8 - Life en Direct: The Portrayal of Collective Memory in Direct Cinema

Life en Direct: The Portrayal of Collective

Memory in Direct Cinema

By Luca, Amit and Albert 

Memory on Display

Memory is essentially an autobiography, a dusty tome full of dog-eared, often illegible, and sometimes conspicuously absent pages reflecting a person’s life. The collective memory of mankind (history) is like a museum display full of pages of memory, pages which were consciously chosen and placed just so for a variety of possible motives. However, the collective memory of mankind is not only written in textbooks; it appears in every form of art, from literature, music, and sculpting to painting, dance and cinema. A collection is what history is, but why does it matter? What good does it do? In the films Pour la suite du monde, Les raquetteurs, Night and Fog, Triumph of the Will, and Don’t Look Back, we are shown a representation of several different points in history. Each documentary showcased different times, places and situations, but all reflected several key aspects of society, both at the time indicated and throughout history.

 

Direct Cinema in Early Documentary

Pour la suite du monde, a 105 minute long documentary directed by Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, and Pierre Perrault, was released in 1963 and documents a final revival of the whale hunting tradition of l’Île-aux-Courdes, Qc. Les raquetteurs, filmed and directed by Gilles Groulx and Michel Brault in the late 1950’s, was released in 1958 as a documentary of the festivities at Sherbrooke, Qc, celebrating an international snowshoe race between Canadian and American snowshoeing clubs. These two Québecois films portray the life and soul of the province through their intimate use of direct documentary techniques and are characterized by an unrefined filming style where jolted camera shots and quick pans between speaking individuals show content that is minimally staged –if at all—resulting in an immersive and engaging viewing experience. The filmmaking ensemble is especially discreet in these documentaries, often taking long, uninterrupted shots that are edited only minimally during production. As such, these two films best represent the direct cinema filming style and its strong roots in the observational documentary mode, as it is described in the video clip Direct Cinema.

Richard Leacock and Robert Drew discuss the
origins and philosophy of Direct Cinema

In these films, there is a focus on the cultural aspect of history. The Mid-Lent celebrations of l’Île-aux-Courdes as well as the snowshoe race and its surrounding festivities (namely the ball and the parade) show times of celebration, a brief respite from the mundane world of work and school in which the community is brought closer together. The revival of the whale hunt serving the purpose of preserving tradition has a similar effect, as can be seen from the cries of joy and merry demeanor of the whalers after capturing a beluga.

Setting up for the beluga hunt

The snow shoe race 

A more sinister and ironically similar version of the same tale is presented in the 1935 film Triumph of the Will, which was made by German filmmaker/director Leni Riefenstahl and has a total running time of 114 minutes. The film is characterized by Riefenstahl’s steady, sweeping, and overwhelming shots of parades of soldiers marching in formation, Adolf Hitler’s massive public rallies, and scenes of adoring crowds lining the roads as Hitler passes by, as well as intimate close-ups and low angle views of Hitler himself. Hitler bought the support of the German people during World War II by playing upon pre-existing emotions, but also through a massively successful propaganda campaign in which public holidays were created (Hitler’s birthday was one such example), public rallies and military displays such as the ones seen in the film were held, and visual newspapers- for the literate and illiterate alike- as well as patriotic films (Triumph of the Will being one of the most famous products) were made available to the people. In North America, “propaganda” is a term used very hesitantly due to its strong connotation to manipulation, which is not unjustified, as the works of the baldly titled German “Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” show us. Triumph of the Will is a film whose message lies well beyond the line where reality ends and manipulative fantasy begins, and its purpose is undeniably the glorification of the formidable German nation helmed by Adolf Hitler. However, the film was not just meant to affect the current conditions of Germany at the time. Hitler envisaged a rule of a thousand years; the film would in his mind have been of almost religious proportions, documenting the birth of the “greatest empire known to man”.

The incredible size of the Nazi party 

The glory of the Third Reich is put to the lie in Night and Fog, a 1955 documentary directed by Alain Resnais. Each of the film’s 32 minutes is drenched in mankind’s unthinkable capacity for evil and is characterized by the use of cold, clinical black-and-white Nazi footage devoid of the intimacy of the individual as well as desolate, haunting colour images of now deserted Nazi concentration camps, which looks much like what one would imagine the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl must. This film is the only one of the five films analyzed that features a designated narrator, and the only one with no diegetic dialogue in the documentary. These sonic differences changed the dynamics of sound and image, forcing a direct relationship between the content of the images and that of the narrative. This focus on the links between audible and visual information is characteristic of a type of filmmaking known as “Cinema de parole”, the cinema of speech, and is an extremely powerful tool at the disposal of the filmmaker, allowing them to focus on the significance of a certain aspect much as camera can focus on a relevant subject. While the previously mentioned films present images of varying honesty depicting communities brought together by heritage and tradition, Night and Fog –which cannot be classified objective, but nevertheless brings the most horrifyingly real images of all these films to the audience— shows how these very things that bring the “included” people together can be used to tear the “others” apart. The film reflects the lives of millions of people in some of the worst conditions imaginable and in so doing forces us to face the terrible reality of what our neighbors, our families, and even ourselves are capable. Those in power are capable of corrupting millions of people, just as power itself can do to those wielding and striving for it.

The suffering Jews in Auschwitz

Additional Screening: Don't Look Back

Don't Look Back is a 95 minute long black and white direct cinema film created by Donn Alan Pennebaker. This film is about Bob Dylan's three week long tour of England in 1965 as well as the psychedelic sixties. Bob Dylan's actual name was Robert Allen Zimmerman but he changed it once he started performing. He has been an influential figure in the world of music for more than five decades and has created many hit songs in that time.

The great Bob Dylan 

In direct cinema films, the filmmaker is aiming at an objective point of view meaning the camera is in the background filming everything that goes on and is not influenced by personal feelings or emotions. It gives the viewer the feeling that they are there experiencing it themselves. The close ups provide a sense of intimacy between the viewer and the person on screen (such as Bob Dylan, his friends, his fans, etc.) allowing them to establish emotional connections, thereby making them more involved in the film. An example from the film is when three girls are outside Bob Dylan's hotel screaming for his attention, which they manage to get. They end up having a discussion with him and enjoying his company. Throughout this entire thing, we feel how in love they are with Bob Dylan and see how "out of this world" they felt. In terms of editing, there is no specific way of presenting it yet Pennebaker seems to have each clip lead into the next through either a common idea or a continuation of a certain event/situation. Every so often, a new idea is introduced or a new event/situation is established and then this process begins anew, however, along the entire film, the clips are presented in a rather chronological order.

Bob Dylan's music video 

Although direct cinema films are supposed to represent an authentic reality, many argue that that is not completely true. In the filming stages, the camera man picks the angles in which he wants things to be shot and Bob Dylan is not acting as he would normally because he knows the camera is there. Being a natural performer, he is probably putting on a show in front of the camera. Is he being authentic? In the editing stages, the filmmaker chooses all the footage, some footage might be considered unusable because it could harm Bob Dylan's career, the order of clips might suggest something that wasn't actually there in the moment and the footage might not show the whole picture. With all this said, how much of direct cinema films can we actually take to be an authentic reality? More specifically, how much of Don't Look Back can we take to be an authentic reality?

 

In this film, we learn a lot about Bob Dylan. As we are following him around, we meet his fans, his friends, reporters that interviewed him or were interviewed by him in many cases because he often asked more questions than them, his manager and others. We get a unique glimpse into his life, which is truly a special experience because he is truly talented and one of a kind. We also see how juvenile, arrogant, cynical and rude he can be when he feels like it, which seems to be a lot of the time. The dark side of Dylan is exhibited in his interview with Time Magazine as originally seen in the film.

Bob Dylan interview with
Time Magazine

This film is still relevant and important to this day because Bob Dylan continues to make music and perform on stage just as well as he did back in the day. As Entertainment Weekly stated, " Dylan retains the sort of fundamental mystery that a younger entertainer such as Lady Gaga has to work very hard and nobly to try and equal". Not so bad for a 72 year old.

As D. A. Pennebaker said about Don't Look Back, " To my mind, the most interesting filmmaker that I ever knew about was Robert Flaherty, who made NANOOK OF THE NORTH. It was about this Eskimo, and Flaherty didn’t try to tell you everything there was about the life of an Eskimo. He just wanted to show you what it was like to be with an Eskimo for little bit. And that’s the feeling I tried to put across. I was never interested in educating people about Dylan. First of all, I don’t know enough about him. Who does? [...] What I wanted to do was just be present when Dylan enacted his whole life and show you what he deals with and what interests him". This pretty much sums up what the movie was truly about.

D. A. Pennebaker 

The Significance of Collective Memory

The films previously analyzed each use distinct filming techniques that captured images of the past and society as it was in the time period documented. Despite their relatively focused views of culture, living conditions, social situations and mentality, all of these films contain fragments of universal truth. These little bits of truth may appear quite random and sometimes obvious or insignificant, but when they are examined in light of each other, a picture starts to emerge, like pieces of a puzzle falling into place, and seemingly incompatible images merge into a seamless whole.

The elaborate whale hunts of the past inhabitants of l’Île-aux-Courdes, which involved making over 100 stakes during winter to plant in the riverbed in spring, and the exhaustive labour of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps are essentially the same thing; survival in the face of adversity. In the same vein, the festivities surrounding the snowshoe race are comparable to the festivities—such as Hitler’s birthday—hosted by the German National Socialist party in their rise to power; they are the gathering and bonding of a community, and are made possible by a fundamental human affinity to merriness and pleasure. The celebration of Mid-Lent on a Québecois island community is similar to thousands of fans packing into a concert hall to hear Bob Dylan play guitar; it is the evolution of entertainment and its increasing significance in society. Over a million Germans attending Hitler’s Nuremburg rally felt exactly the same thing that millions of Bob Dylan’s fans experienced while listening to Times They Are A-Changin; the weight of social influence and the power of philosophy.

These images do not all belong to the same movie, but in a very real sense, they absolutely do. Because they seek to be true. They are life; even though they are sometimes misleading or even intentionally deceptive, the images are nevertheless a record of actual events. The beauty of direct cinema and unbiased documentary is the clear image of true events that can be viewed as an objective base for thought and understanding. Propaganda and misinformation are the exact antitheses of direct cinema and, if believed to be true, can eventually lead to misinterpretation and destruction, as is exemplified by the Holocaust and possibly by Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, showcasing what he portrays to be a groundless public support for American intervention in Iraq. However, if a manipulation of some misleading information is correctly identified, then the understanding of the truth may be all the greater for the insight into the motives of the informer.

These human messages across time are also evident in less abstract ways, a prime example being that of religious tradition. There are several traditions in my family, one of them falling on Christmas Eve, when both sides of my family come together at my house to have a big Christmas meal. Afterwards, we all go to church together, where one of my uncles always falls asleep during the sermon. Finally, we return to my house to open gifts and watch The Muppet Family Christmas. This tradition is very important to my family just as the traditions of Mid-Lent and of the beluga hunt were central to generations of the inhabitants of l'Île-aux-Courdes, and as the tradition of the yearly snowshoe race was significant to the hosting city (Sherbrooke, Qc, in Les raquetteurs). Being a Roman Catholic, I grew up hearing biblical stories of Jesus and numerous other tales that shaped me into who I am today. It had an effect on my beliefs, my mannerisms, and my attitude towards many aspects of my life. It also provided me with a variety of psychological tools which I was later able to apply to my own life. An example of this would be the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, which played a role in establishing my personal system of ethics and values. These stories—which some consider history and others myth— have impacted many people's lives across the globe, just as those of the Holocaust (as depicted in Night and Fog) and stories of the Nazi party (as depicted in Triumph of the Will) have influenced the ideologies and lives of countless people worldwide.

A look at holiday traditions

through Jim Gaffigan's eyes

A final example of this inter-temporal communication exists within the creative arts. I am a musical enthusiast, with my preferences lying in blues and classic rock. One of the bands best known for bringing these two genres together is the Beatles, whose infamous lead singer John Lennon wrote one of the most influential songs of the 20th century. “Imagine” is one of the most ideological songs I have ever heard, and one of the most hauntingly beautiful. Its images of a utopic society, formed through pointing out flaws in the world as it was (and, for the most part, still is), carry a powerful message that affected millions of people over the course of the past 42 years, including myself. It expresses deep sorrow over humanity’s greatest faults, but it is nevertheless an anthem of hope for the future of mankind. This song, originally recorded in 1971, has since been immortalized by countless musicians (including such legends as Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Madonna), and has played an important role in shaping my view of the world and my attitude towards life.

"Imagine" by John Lennon

These insights into human nature are the true value of collective memory, for they allow us to not only understand the world around us on a deeper level, but also to understand our motivations, our significance, and our thoughts.

Understanding Our World through Documentary

We see our world in many different ways: by the use of our senses, by reading books, by contemplating art, by watching movies. Memory is our ability to retain the knowledge gleaned from our senses, and the collective memory of humanity is retention of knowledge gleaned from its senses— the individual members of the human race. This collective memory –history— is a resource through which thought and knowledge are passed along via a carrying medium; oral tradition, literature, dance, cinema, all are expressions of an individual or a group’s ideologies, collected information. Films such as Pour la suite du monde, Les raquetteurs, Night and Fog, Triumph of the Will, and Don’t Look Back, serve exactly this function. They are links in a chain of interpretation and understanding of the world both instantaneously and in the massive scope of time, connecting us (the audience) to those who made and appeared in these documentaries, and through them to the knowledge of their predecessors. This slow thought process is directly comparable to our own thoughts, which invariably begin with some knowledge or impression we at one point received from our environment. Thus, history is to mankind what a rational line of thought is to a single man. But this brings us back to the all-important question, why does it matter? Ultimately, we gain general information that we are then free to interpret. Collective memory, and documentary as a modern part of it, is an incredible extension of our senses through time and space which eventually leads to a degree of understanding that would otherwise be unattainable. However, this process would be insignificant and fundamentally impossible without the active involvement of numerous individuals, thereby uniting people by its nature. This effect is an integral part of the complex social phenomenon that is community; the passing of collective memory serves the individual by exposing them to ideas they would not have conceived themselves and also serves civilization as a whole by bringing together its individual members to form a cohesive society with common ideological and historical grounds.


Sources:
http://www.phfilms.com/index.php/phf/film/dont_look_back/
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/bob-dylan/biography
http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/05/24/bob-dylan-70-birthday/
http://www.nfb.ca/film/raquetteurs_en/
http://www.nfb.ca/film/pour_la_suite_du_monde_en/
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/triumph-of-the-will-special-edition/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour_la_suite_du_monde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_and_Fog_(1955_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(song)