Renaissance — a series of encounters and screenings, paying tribute to the post-war documentary filmmakers who contributed to the renaissance of the genre. Berlin Documentary Forum 1, New Practices Across Disciplines (HKW).
Documentary Moments elaborates documentary film practice through screenings and encounters with filmmakers who shaped particular moments of the practice's history. The initial chapter of Documentary Moments is an homage to artists who contributed to the renaissance of documentary film in the post-war period.
1946, the year of the Nuremberg trials in Germany, is designated as the re-invention of documentary film as a practice expropriated from power and re-appropriated by practitioners. As children of WWII, these filmmakers not only challenged the workings of power but also the documentary's ability to produce truth.
The 20 years following WWII saw major aesthetic-political debates on cinema and the rise of such influential movements as nouvelle vague and neorealism. Challenged by decolonization (wars in Algeria, Indochina, Asia), the Cold War and the advent of television, practitioners formed new modalities of production and distribution, ensuring the renaissance of documentary cinema.
The potential writing of a post Euro-genocide world history is attempted in this first edition of Documentary Moments with Alain Resnais (b. 1921), Edgar Morin (b. 1921), Marcel Ophuls (b. 1928) and Frederick Wiseman (b. 1930).
Take 1: Towards Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog), 1955: Alain Resnais. This film is a landmark in both documentary practice and the narration of genocide. As a visually iconic representation of the Holocaust, it quintessentially demonstrates the use of images to establish an independent authority. Several short documentary films produced in the 40s and 50s will be screened with commentaries by cultural historians Adrian Rifkin, Marie-José Mondzain and filmmaker Eyal Sivan: Van Gogh (Alain Resnais, 1947, 18 min, France), Guernica (Alain Resnais, 1950, 12 min, France), Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Alain Resnais, 1953, 29 min, France), Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955, 30 min, France).
Take 2: Memory of the Future: Chronicle of a Summer, 1961, revisited with Edgar Morin. Chronicle of a Summer, directed by anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, builds truth through constructed or almost fictional situations. It provoked heated debate on the relationship between cinema, reality and truth. In April 2007, artists Ayreen Anastas, François Bucher and Rene Gabri unearthed an interview with Edgar Morin, in which Morin spoke of a cache of original rushes. With the assistance of Françoise Foucault, a former collaborator of Rouch, they succeeded in finding nearly everything that had not been included in the final edit. Shots from the original 16mm rushes of Chronicle of a Summer will follow a screening of the film (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1961, 85 min, France).
Take 3: History of Present Time: 'Direct', 'Truth' and Other Myths: Frederick Wiseman. Independent producer and filmmaker Frederick Wiseman's unswerving interest is to produce direct cinema, a notion refuted by Wiseman himself. Since the mid-1960s, he has scrutinized American life and institutions, revealing the mechanisms of administration and hierarchy. As a benchmark in the history of social documentary, as both a school and a genre, Wiseman's infinitely re-qualified cinema is indispensable in any debate on the potential of the documentary image to produce truth. A conversation between Frederick Wiseman and film historian Stella Bruzzi is followed by a screening of the film Primate (Frederick Wiseman, 1974, 105 min, USA), which presents a scientific study of the physical and mental development of primates, as conducted at the Yerkes Primate Research Center.
Take 4: War Time / War Crime: Narrated by Marcel Ophuls. Filmmaker Marcel Ophuls uses the documentary interview and montage to review and re-edit historical narration, subverting the hegemony of authority and its propaganda image. His epic oeuvre — both in scope and in length — is a landmark of the critical historical essay. A conversation between Marcel Ophuls and Eyal Sivan will be followed by a screening of the film The Memory of Justice (Marcel Ophuls, 1976, 278 min, France, Germany, UK, USA). The film uses Telford Taylor's book Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy as a point of departure in exploring wartime atrocities and individual versus collective responsibility.
Conceived by filmmaker Eyal Sivan, the long-term project “Documentary Moments” elaborates documentary film practice through screenings and encounters with filmmakers who shaped particular moments of the practice’s history. In an interview conducted by Alan Toner for Berlin Documentary Forum, Eyal Sivan discusses the background of “Documentary Moments” and the questions that evolve from revisiting films and filmmakers who have shaped the concept of the documentary so strongly.
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