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.
Marlon Troy Riggs was a black gay filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, and Black Is...Black Ain't. His films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality in the United States. The Marlon Riggs Collection is housed at Stanford University Libraries.
Barbara Kopple is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work. She is credited with pioneering a renaissance of cinema vérité, and bringing the historic french style to a modern American audience. She has won two Academy Awards, for Harlan County, USA (1977), about a Kentucky miners' strike,[1] and for American Dream (1991), the story of the 1985–86 Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota.[2] Consequently, she is the first woman to have won twice in the Oscars' Best Documentary category.
Sheffield DocFest, short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Industry Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England.
Robert Lincoln Drew was an American documentary filmmaker known as one of the pioneers—and sometimes called father—of cinéma vérité, or direct cinema, in the United States. Two of his films, Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, have been named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The moving image collection of Robert Drew is housed at the Academy Film Archive. The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of his films, including Faces of November, Herself: Indira Gandhi, and Bravo!/Kathy's Dance. His many awards include an International Documentary Association Career Achievement Award.
Incite Pictures is a documentary film production company located in New York City, founded by Rose Rosenblatt and Marion Lipschutz Incite Pictures is the for profit arm of Cine Qua Non, a non-profit organization. In addition to national U.S. broadcasts, their work has been broadcast on the CBC's Passionate Eye in Canada, The BBC in England, NHK, Indian TV, and many other strands around the world. Their films have won Best Cinematography at The Sundance Film Festival, The Audience Award at SXSW, The Audience and Jury Award at Cine Las Americas, Best Documentary at Red Nation Film Festival, Best Documentary at Native Cinema Showcase, The Emerging Picture Award at Full Frame, and The Jury Prize for Best Documentary at The Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Personal recognition includes The Full Frame Women in Leadership Award, The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, and a nomination for the British Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Award. Though their topics have been specific to the United States, they have durable international appeal, showing in hundreds of festivals, including The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Hot Docs, The Stockholm International Film Festival, The Seoul International Film Festival and The Festival de Rio de Janeiro.
Bill Lichtenstein is an American print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer, president of the media production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media, Incorporated.
Flag Wars is a 2003 American documentary film about the conflict between two communities during the gentrification of a Columbus, Ohio neighborhood. Filmed in a cinéma vérité style, the film is an account of the tension between the two historically oppressed communities of African-Americans and gays in Columbus' Olde Towne East neighborhood. The film was nominated for an Emmy Award and won three awards, including a Peabody Award.
Charlotte Zwerin was an American documentary film director and editor known for her work concerning artists and musicians. However, she is most known for her editing contributions to the direct cinema and cinéma vérité documentaries Salesman (1969), Gimme Shelter (1970), and Running Fence (1978) in which she was given co-director credits along with the two cinéma vérité pioneers Albert and David Maysles.
Marshall Curry is an Oscar-winning American documentary director, producer, cinematographer and editor. His films include Street Fight, Racing Dreams, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Point and Shoot, and A Night at the Garden. His first fiction film was the Academy Award-winning short film The Neighbors' Window (2019).
The Street: A Film with the Homeless is a 78-minute 1997 documentary film about the homeless in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The film was directed by Daniel Cross and produced by him and Don Haig. The production houses were the National Film Board of Canada and Necessary Illusions Productions Inc.
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.
Marwencol is a 2010 American documentary film that explores the life and work of artist and photographer Mark Hogancamp. It is the debut feature of director Jeff Malmberg, produced through his production company Open Face. It was the inspiration for Welcome to Marwen, a 2018 drama directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Nancy Schwartzman is an American documentary filmmaker, member of the Directors Guild of America, and The Academy.
Jig is a 2011 documentary produced and directed by Sue Bourne about the world of Irish dance and the fortieth Irish Dancing World Championships, held in March 2010 in Glasgow.
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.
Nina Rosenblum is an American documentary film and television producer and director and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. Italian Fotoleggendo magazine said Rosenblum “is known in the United States as one of the most important directors of the investigative documentary”.
Peter Kuttner is a Chicago filmmaker, activist, and cameraman. He is known for his early socially-conscious documentary films that touch on topics such as opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, gentrification of Chicago, racism, and social class. He produced many of these with the film collective Kartemquin Films, of which he was an original member. He is best known for his work on the film The End of the Nightstick (1993) with Cindi Moran and Eric Scholl, which documented police brutality in Chicago and torture allegations against commander Jon Burge. Kuttner has worked extensively in activism and community service, and was a founding member of activist group Rising Up Angry. Kuttner has worked with many collaborators including Kartemquin Collective founder Gordon Quinn, and filmmakers Haskell Wexler and Robert Kramer. He is also known for camera work on a number of major motion pictures including Man of Steel and Source Code.
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.
