One of the most challenging aspects of this project is having a poetic piece which links to the later, 5-10 minute documentary that we will be creating. Some ideas that I have come up with would fit the poetic form well, but would be difficult to create a longer piece with, and vice versa. I think the most logical approach to this will be to find an idea for the second piece that has potential to be explored more abstractly for the poetic documentary, with opportunities for creative sound design, exploration of broader themes and visual symbolism.
We began the session by looking at actual poems, such as 'Still I Rise', 'The Poison Tree' and 'Do not go gentle into that good night' - the last of which was used on the trailer for 'Interstellar' (Christopher Nolan, 2014) for its links to the film's themes of hope and struggle. In my blog last year I wrote about how useful I have found poetry for generating ideas, and so I will most likely use it at some point during the project.
- Rhythm
- Aesthetics
- Universal themes
- Emotions
- Non-linear (or playful) narrative
- Lyrical imagery
- Metaphoric and symbolic
- Tone and mood
We then watched clips from a number of documentaries with poetic elements.
Regen (Rain) - (Joris Ivens, 1929)
In this short documentary we follow a rain storm in Holland from beginning to end. Influenced by avant-garde cinema, the piece is purely visual, with no titles or dialogue, accompanied by a musical score. As a piece from the 1920s, the film showcases montage editing following a broadly linear narrative.
As the storm picks up, the music builds pace and matches the action - the guitar notes synchronising with the sound of rain drops. The reflections and effects caused by the rain draw our attention to the small, everyday moments in our lives, presenting it in a memorable and meaningful way.
Night Mail - (Harry Watt and Basil Wright, 1936)
'Night Mail' follows the course of the mail as it travels overnight up the country. As part of the British Movement, we can see it as an attempt to make 'drama from the every day', and to represent ordinary working class men.
Similar to 'Regen', the music plays a large part in building and controlling pace in the film, speeding up to match fast-cut images of moving train parts and a quickly-delivered voice-over of a poem. Together, these elements create a sense of rhythm and urgency, creating action which rises and falls throughout.
Sans Soleil (Sunless) - (Chris Marker, 1983)
As part of the Cinema Verité movement, Chris Marker wanted to use documentary to explore wider, more abstract and philosophical ideas. In contrast to Grierson and the British Movement, they were not about social betterment or education.
With 'Sans Soleil', Marker uses a flurry of disparate images from multiple locations in combination with voice-over from an unidentifiable narrator. The film is essentially exploring the human memory, demonstrating our inability to recall events and our changing perceptions of history as a result.
Night and Fog - (Alain Resnais, 1955)
Made after WW2 and when the shocking truth about the Nazi concentration camps had been revealed to the world, 'Night and Fog' tries to make sense of it, with the predominant emotions confusion and anger. In narrative terms, the film follows the general chronology of Nazi Germany, from the construction of the concentration camps in 1933 through to their use as death camps in 1942 and their discovery at the end of the war.
The film uses a mix of archive footage and photos with newly filmed colour material at Auschwitz and Birkenau. The narration provided is at times poetic and accusatory, asking questions of 'Who is responsible?' for what we are seeing. As the film tries to make sense of what happened, the voice-over gives context to the images we see.
The one element of the film that did not work for me was the music - which was overly dramatic and often felt as if it had been made with little consideration for the footage it overlaid. Other members of the class felt that the music was purposefully jarring to juxtapose the images we see, but I felt it didn't serve this purpose at all and often undermined an incredibly sensitive and emotive subject.
Blight - (John Smith, 1996)
Made at the time when houses were being demolished in London to make way for the M11 link road, 'Blight' is an experimental documentary short that also comes across as a sort of protest film. The footage for the film is a mixture of the literal, men knocking down the houses, and the metaphorical, such as expanding lines on a tree stump, deflated footballs, broken plates etc.
The film's images are full of interior meaning, and the editing and sound design enhances this symbolism further. One of the most powerful and thoughtful elements in the piece for me is the way that the interviews with the local people we assume live there are broken up into fragments, linking thematically and visually to the destruction of their homes, brick by brick.
The lines of dialogue are clearly thoughtfully chosen to match the images. For example, in the opening section we hear a woman talk about how she thinks that houses have a spirit of their own. This overlays a sequence where we see the house falling to pieces but with none of the workers, as if it is destroying itself.
The music in 'Blight' is integral to the rise and fall of action and pace throughout, a result of director John Smith's work with composer Jocelyn Pook. Several fragments of speech and demolition sound effects are also used to build a rhythm in the film, adding a sense of urgency to the film's subject which is presented thoughtfully at the end of the film.
After watching clips from the films, we read an essay making sense of 'Sans Soleil', which raised the following points:
- The film is a 'highly conscious miming of the involuntary process of memory'.
- Its images have an 'undulating rhythm... rushing forward, stopping to gaze, following...'
- The film raises its own questions rather than answering them. 'Where are we now? Why is he showing us this?'
- The film has 'no subject but the consciousness, the memory of the man who shot it' - deeply personal.
We finished the session by reading the autobiography of Joris Ivens, in which he describes the process of how 'Regen' was made, offering insightful advice for documentary film-making:
- The idea came about when filming another film 'Breakers' and it wouldn't stop raining.
- He had to be pragmatic and adaptable, not sticking to the script and letting the rain guide the camera.
- Ivens never moved without his camera.
- He relaxed the 'rigid and over-analytical method of filming' he had used in earlier films.
- Spectators commented on the film's identity with the simple things of daily life - 'revealing the beauty in these things.'
- Everything in the film 'subordinated to the aesthetic approach'.
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