Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.
The War Room is a 1993 American documentary film about Bill Clinton's campaign for President of the United States during the 1992 United States presidential election. Directed by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, the film was released on December 5, 1993. It was eventually nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.
Frederick Wiseman is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theater director. His work is primarily about exploring American institutions. In 2017, The New York Times called him "one of the most important and original filmmakers working today".
Yearbook was a documentary television series that aired on the Fox Network in 1991. It is one of the earliest examples of a reality series as it chronicled the school and home lives of various students of Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb about 30 miles outside Chicago. The critically acclaimed series was filmed over a six-month period, five days a week by Chicago videographer Ned Miller in the Betacam video format. Inspired to make a "real life" version of John Hughes films, co-executives Lou Gorfain and Chuck Bangert shot a ratio of "150:1", 150 minutes to one minute of usable footage, comparing waiting and observing to capture unscripted moments to "panning for gold".
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is a 2005 documentary film by Martin Scorsese that traces the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on 20th-century American popular music and culture. The film focuses on the period between Dylan's arrival in New York in January 1961 and his "retirement" from touring following his motorcycle accident in July 1966. This period encapsulates Dylan's rise to fame as a folk singer and songwriter where he became the center of a cultural and musical upheaval, and continues through the electric controversy surrounding his move to a rock style of music.
Karin Muller is a Swiss-born author, filmmaker, photographer, and adventurer. She graduated from Williams College in 1987.
Nancy Kates is an independent filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She directed Regarding Susan Sontag, a feature documentary about the late essayist, novelist, director and activist. Through archival footage, interviews, still photographs and images from popular culture, the film reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, and received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Sundance Documentary Film Program.
D.E.A. is an American drama series which was aired on Fox as part of its 1990–91 lineup.
R. J. Cutler is an American filmmaker, documentarian, television producer and theater director.
Chain Camera is a 2001 American documentary film directed by Kirby Dick about the lives of Los Angeles high school students. It premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.
Jean de Segonzac is an American director, screenwriter and cinematographer who has worked in documentaries and television programs. Most of his work has been in gritty, cinéma vérité-style law enforcement TV dramas.
Richard Sebak is an American public broadcasting television producer, writer and narrator who lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States.
Alek Keshishian is an Armenian-born American film and commercial director, writer, producer and music video director. His 1991 documentary, Madonna: Truth or Dare was the highest-grossing documentary of all time until 2002; it "changed the way filmmakers explored the world of celebrity" and had a "profound impact on LGBTQ representation in film."
Rodman Flender is an American actor, writer, director and producer.
John Kennedy Marshall was an American anthropologist and acclaimed documentary filmmaker best known for his work in Namibia recording the lives of the Juǀʼhoansi.
Jennifer Fox is an American film producer, director, cinematographer, and writer as well as president of A Luminous Mind Film Productions. She won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her first feature documentary, Beirut: The Last Home Movie. Her 2010 documentary My Reincarnation had its premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2010, where it won a Top 20 Audience Award.
Tod Lending is an American producer, director, writer and cinematographer. His work has aired on ABC, PBS, HBO, Al Jazeera English, CNN, A&E; has been screened theatrically and awarded at national and international festivals; and has been televised internationally in Europe and Asia. He is the president and founder of Nomadic Pictures, a documentary film production company based in Chicago, and the Executive Director of Ethno Pictures, a nonprofit film company that produces and distributes educational films.
The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd is a video directed by Arthur Ginsberg and Video Free America involving footage filmed between 1970 and 1975 following the lives and marriage of Carel Rowe and Ferd Eggan. Originally shown as a 3- channel video, 8-monitor installation including live feed of the audience for The Kitchen in New York in 1971, the edited video is now distributed by Video Data Bank and Electronic Arts Intermix. The edited video consists of an hour-long tape selected from over 30 hours of footage that includes both footage of the marriage and subsequent consummation, shot from 1971-1972, and footage of an interview of Carel, Ferd, and Ginsberg produced for WNET's Video and Television Review in 1975. The video is most readily available as a 33:15 segment on a collection of videos and video segments produced by Video Data Bank, Surveying the First Decade: Volume One: Program 3: Approaching Narrative: "There are Problems to be Solved".The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd is often classified as video vérité, somewhere in between cinéma vérité and reality television, though the footage predates An American Family, a documentary series often considered the first example of reality television.
Julia Bell Reichert was an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist. She was a co-founder of New Day Films. Reichert's filmmaking career spanned over 50 years as a director and producer of documentaries.
