The Autobiographical Documentary in America

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. John Stuart Katz and Judith Milstein Katz, “Ethics and the Perception of Ethics in Autobiographical Film,” in Larry Gross, John Katz, and Jay Ruby, eds., Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . Please note the terminological problem of film versus video. Video technology has advanced rapidly, while costs for film have increased, causing many documentarists to shoot on video today. The reader should note that terms like film are often interchangeable with video. Although this is technically inaccurate, popular parlance ignores the inaccuracy. The reader will encounter this throughout this text with terms like cinematic and filmic to refer to documentaries that were shot and edited on video. 2. I am indebted to Jay Ruby for his remarks on this topic. 3. Roland Barthes’s literary autobiography, roland BARTHES by roland barthes (New York: Hill and Wang, ), is a notable example of a French literary text that uses many cinematic techniques, such as the arrangement of narrative fragments in a montage. 4. David James, Allegories of the Cinema: American Film in the Sixties (Princeton , N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . 5. Network broadcasters have historically rejected these documentaries because they are perceived as breaking many of the rules of broadcast journalism, such as objectivity and balance, the ideological staples of network documentary. Yet when these documentaries are seen on PBS, they can provoke strong reactions from viewers. Silverlake Life: The View from Here and Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied () are good examples. 6. Thomas O. Beebee, The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, ), .  1. The Convergence of Autobiography and Documentary 1. For early examples see P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, ) and P. Adams Sitney , ed., The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism (New York: New York University Press, ). The more recent wave of avant-garde theory and criticism includes David James, Allegories of the Cinema: American Film in the Sixties (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); Patricia Mellencamp, Indiscretions : Avant-Garde Film, Video, and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ); Lauren Rabinowitz, Points of Resistance: Women, Power, and Politics in the New York Avant-Garde Cinema, – (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ); David James, ed., To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas and the New York Underground (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); James Peterson, Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order: Understanding the American Avant-Garde (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, ); Edward Small, Direct Theory: Experimental Film/Video as Major Genre (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ); and Robert Haller, ed., First Light (New York: Anthology Film Archive, ). 2. See Peterson, Dreams of Chaos, chap. . 3. This list merely scratches the surface of the many autobiographical avantgarde films produced at this time. For a more in-depth filmography, see note . 4. Edward S. Small, “The Diary Folk Film,” Film Library Quarterly , no.  (): . 5. Many autobiographical documentarists have experimented with singleperson synchronous-sound shooting. For a detailed description of single-person synchronous-sound documentary production, see Ed Pincus, “One Person SyncSound : A New Approach to Cinema Verité,” Filmmaker’s Newsletter , no.  (): –. This article discusses many important aspects of film technology related to this shooting style, including inobtrusive strategies of lighting, use of shorter zoom lenses, and decisions on camera magazine size. For a discussion of other filmmakers shooting single-person documentaries, see David Schwartz, “First Person Singular : Autobiography in Film,” Independent, May , pp. –. Much has been said about the simplification in the recording apparatus that occurred in direct cinema and cinema verité documentary. Many have shown how the appearance of lightweight, synchronous-sound recording devices freed documentarists from tripods , lights, and cumbersome sound-recording equipment. In my discussion of Ed Pincus’s work I show how important single-person synchronous-sound shooting became for autobiographical documentarists. Also, more recent digital camcorder technology allows for inobtrusive single-person shooting in available light with extraordinary results. For more on the political relation of nonprofessional aesthetics and Hollywood dominance, see Patricia Zimmerman, “The Amateur, the AvantGarde , and Ideologies of Art,” Journal of Film and Video , nos. – (): –, and “Hollywood, Home Movies, and Common Sense: Amateur Film as Aesthetic Dissemination and Social Control, –,” Cinema Journal , no.  (summer ): –. 6. Paul Arthur, “Routines of Emancipation: Alternative Cinema in the Ideology of the Sixties,” in David James, ed., To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas and the New York Underground (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . Notes to Pages...