History of TV Documentaries

 History of TV documentaries 

Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. Single-shot, minute-long moments were captured on film, such as a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. They were also used for commercial or work-related reasons, recordings of surgeries being used to correct professional errors., all of which have been preserved. Between the 1900-1920’s Travelogue films were very popular. They were often referred to by distributors as "scenic". Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time. Biographical documentaries also appeared during this time, such as the feature of Eminescu-Veronica-Creangă on the relationship between the writers Mihai Eminescu, Veronica Micle and Ion Creangă (all deceased at the time of the production) 

These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. 

Documentary films began to embrace romanticism ( an artistic and intellectual movement that advocated for the importance of subjectivity, imagination, and appreciation of nature in society and culture) in 1922, with Robert Flagerty’s Nanook of The North which follows the struggles of the Inuk man named Nanook and his family in the Canadian Arctic. At this time, the concept of separating films into documentary and drama did not exist. Because of this, we can consider the film more of a docudrama/fiction, a hybrid genre characterised by dramatised reenactments of actual events and real people playing themselves (or slightly fictionalised versions of themselves) in staged scenarios. The film, called Nanook of The North, written and directed by Robert J Flagerty, follows the struggles of the Inuk man named Nanook and his family in the Canadian Arctic. The film was described by famous film critic, journalist and author Roger Ebert as "standing alone" among Flaherty's films "in its stark regard for the courage and ingenuity of its heroes.” As the first "nonfiction" work of its scale, Nanook of the North was ground-breaking cinema; It captured many authentic details of a culture little known to outsiders. Hailed almost unanimously by critics, the film was a box-office success in the United States and abroad, and was among the first group of 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1988. Despite this, Flaherty received criticism concerning the film for any things, like lying about the featured actors’ names and roles in the film and portraying the Inuit people as without technology or culture, comparing them to animals. For example, Nyla and Cunayou, portrayed as Nanook’s (actually named Allakariallak) wives, were in fact common-law wives of Flaherty. He also staged multiple parts of the docufiction - although Allakariallak normally used a gun when hunting, Flaherty encouraged him to hunt after the fashion of his recent ancestors to capture the way the Inuit lived before European colonisation of the Americas. Flaherty also exaggerated the peril to Inuit hunters with his claim, often repeated, that Allakariallak had died of starvation less than two years after the film was completed, whereas in fact he died at home, likely of tuberculosis. In the following years, many others would try to follow Flaherty's success with "primitive peoples" non-fiction films. In a 2014 poll, film critics voted Nanook of the North the seventh-best documentary film of all time. 

From the 1930s and 1940s onwards documentaries have an extensive history of being used as political propaganda.  One of the most celebrated and controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will (1935), which chronicled the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler. Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942–1944) series was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. All the way in Canada, the Film Board, set up by John Grierson, was set up for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counterpropaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often regarded as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. A June 2020 article in The New York Times reviewed the political documentary And She Could Be Next, directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia. The Times described the documentary not only as focusing on women in politics, but more specifically on women of colour, their communities, and the significant changes they brought to America.