A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".
The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra is a 1928 American silent experimental short film co-written and co-directed by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapić. Considered a landmark of American avant-garde cinema, it tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star; he fails and becomes dehumanized, with studio executives reducing him to the role of an extra and writing the number "9413" on his forehead.
Manhatta (1921) is a short documentary film directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand.
Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 American experimental silent short film directed by and starring wife-and-husband team, Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied.
Robert Florey was a French-American director, screenwriter, film journalist and actor.
Maya Deren was a Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important part of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.
Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova. Kaufman also appears as the eponymous Man of the film.
A movie camera is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate to show the moving picture. When projected at a high enough frame rate, the persistence of vision allows the eyes and brain of the viewer to merge the separate frames into a continuous moving picture.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
The Cocoanuts is a 1929 pre-Code musical comedy film starring the Marx Brothers. Produced for Paramount Pictures by Walter Wanger, who is not credited, the film also stars Mary Eaton, Oscar Shaw, Margaret Dumont and Kay Francis. The first sound film to credit more than one director, it was adapted to the screen by Morrie Ryskind from the George S. Kaufman Broadway musical play. Five of the film's tunes were composed by Irving Berlin, including "When My Dreams Come True", sung by Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton.
Ralph Steiner was an American photographer, pioneer documentarian and a key figure among avant-garde filmmakers in the 1930s.
Slavoljub "Slavko" Vorkapić, known in English as Slavko Vorkapich, was a Serbian-born Hollywood montagist, an independent cinematic artist, chair of USC School of Cinematic Arts, chair of the Belgrade Film and Theatre Academy, painter, and illustrator. He was a prominent figure of modern cinematography and motion picture film art during the early and mid-20th century and was a cinema theorist and lecturer.
French impressionist cinema refers to a group of French films and filmmakers of the 1920s.
Rain is a 1929 Dutch short documentary film directed by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens. It premiered on 14 December 1929, in the Amsterdam Filmliga's theater, De Uitkijk.
Non-narrative film is an aesthetic of cinematic film that does not narrate, or relate "an event, whether real or imaginary". It is usually a form of art film or experimental film, not made for mass entertainment.
Side/Walk/Shuttle is a 1991 American avant-garde film directed by Ernie Gehr. It shows downtown San Francisco as seen at different angles from a moving elevator.
Montparnasse is a French short documentary film, released in 1929, that was directed, filmed and produced by Eugène Deslaw, a Ukrainian filmmaker. The film is also known as Montparnasse: Poème du Café crème; Montparnasse ou le poème du café crème; Quatre Cafés.
Études des mouvements à Paris is a 1927 city symphony film directed, shot, and edited by Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Its original Dutch name is Bewegingsstudie van varkeer te Parijs. The film depicts the city of Paris during the summertime, with an emphasis on its traffic, intersections, and street life. Notably using a variety of camera angles, Ivens attempts to capture the movement of street life in Paris.
City symphonies emerged in the 1920s, a unique genre of film emerged encompassing documentary, experimental, and the avant-garde. Coming to prominence alongside modernist art movements such as futurism, constructivism, and radicalism, city symphonies reflect the historical development of city centers and technological hubs of advancement. As the art of cinema became more respected and auteurist, filmmakers such as Walter Ruttman and Dziga Vertov gravitated towards works highlighting the beauty of cities, aiming to capture scenes of modern life from their narrative points of views.
