Film the Modern Film Is a Genre

¶ … Film

The modern film is a genre of its own that expresses a huge variety of cultural experiences through a fluid continuum. Film expresses the entire gamut of human emotions and needs; from the tragic to the comic; from entertainment to education; from adult to the young child. Films have become cultural artifacts created by specific cultural needs -- from a sociological perspective as a form of cultural expression for that particular time and place, but even more -- from the imagination and needs of the writer, producer, or director. Moreover, this cultural expression shows how cultural and historical events are reflected and affect the individual. Even the most simple cartoon can become a social or political statement in the right hands. Film, then, is considered to be an important art form, a source for popular entertainment, a powerful tool for educating, and a way to indoctrinate -- some would say propagandize viewers. The fact that film combines so many art forms -- visual, aural, dramatic, creates a universal power and desire that often transcends time and place, and more certainly geography. Because film creates far more than the reality of the image, instead allowing the director to provide fantasies and extrapolations of reality in time, space, and chronology, film becomes something more than the possible (Braudy and Cohen).

In a sense, then, as many film scholars have noted over the past century, film is really a cultural mirror -- and mirrors can be reflections or shapers. This is the classic "chicken and egg" argument though, is almost superfluous. Within the culture of the film artist, politics and expression tend to be more liberal -- more open to radical social attitudes and movements. Films that are primarily made for fiscal or mass-market production, however, tend to reflect the changing mores of society, what society sees as humorous, serious, or relevant, and the manner in which the causality becomes "real" for most of the audience. One film genre, the documentary, while not as fiscally profitable as others, can also be seen as a reflection on societal morals and values -- at least what is important enough from an ideological perspective to devote time and effort to produce and distribute (Rollyson).

Documentary films are nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of the producers or director's world view -- usually for the point of instruction or maintaining some sort of historical record. One scholar notes that the documentary film is a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and a mode of audience reception" that continues to evolve and is able to morph into flexible boundaries depending on subject matter and taste (Bill).

Historically, it appears that the word "documentary film" was first used in 1926 published in the New York Sun regarding a review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana. This film was filmed in Samoa and took a year to complete, with the filmmaker living in the Samoan villages. This was the same director who filmed the box-office success Nanook of the North (1922). This film was not as successful, since it was not as "wild" for audiences -- the Samoan villagers had already adopted Western clothing, etc. By working with missionaries and the danger and strange location did not translate as well, even though the film was visually and technically stunning (Rosenbaum). The actual origin of the documentary was probably Louis Lumiere's first films of 1895, though, and demonstrated the film's ability to document the universe (Nichols).

Some film historians say that documentaries are factual films that are dramatic, while others believe that a documentary produces a message, a paradigm, and an opinion, and uses filmed facts to support its premise. This is important in that film, by necessity, is biased in what it shows and does not show. Early views held that the principle of documentary focused around the nature of the cinema's potential for observing the university, and this new aorm had the original actor and original scene producing more cinematic truth than their fictional counterparts when interpreting the modern world. Materials "taken from the raw," are more real than scripted sences, so much so that it is a "creative treatment of actuality" or "life as it is" (Morris). From the modern viewpoint, we know that a documentary is showing only a piece of reality in what it chooses to film and what it excludes. Filming a native village and only filming positive interactions at festivals presents a limited view of that society that is real, but only a portion. The "reality" then is still somewhat scripted, at least through the storyboard and intent of the Director, and while professional actors may not be rehearsing and redoing scene after scene, or in the modern era a special effects team creating an alternative reality, the nature of film shapes the images presented (Godmilow and Shapiro) This issue continues in modern documentaries, most recently in the 2013 film Blackfish, focusing on the capture and confinement of Killer Whales at SeaWorld and other sea-parks and the death of a trainer. The film followed those who captured the whales through housing in SeaWorld, but was accused by SeaWorld as being one-sided and biased by presenting only one side of the situation/argument (CNN News).

Documentaries did not magically appear in the 1920s, they simply took advantage of the emerging technology to form a separate genre. Historians state that early film (pre-1900) showed short events; boats docking, factories, etc. Some filmed surgeries, some medical or physiological issues, all which preserve a slice of reality, but are bursts of information rather than telling a story or filming a process or story that has a significant argument or commentary about society other than pure information. This changed between 1900-1920, when traveloe films became popular since the general population could pay for a film, but rarely travel to distance lands and experience the extremes of nature (McLane).