Cinema verite
Cinema verite is a style of filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques that originated in documentary filmmaking, with the storytelling elements typical of a scripted film. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics. The name is French and means, roughly, "cinema of truth".
Cinéma vérité aims for an extreme naturalism, using non-professional actors, nonintrusive filming techniques, hand-held camera, genuine locations rather than sound stages, and naturalistic sound without substantial post-production mixing or voiceovers.
As Bill Nichols points out, the reality effect of a new mode of documentary representation tends to fade away when "the conventional nature of this mode of representation becomes increasingly apparent". In other words, new modes initially appear to be true, unvarnished "reality" on the screen, but as time goes by that mode's conventions become more and more obvious. Such is certainly the case with cinéma vérité whose conventions can now appear quite mannered and open for critique.
History
The term originates in the translation of Dziga Vertov's Kino-Pravda (Russian for "cinema of truth"), a documentary series of the 1920s. While Vertov's announced intention in coining the word was to use film as a means of getting at "hidden" truth, largely through juxtapositions of images, the French term refers more to a technique influenced by Vertov than to his specific intentions.
The movement was fueled as much by technological as artistic developments. During World War II, cameras had become small enough to be portable and unobtrusive. Even more important, cameras were now quiet so that natural sound could be recorded at the same time as filming.
The movement began in earnest in France and Quebec (particularly at the National Film Board of Canada) in the 1950s and flourished in the 1960s. The aesthetic of cinéma vérité was essentially the same as that of the mid-1950s "free cinema" in the UK and "Direct Cinema" in the US. Some filmmakers in France and Québec found the term cinema vérité to be pretentious and called it "cinéma direct" instead.
There are however subtle yet important differences between these movements. Direct Cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence. Essentially what is now called a "fly on the wall" documentary. Many therefore see a paradox created by drawing attention away from the reality of the camera and simultaneously declaring the discovery of cinematic truth. Others argue that the obvious presence of the filmmaker and camera was seen by most cinema vérité filmmakers as the best way to reveal the truth in cinema. The filmmaker was then seen by these filmmakers as a catalyst of a situation.
This is the case for filmmakers like Pierre Perrault who sets situations up, and who then films that, for example in Pour la suite du Monde (also known as The Moontrap) where he asked old people to fish whales. The result is not a documentary about whale fishing, it is about memory and lineage. In this sense, Cinéma Vérité is also concerned with anthropological cinema, and with the social and political implications of what was captured on film. How a filmmaker shoots a film, what is being filmed, what to do with what was filmed, and how that film will be presented to an audience, all were very important for filmmakers of the time.
In all cases, the ethical and aesthetic analysis of the documentary form of the 1950s and '60s has to be linked with a critical look at post-war propaganda analysis. The best way to describe this type of cinema is probably to say that it is concerned with notions of truth, and reality, in film. To say that it is an interrogative and highly ethical-minded film form, looking mainly at the social, anthropological, and political aspects of reality.
As Edgar Morin wrote in an introduction to an event held on cinéma vérité at Pompidou: "There are two ways to conceive of the cinema of the Real: the first is to pretend that you can present reality to be seen; the second is to pose the problem of reality. In the same way, they were two ways to conceive cinéma vérité. The first was to pretend that you brought the truth. The second was to pose the problem of truth."
Feminist documentary films of the 1970s often used cinéma-vérité techniques but very soon this sort of 'realism' was criticized for its deceptive pseudo-natural construction of reality. In 1979 Michelle Citron released Daughter Rite, a feminist pseudo-documentary that deconstructs the conventions of Cinema verite.
In principle, the film movement Dogme 95 features similar tenets, but in practice, most Dogme 95 films show far more indications of the scripting and direction than is typical for Cinema verite.
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