certain knowledge is impossible. The existing “knowledge” of the world is largely based upon such statements as this is bigger than that, less differentiated than those, better than this, more red than that, etc. When we compare, we establish relations. These relations come from the individual. A traditionalist would further assume that there is meaning in things and that a meaning exists. However, Fritz Perls, a German psychiatrist, claims that a meaning does not exist. According to him, a meaning is a creative process, a performance in the here and now. In every case a meaning is created by relating a figure, the foreground, to the background against which the figure