Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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!)()( I Ml \ I \m \| \\s I I INK 107 WORM'S EYE VIEW on A POSTWAR RECRUIT LOOKS AT DOCUMENTARY MICHAEL CLARKE ».' looking back at a year in the industry and a year's issues of DNL, it occurs to me that the documentary movement is inexplicable and confused. When I read about documentary in books and articles, years ago, 1 learned how vital a medium for public information and social improvement it could be. I realized that our films could, in the crudest terms, be a weapon on the side of truth. I also learned that one of the chief tasks o\ the documentary worker was to negotiate wider manufacture and better distribution of the product, in order that the broadest social effect might be realized. What do I find.' from the old guard, all too often merely complaints —that the industry is commercialized, that £17 a week is somehow worse than £5, that there is no longer the 'spirit' of the old days. This at a time when more documentaries are commissioned and made than ever before in peacetime. It isn't sense: but of course it is understandable. For with the wider use of factual films, there have entered the industry many technicians who have no sense of dedication. But it is not their fault that they don't feel like missionaries, nor does it matter if, as often, they are technically very efficient. There isn't any more the feeling of a happy band of pilgrims; the party is too large. Nor is there a large quantity of films with a radical social message being made. (Not that there e\ er was ; but they are the ones that people remember. ) To this extent, the spirit of documentary must have changed; and it is true that the movement is completely disorganized, if indeed it is still a movement at all. I don't think this is because it is too large; for there is still a number of technicians who ally to a love of film the conviction that human health, happiness and values are supremely important, and that our medium can help to tight for their recognition. But main ol these people have entered the movement since 1939; they find that documentary, is shapeless, and that there is no channel through which their energies, enthusiasms and varied abilities can be canalized. Most of the complaints about the present, and the esoteric comparisons with 'the old GPO days', come from those whose long service and experience should have led them to keep the movement on its feet. It is these senior technicians of the movement who, I suggest, are responsible for its decline into individualism; it was their task to give leadership, to develop their juniors, or rather so to encourage them that their best talents were matured to the service of documentary. There used to be. one hears, a tradition of this kind: but nowadays most of the people whose task it is are doing other work. Public relations, propagation of the documentary gospels, all the related jobs are vital!) important. and must not be obscured. But if the} mean that real connection with film-making and filmmakers is abandoned, then those who perform them lose their touch: ami leadership is reduced to the SOU! complaint that things are no longer as thev were. It is no coincidence that most sense is usually spoken bj those of the lust generation who still make films. However discrete the documentary movement appears to be. there is still a common factor connecting most of its units. That factor is the technicians who believe actively in the original purposes of the medium. But, with so many people employed, it is no longer possible to preserve and build on that unity by chance meetings in the pub; if we arc to tight what Grierson, I believe, called the 'carpel-slipper mentality', we must find something more suitable than the Highlander or the Dog and Duck. There seems to me to be an important place for an organization catering solely for documentary workers; we are in a period of great change, in which we have to adjust our methods and objectives; at the same time, there are numbers of junior technicians who need to be developed and made familiar with the movement in which thev work. No existing organization can achieve fhis. The FDFU. with the chance of a lifetime, nevertheless remains almost solely a producers' body, albeit a valuable one; the ACT has a far wider scope; while Film Centre takes no advantage of its power and opportunity. At the moment, DNL is the only point of contact for documentary workers; and you can't belong to a magazine. Let us therefore, since the doyens of the movement have donenothing to crystallize it, attempt to focus what energies and talents we can assemble in a new body of documentary workers, at once social and professional. Of course, you cannot achieve miracles simply by forming an organization : but it dues provide a basis on which to work. It is at the same time very necessary to clear up the large question of our attitude to the suit of films that are being made. It is quite irrelevant to complain that we are no longer produi films of the radical nature of Today We Live and the like. The external situation has completely altered, and in fact documentary is doing more useful work in a practical way than it eveOne hears the complaint that too much lime is spent on making educational films, alleged to be easy meat for the skilled director. Too much lime, the miner may think, is spent in hew coal. Surely it is a tribute to the place documentary has earned for itself that it has been given so much of the responsibility for this work. If we have a progressive aim, it is time for rejoicing when even a part of it comes to be realized. Documentary has called so long and SO loud for the use of film in all kinds of education and enlightenment that those who sneer at instructional become themselves immediately suspect. For now we have actually to perform some o\ those tasks which, earlier, were only the subject of agitation. Nor is it so easy to make teaching films. In fact, we have to go a long way before establishing a proper theory of educational film; we must study the problems of fore and background films more deeply, examine the varied needs of special audiences, and find a way of making this important medium cheaper and more accessible. There is as much a place as ever for the general interpretive film : indeed in some senses we are at an advantage over pre-war days, and are certainly assured of a wider audience. If films {Continued page 111, top col. 1) WOKLII Willie *A Power in the Laml* (The story of electricity in the modern world) Has been acquired by GENERAL FILM DISTRIBUTORS LTD for theatrical distribution WOIU !> WIDE PICTURES 1/r l> LYSBETII HOUSE, SOHO SQl \KK. LONDON. \\ I Gerrurd 1736 7/8 [Member of t}u Federation of Documentor) Film ' nil*)