1) Early documentary styles diverged in the 1910s, with some using reenactments like In the Land of The Headhunters and others using actual footage like The Rescue of the Stephansson Arctic Expedition. 2) In the 1920s, Robert Flaherty staged some scenes for Nanook of the North while Dziga Vertov believed the camera could capture reality more accurately than the human eye in Kino Pravda. 3) Technological advances enabled the French Cinema vérité style in the 1960s to capture events as they unfolded using handheld cameras on location.

1. Kostadin Stoimenov

2.  In 1914, two seminal documentaries indicated the development
of divergent styles in longer form: storytelling documentaries.
Edward S. Curtis used re-enactments to show ’true’ Native
American life in In the Land of The Headhunters, while footage
actually shot on location revealed the hardships endured by the
cast of The Rescue of the Stephansson Arctic Expedition. Setting
the Scene
 Reenactment and setting the scene was commonplace in early
documentaries. In his famous Nanook of the North (1922),
Robert J. Flaherty shot on location, but frequently censored the
behavior of his subjects and even had them build an igloo
without a roof so he could get sufficient light and space for his
camera work.
 Kino Pravda (Cinema Truth) describes Dziga Vertov’s 1920s
newsreel series. Vertov believed the camera could see and
capture reality more accurately than the human eye, and used
varied lenses, time lapse, shot and counter shot, slow, fast and
stop motion to capture the cinematic reality of a moment in time.

3.  Films were used as outright propaganda
during the 1930s and 40s war years, when
Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, which
stirred Nazis to their fevered adoration of
Adolph Hitler, was countered by Frank
Capra's Why We Fight newsreels, which were
produced to sway Americans to go to war.

4.  Taking advantage of technological
developments in image and sound recording
equipment, the French Cinéma vérité, similar
in name to Kino Pravda, took documentary
filmmaking to a new level of realism by using
handheld cameras on location to capture
events as they occurred. No more staged
battle scenes. Cinema vérité shows you the
real thing.

5. The North American variation of Cinema vérité,
known as the Direct Cinema style, was
developed and preferred by trend-setting
filmmakers Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault,
Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert
and David Maysles.

6.  Following the Direct Cinema style, most
filmmakers shoot for reality, but
contemporary directors are generally divided
into two groups--those who, like Michael
Moore, enter the story and influence its
outcome, or those who, like D.A. Pennebaker,
remain objective observers who watch and
film as their story develops.

7.  The Direct Cinema style, still in vogue, usually
involves following a person or group through an
event--often a crisis--using handheld cameras
to capture the subject's reactions as the situation
unfolds. Voice over narration and sit down
interviews are used very sparingly. In making
these films, directors often shoot many hour of
film, which must then be edited to concisely tell
the story. In contemporary documentary
filmmaking, editing is often as important as
shooting, but great editors--like Nancy Baker,
who shaped Harlan County USA--rarely get the
credit they deserve.


8.  The propaganda potential of documentary
film is still a factor in contemporary
nonfiction films, especially those dealing with
political hot potatoes. For example, most
films shown at the annual Human Rights
Watch International Film Festival have strong
social and political messages for viewers.

9.  Commercially successful documentaries such as
Super Size Me, March of the Penguins and An
Inconvenient Truth have given nonfiction features
a much broader reach--and yielded bigger
budgets for some documentary filmmakers. On
the other hand, very affordable digital recording
equipment now makes it possible for almost
anyone to make a documentary, which
guarantees a proliferation of nonfiction films--
which will undoubtedly give rise to the
development of new and highly individual styles
of documentary filmmaking.