Leni Riefenstahl filming Olympia.

What Is & What Ain't Documentary

The dividing lines are getting blurrier than ever, but, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography: you know a real doc when you see it. Reality TV ain't it. Nor are most made-for-television series, formulaic and neutered by the demands of the medium. Of course there are exceptions - works of gravitas by nature of their subject and by who made them. Certain sub-genres, like the nature documentary or performance film, are often regarded separately - although here, too, there are plenty of exceptions. Simply put, documentary is non-fiction film, and generally a film about people and ideas, running toward social analysis and independent visions. But that's too narrow a definition of an art form that's all over the map.

Over the course of its history, the documentary has developed into many things: explorer, reporter, propagandist, poet, advocate, observer and iconoclast. The first -- and for some, still the greatest -- documentary was Nanook of the North (1922), Robert Flaherty's look at a vanishing way of life among the Eskimos. He went on to document other primitive peoples (see Man of Aran) and launched the ethnographic genre - still going strong today with films like The Saltmen of Tibet (2001). The next great pioneer was Dziga Vertov, who began in the Russian civil war making newsreels shown on agit-trains. Then he turned to experimentation as a way to document socialist reality , as can be seen in the ahead-of- their-time Kino Eye and Three Songs of Lenin. His most enduring testament is 1929's The Man With The Movie Camera, a kaleidoscope of dazzling virtuosity - don't miss it.

If the 1920s saw the first flowering of documentary's poetic possibilities, the 1930s brought the social documentary to the fore. Film became an instrument of struggle. One of the most amazing works of propaganda ever made is Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1934), heralding the arrival of Hitler's Nazi Germany at a huge rally choreographed for the camera. Debate goes on about whether it's a great documentary or the basest of propaganda, but it still packs a powerful (and frightening) punch. Also check out Riefenstahl's Olympia as well as a recent documentary about her, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.

In England, a different kind of political documentary emerged. John Grierson trained a bunch of raw recruits to make films on social issues. "Art is a hammer, not a mirror," he said. But some brilliant work emerged, especially Night Mail (1936), edited to a poem by Auden. Grierson was known as "the chief"; he was an organizer of film units in England, Canada and elsewhere, and, through protégés like Paul Rotha, the progenitor of the socially engaged documentary. In the U.S., Pare Lorentz made the short documentary The Plow That Broke The Plain (1936) and The River (both of which are on the DVD, Our Daily Bread); and a group of photographers including Willard Van Dyke, Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz made hard-hitting docs about civil rights violations in the South and the Spanish Civil War. The City, made for the 1939 New York World's Fair, is a gem. The most celebrated man of causes was Joris Ivens, the Dutch documentarian. From Russia, Spain and China to Cuba and Vietnam, he made dozens of legendary films. Unfortunately, they're so hard to find that they're likely to remain legends.

World War II seems to have been made for documentary. Some may jokingly call the History Channel the "Hitler Channel" due to the number of their programs about the subject, but there are so many angles of the Second World War to explore. The best archival history is the 26-epsiode British series The World At War, and for classic bombast you can't beat Victory at Sea. Many of the bugle-call films made to rally support, like the Why We Fight series produced by Frank Capra, now seem heavy-handed and simplistic. More nuanced and interesting is the work of Humphrey Jennings, Listen to Britain and other films that capture the English "we'll be all right" spirit of endurance in the face of adversity. John Huston's Battle of San Pietro is an unforgettable look, from a foot soldier's perspective, of a slaughter of uncertain value. Wartime France under Nazi control is the subject of one of the all-time great documentaries, The Sorrow and the Pity (1970) by Marcel Ophuls. In brilliant interviews he cuts through the veil of myth surrounding both the resistance and the collaboration.

And, of course, the Holocaust continues to be, and rightfully so, thoroughly documented. Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1955) is the most admired and Shoah (1985), an epic but unforgettable series, the most monumental. Several good recent films about the Holocaust include Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport and The Long Way Home, both by Mark Jonathan Harris, both Oscar-winners.

In the postwar era, documentary had to reinvent itself, evolving in many directions. One of the biggest influences was television. The networks made important series (See It Now, hosted by Edward R. Murrow) and exposés (Harvest Of Shame), but in the end they tamed and institutionalized the documentary. A new wave of dissenters turned to much more personal and engaged styles of filmmaking. In England Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz developed the cool stance of the intimate observer. In America Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers were developing what they called "actuality cinema." They dropped the narration, lost the tripod and went mobile with light 16mm equipment. A new trend - cinema verite (or "film truth/true film") - swept the documentary world. This could be considered a golden age, with highlights including: Leacock and Pennebaker's Don't Look Back and Monterey Pop; Robert Drew's Primary; the Maysles brothers' Salesman, Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter; Fred Wiseman's Titicut Follies, High School and Law and Order; Louis Malle's Phantom India; Mike Rubbo's Sad Song of Yellow Skin; and many more lesser known but outstanding films. A verite hybrid film, Medium Cool, used this documentary style to tell a fictionalized story set around the tumultuous Democratic convention in Chicago. All of these films sure influenced the handheld camera style we take for granted today.

Hearts and Minds

As an era of protest grew, independent docs became increasingly political. Some were made by old lefties like Emile De Antonio: Point of Order (about Joe McCarthy); In the Year of the Pig (about the war in Vietnam); and Underground (about the Weather Underground, also the subject of Sam Green's more recent film). But most of the political polemics were made by new lefties, those who came of age during the 1960s. Hearts and Minds ruthlessly exposed the fallacies of the Vietnam War, with Daniel Ellsberg talking about how we came to be the enemy. Barbara Kopple's great Harlan County USA is a gripping look at a coal miners' strike-turned-war. The Murder of Fred Hampton chronicles the cold-blooded killing of a Black Panther leader by the Chicago police. The Battle of Chile examines the overthrow of Allende by Pinochet's military coup. El Salvador: Another Vietnam? and From the Ashes: Nicaragua Today look at struggles in Central America. Union Maids and Seeing Red are portraits of previous generations of radicals. Then there's Roger & Me, which introduced us to the phenomenal Michael Moore and his inimitable muckraking, still going strong with Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Television has become the source of more and more non-fiction films. PBS was the first real home for docs in this country - from An American Family by Allan and Susan Raymond (an intimate look at the Louds of southern California, and perhaps the first real "reality series") to National Geographic specials, from prominent series like Bill Moyers' The Power of Myth to Ken Burns' The Civil War. Several strands at PBS have produced outstanding work: Nova for science; American Experience for history; and P.O.V. for more personal visions by independent filmmakers. HBO's America Undercover series has a predilection for the tantalizing, sponsoring such offbeat films as Paradise Lost: the Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (the sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, is also available on DVD). The Discovery Channel has become a major source of nature and other nonfiction programming, often co-productions with the BBC like the stunning The Blue Planet. By now we have entire channels dedicated to one genre, such as history or travel. If too much of it seems rote, you can still find an amazing variety of quirky stuff on the satellite channel LinkTV.

Which brings us to the rest of the world. The Brits are masters of the television documentary, from BBC warhorses like Civilization and The Ascent of Man to Michael Apted's long-running Up series (now in its seventh incarnation, 42 Up) and David Attenborough's natural history series: Life on Earth, Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals. There are also a lot of great docs being made by German, French, Scandinavian, Canadian and other television networks. Unfortunately, we rarely see these here, unless it's some prestigious series about an American subject - such as the Japanese network NHK's Visions of Light, a look at Hollywood's best cinematographers.

Why so hard to find?

Perhaps we should take a moment to explain why so many documentaries can be hard to find. Historically their market has been very limited. Typically, an educational distributor sells or rents a small number of copies to schools and libraries - and charges high fees to make up for the low volume. Many docs have not been released on home video so as not to threaten the educational market. Other docs simply can't find a distributor willing to take on such low-volume business. Still others run into rights problems, or are forgotten with the passage of time. It's distressing to leave so much good work by my friends and colleagues out of this primer, simply because they're unavailable. Now that DVD has made it cheaper and easier to release films, it's to be hoped that more and more docs, old and new, will be brought to the public.