Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning

9 The Profilmic

213 9 The Profilmic We have already explored the ways filmmakers position fragments of lived reality through editing. And we know that camerawork can add to or subtract from the events or situations documented. But we haven’t discussed how the profilmic environment—that which the camera records— contributes to the making of a documentary. Nonfiction filmmakers often draw on settings and lighting to communicate information and characterize specific situations. They also commonly enlist the “collaboration” of people in front of the camerainordertofurthertheirstoriesorarguments.Whilewemaybetemptedto draw a line between the act of filming and the material recorded, that line is usually fuzzy. The profilmic is in fact an integral part of the re-presentation process. The handling of the profilmic environment is generally known as the mise-ensc ène. The term comes from theater. A literal translation from the French would be “put into the scene.” Because it is associated with theatricality and fiction, mise-en-scène seems to contradict the very notion of documentary. It implies that the situations captured on film are arranged for the camera. And it assumes a large measure of creative control over the profilmic material. In nonfiction cinema, as Bill Nichols notes, “[the profilmic] and the historical referent are taken to be congruent with one another.” We presume that what is recorded “remains identical to the actual event that we could have ourselves witnessed in the historical world” (Representing Reality25).Interferinginwhat happensinfrontofthecameracould seemingly upset this equation. 214 chapter nine In practice, the treatment of the profilmic in nonfiction cinema involves a more complicated scenario. Documentary makers frequently intercede in the events recorded . The subjects in the films, too, participate in this process by responding to the presence of the camera, taking up a role comparable to that of an actor. They are performers of some sort. As we shall see, however, neither situation necessarily poses a threat to the authenticity of the historical referent. Rather, they are part of the conventions of documentary cinema. The difficulties posed by the concept of mise-en-scène may be partly understood as reluctance to embrace the idea of aesthetics in nonfiction filmmaking. As we noted in the book’s introduction, absence of style in documentary often imparts a greater sense of credibility (Corner 96). Aesthetic “flourishes,” by contrast , might appear to distort the material available for documentation or even distract us from the subject in the film. While this attitude can guide our appreciation of all aspects in the documentary process, it is the profilmic that seems most resistant to aesthetic consideration. From the profilmic we expect not form but content. The problem with this argument is that it confines documentary filmmaking to a very limited set of procedures. It also overlooks the exchanges that take place between the documentarian and the referential world, and it diminishes the significance of the mise-en-scène as a means of addressing historical reality. As Keith Beattie has recently argued, critics have repeatedly neglected the power of what he calls “visual display” in nonfiction cinema, despite evidence that documentaries rely heavily on visual aesthetics to produce knowledge (3–5). The creative treatment of profilmic reality is one important way in which visual display can be used in order to generate meaning. Only within certain film movements or historical contexts—the direct cinema documentaries that we discussed in the last chapter, for example—have filmmakers openly resisted creative intervention in the profilmic. But even in these cases the suggestion that the documentary can record completely uncontrolled events has come under critical scrutiny. Documentary filmmakers intervene creatively in the profilmic not only by staging events but also by assigning meaning to situations or settings that already exist in the historical world. That is to say, they select and organize the material available for shooting, including the subjects who appear in their films. This chapter focuses on the way documentarians treat profilmic reality. More specifically, it discusses how settings can be used in documentaries, and how nonfictional performers , now and then the documentary makers themselves, contribute to the documentary’s meanings. The Profilmic 215 Reenactments One way to start this discussion is to revisit the notion of reenactment in documentaries . A reenactment is the repetition of an action—or series of actions— that has already taken place. It is a staged event, not an “original” occurrence. A documentary about the American Revolutionary War, for example, can rely on various...