Documentary History: Grierson

John Grierson, a Scottsman is the man who history has dictated coined the term 'documentary'.

He also wrote the first principles of documentary and they are worth a read. 

I think what is interesting about them is his absolute conviction that documentary, or filming the 'real' was more 'truthful' a view of the world than the 'fantasy' of fiction.

Is that still true today?  With news editors being forced down certain lines by their company owners or sponsors, with the realisation that a documentary maker is of course telling his or her 'version' of reality, maybe this version of 'reality' is conflicted.

At the same time, documentary, unlike fiction, does possess a 'truth' value. 
The First Principles:
1) ‘We believe that the cinema’s capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form. The studio films largely ignore this possibility of opening up the screen on the real world. They photograph acted stories against artificial backgrounds. Documentary would photograph the living scene and the living story.’


2) ‘We believe that the original (or native) actor, and the original (or native) scene, are better guides to a screen interpretation of the modern world. They give cinema a greater fund of material. They give it power over a million and one images. They give it power of interpretation over more complex and astonishing happenings in the real world than the studio mind can conjure up or the studio mechanician recreate. ‘


3) ‘We believe that the materials and the stories thus taken from the raw can be finer (more real in the philosophic sense) than the acted article. Spontaneous gesture has a special value on the screen. Cinema has a sensational capacity for enhancing the movement which tradition has formed or time worn smooth. Its arbitrary rectangle specially reveals movement; it gives it maximum pattern in space and time. Add to this that documentary can achieve an intimacy of knowledge and effect impossible to the shim-sham mechanics of the studio, and the lily-fingered interpretations of the metropolitan actor.’