Documentary in a Changing State: Ireland since the 1990s

Documentary Film and History

Introduction Documentary films dealing with historical subjects are increasingly popular with audiences. They have of course always been a stable of public service broadcasting. Now within the proliferating world of cable and satellite television we have specialist channels exclusively concerned with history programming such as the History Channel and a number of others, for example Discovery and National Geographic, with a substantial percentage of such programming. How do documentary film-makers picture the past and in what ways does their approach differ from the orthodox writing of history?1 Is the documentary a populist form which necessarily involves the ‘dumbing down’ of academic history? On the other hand, can the inclusion of historical documentary material within the television schedule extend access to historical understanding to a broader range of people than the specialist texts of academic written history? In this paper I draw upon my own work as a documentary film-maker concerned with historical issues to explore some of the ways film- and programme-makers have dealt with problems of historical representation and narrative. The Historian’s Scepticism towards Film From the outset let us admit that historians have a deep suspicion towards the notion that film-making might represent a methodologically valid way to ‘do’ history. And yet, historians and documentarists by and large share a commitment to an ethic of public communication with its attendant notion of truth and impartiality. However, historians remain suspicious of the epistemological status and cultural role of documentary film. Many have concerns about the evidential status of the forms of personal testimony and narrative revelation that documentary films often rely upon. Many are uncomfortable with the notion of memory as a constitutive concept within historiography and have remained aloof from the sustained debate about ‘popular memory’ that has taken place within critical studies.2 And this is so despite the development Documentary Film and History DESMOND BELL 42 of oral history approaches within their discipline and the increasing use of visual sources and media contents as historical data. Historians have, however, been slow to engage in the corresponding critical debate around the mediated and contingent nature of collective memory and photographic record. The scepticism of historians towards film has not of course inhibited historians from offering their services as historical consultants to programmemakers tackling historical subjects. Within the BBC model of the historical documentary the historian-as-consultant functions as a source of ‘quality control’. They are brought on board to oversee and underwrite the authenticity of programme content in accordance with the existing state of historical knowledge. Within this Reithian-inspired model historians don’t need to know much – or indeed anything – about the programme production process or about the formal features of film.3 They are hired to vouch for the historical credentials of the piece. From this perspective the historical documentary can look like an applied and, let’s face it, ‘second rate’ form of doing history. Dependent for its factual accuracy on the mother discipline, the historical documentary film is viewed as an act of communication of previously accredited historical knowledge relayed through a mass medium. The historians who actually appear in front of camera in historical documentaries have largely approached the challenge of televising history from a pedagogic standpoint, often operating with a model of broadcast documentary as a form of illustrated lecture. The historian/presenter marshals their arguments before the camera and illuminates these employing the visual resources that lens-based media can make available – live-action cinematography revisiting historical sites, dramatic reconstructions of events, expert testimony, use of picture archive, etc. The great masters of this genre were of course A.J.P. Taylor and Kenneth Clarke, who in a simpler television age produced spellbinding performances to camera with relatively few cinematic resources at their disposal. But the model has tenacity within television. Today Simon Schama has assumed the mantle of the ‘history man’. Besides writing the scripts of the series he has been involved with,4 Schama has also had a significant input into other aspects of some of these productions, including the choice of locations and elements of visualisation strategy. Unlike Taylor and Clarke, Schama in his films has to deal with the indignity of large sections of dramatic reconstruction where out-of-work actors and hapless extras are directed to show us how things looked, felt and indeed were in ‘olden times’. Documentarists remain divided about the validity of re-enactment within factual film-making. The problem is that documentary film...