The following is reprinted from Afterimage, March/April 2006, p43-44.

Afterimage Magazine | Reviewing Orthodoxies: A New History of Documentary Film

By Roger Hallas

Now is undoubtedly a boom-time for the documentary. The popularity and critical success of the theatrically released documentary are all around: HBO and the Sundance Channel have both invested heavily in funding and acquiring new documentaries for their schedules, and the technological innovations in camera and editing equipment have massively lowered the threshold for entry into documentary production. On the scholarly front, the last fifteen years have also witnessed the emergence of documentary studies as a significant subfield within film and media studies. Scholars such as Stella Bruzzi, Bill Nicols, Michael Renov, Vivian Sobchack, Brian Winston, and Patricia Zimmermann have generated a set of sophisticated theoretical frameworks for understanding the documentary moving image. The twelfth edition of the documentary-themed "Visible Evidence Conference" in Montreal in August 2005 was the largest to date, drawing many young scholars from around the world; the affiliated book series established in 1997 by the University of Minnesota Press also continues to grow in size and scope; and the publication of Ian Aitken's Encyclopedia of Documentary Film (2005), a massive reference tome for libraries, indicates the degree to which documentary studies have now gained institutional sanction.

The time is thus ripe for a new history of the documentary, one that could not only include the most recent transformations in documentary practice but also integrate the most pertinent theoretical and historiographic innocations of documentary studies into its methodology. Unforunately, Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane's A New History of Documentary Film falls short of such an achievement. The book certainly offers a well-researched and highly readable history of the social documentary film in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but this is not a new history of the documentary. In fact, the book is a revision and update of Ellis's 1988 book Documentary Idea: A critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video. It is worth noting here that Ellis's earlier book carefully qualifies its scope in its subtitle: it focuses on the English-speaking world and includes consideration of video as well as film. Although the latter book is equally focused in scope, the generality of its title promises a more universal history. (Curiously, the back cover of the paperback edition of A New History does include the qualifying subtitle: "In the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.")

The rationale for this focus on the Anglo world is clear in both books: as a scholar and biographer of British documentary pioneer John Grierson, Ellis prioritizes the Griersonian model of documentary ("part record of what exists, part argument about why and in what ways it should be changed"), which, according to Ellis, sets in motion the mainline of documentary practice on both sides of the Atlantic. In this historical account, Robert Flaherty plays the role of Grierson's intellectual sparring partner during the formative years of the documentary film as a distinct genre of nonfiction film: Flaherty's mirror pitted against Grierson's hammer. Not surprisingly, the numerous chapters that cover this period in the 1930s and 1940s are some of the book's strongest. Ellis provides a cogent explanation of the various economic, political, and cultural conditions that facilitated the emergence of the documentary film in this mold. However, one of the major consequences of centering the history of documentary film around the Griersonian model is that all films that precede or follow it are read in comparison to it. For instance, in the chapter on European avant-garde films of the 1920s, the city symphonies of Alberto Cavalcanti, Joris Ivens, and Walther Ruttman are positioned as sources for or precursors to the Griersonian movement rather than read on their own terms in relation to modernity, the "real," and the everyday. Such moves merely strengthen the orthodox historiography of documentary film, which has long been centered on Grierson. They also beg the question: if the inclusion of thse non-Anglo films are necessary in Britain, Canada, and the U.S., then why not others? While A New History retains the chapter on Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s from Documentary Idea, it interestingly drops the chapters that covered Italian neorealism and the French filmmakers Louis Malle, Chris Marker, and Jean Rouch. The rationale for these latter omissions becomes clear when you consider some of the American films that are similarly dropped from the revised and updated book: for example, Jill Godmillow's Far from Poland (1984) or American underground films by Bruce Baillie and Bruce Conner. A New History is clearly shaped by a more conservative vision of documentary film than documentary Idea, one that seems rather less tolerant of works that push and blur the boundaries between fictional, documentary, and experimental film.

The principal strength and significance of Ellis and McLane's book lie in its ability to explain how the complex interaction of historical change, industrial infrastructure, and technological innovation has shaped the ways in which Anglo-American documentary has been produced and distributed since Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922). This is particularly apparent in the later chapters where McLane's professional experience in the documentary business provides the book with abundant insight into the shifting marketplace for documentary film and video at the turn of the millennium. On this note, it seems a shame that the appendix discussing documentaries and film festivals could not have been integrated into this analysis of the documentary market.

Unfortunately, the book concludes with a mishmash of a chapter titled "Some Other Ways to Think About Documentary," which attempts to discuss recent developments in documentary production, such as the shift to digital and the emergence of "reality" genres, alongside the political economy of contemporary documentary film and recent developments in documentary film and recent developments in documentary theory. Toward the end of the chapter, the authors make an unfortunate and, I would argue, misguided dismissal of documentary theory as irrelevant to the producers and audiences of documentary film. We should not forget that many of the same critical thinkers have influenced both documentary filmmakers and theorists alike. Moreover, many young documentary filmmakers are engaging with documentary theory during their film school training. Perhaps the greatest contribution made by the recent scholarship in documentary studies is the insistence on challenging the orthodox history of documentary film, of taking seriously the importance and influence of genres such as ethnographic, industrial, amateur, and autobiographical films. Such an undertaking would prove difficult, if not impossible, to execute in the kind of linear history found in A New History, but that may well be precisely the point: we need to write a different type of history for the documentary.

ROGER HALLAS is an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, in New York, where he teaches documentary studies. He is co-editor of The Image and the Witness (2007, forthcoming from Wallflower Press).