History of Documentaries - Jamie Ellis, Candidate Number 9150

Pre-1900’s - Very first documentaries/films were called “actuality films” because they captured short snippets or real-life actual events.

1920’s Russia – The first real documentaries start with the Russian poet and film editor called Dziga Vertov. His group created a series of educational newsreel called “the Kino-Eye” translated as “cinema truth” during the Russian revolution and was the first to follow the traditional documentary formula.

1922 – “Nanook of the North” by American film maker, Robert Flaherty. Considered the first “original” documentary, as this film profiles the lives of a real Eskimo family. This was his second attempt at the documentary. his first attempt went up in smoke, quite literally, as he dropped a cigarette onto his original footage and lost 30,000 feet of film.

1926 – The first recorded mention of the word “documentary” to describe a non-fiction film by John Grierson

1930’s and 1940’s – Documentaries become a very good propaganda tool during WWII for Nazi Germany, America and Britain. This was due to leaders being able to film the travesties of war that the opposing side has done to their troops, gaining sympathy with their own forces as well as reporting victories to their side, gaining morale.

1950’s and 1970’s – Cinema Verite and Direct Cinema – With new technology and lighter camera equipment, new film-making styles emerged to capture more “spontaneous” events.

The late 60’s and 70’s and later decades see changes in the narrative approach of documentaries. Although cinéma vérité is still practiced, first-person video storytelling, powered by the rush of camcorders into the marketplace in the 1970’s onwards, begins to emerge as something of a unique genre. With the availability of portable camcorders to the public, this was an important event as it allowed more and more people to film events as they happened, they could become more spontaneous they could hold interviews on the go and this is what we plan on doing, filming tattoos and holding interviews on the go in the street by asking people about their views on tattoos and tattoo related topics.

Still need to add in pictures, also looking into new, more artistic ways of presenting this information. This post is to show I have the work done.