We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE FUNCTION OF THE DIRECTOR
1. THE DOCUMENTARY DIRECTOR
PAUL ROTHA
A director goes documentary by choice and not coincidence. In so doing he seeks to serve his conscience and avoid the cupidity of story-film as it flourishes under most studio conditions.
Documentary defines not subject or style, but approach.
It denies neither trained actors nor the advantages of staging. Ir justifies the use of every known technical artifice to gain its effect on the specator.
Two courses are open to the director of documentary. He may seek themes and material at the ends of the earth in the manner of a Flaherty; or he may face the problems of the community around him in the manner of a Grierson. The choice is personal. These two names plot the extremities of the dramatised documentary as distinct from the descriptive style favoured by the lesser lights of the racket.
To the documentary director the appearance of things and people is only superficial. It is the meaning behind the thing and the significance underlying the person that occupy his attention. To the documentary approach every manufacture, every organisation, every industry, every craft represents at one point or another the fulfilment of a human interest.
Documentary approach to cinema differs from that of storyfilm not in its disregard for craftsmanship, but in the purpose to which that craftsmanship is put. Documentary is a trade just as carpentry or pot-making. As a trade its technique must be mastered if the product is to be valuable and have meaning. But technique alone is not sufficient.
A film must serve a purpose beyond itself if it is to survive. It may serve entertainment (as the studio producers dictate), it may serve propaganda (as the publicists demand), or it may serve art as the highbrows pretend), but it cannot be an end in itself.
Because documentary is in its infancy and because production is largely (but not wholly) made possible by serving propagandist ends, the publicist himself is the main enemy of the director. Because cinema is everyone's plaything to criticise for good or bad, your publicist will demand the inclusion of this or the exclusion of that to the prostitution of your conscience.
78