THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF DOCUMENTARY FILM

Аннотация

This article discusses the origins and developing process of world documentary cinema. It acknowledges the early pioneers of documentary film and their contributions to the field offilm studies. Keywords:Documentary film,cinematographer, frame, visual art, John Grierson. A documentary film is a major form of audiovisual art. Unlike feature films, it relies solely on real-life facts and events. This type of cinematography can convey any emotion or catharsis that a fictional film may present, but based on actual events happening or that have happened in reality. The initial step in the development of documentary cinema began directly with the invention of the film camera by the Lumière brothers in France in 1895. The short video clips first captured on this camera—such as Workers Leaving the Factory or Feeding the Baby—align with the features of what we now describe as “documentary film.” The documentary nature of these films is reflected in their reliance on natural realism and accuracy. While the Lumière brothers were establishing their film industry and winning the hearts of audiences in Paris, Charles and Émile Pathé launched their own film company, Pathé-Frères, in Great Britain. In 1908, they began showcasing newsreels, transforming Pathé-Frères into one of the largest film companies intheworld. Pathé-Frères newsreels were short films that reported real events and news stories from around the world. According to the “History of Cinema” section in the Britannica international encyclopedia, Pathé began opening foreign trade agencies, which soon evolved into full production studios: Hispano Film (1906), Pathé-Rouss in Moscow (1907), Film d'Arte Italiano (1909), Pathé-Britannia in London (1909), and Pathé-America (1910)1. These studios played a significant role in the early development of documentary film as we define it today. The Pathé newsreels, like the Lumière films, informed the public through images alone, without a narrator’s voice. Thesefilms were also shown indesignated venues andcinemas for audiences. 1“Historyoffilm1830-1910”RobertSklar,DavidA.CookBritannicaeksikloperdiaysidagimaqola https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-film/Melies-and-Porter#ref507938 http://www.internationaljournal.co.in/index.php/jasass 772 Volume 15Issue 06, June 2025 Impact factor: 2019: 4.679 2020: 5.015 2021: 5.436, 2022: 5.242, 2023: 6.995, 2024 7.75 The true creative spirit of documentary cinema first emerged during the 1920s with Dziga Vertov and his team, particularly during the revolutionary period. Dziga Vertov, a young poet and film editor, was involved in producing educational newsreels that played a vital role in the struggles oftheRussian Revolution. Vertov established the “Kino-Pravda” (Film-Truth) movement, which laid the ideological foundation for documentary film. Kino-Pravda was a series of newsreels that presented real events vividly and without alteration. They were produced between 1922 and 1925 by the Soviet studio Goskino. Vertov showcased his unique style to the world through his silent experimental film“Kino-Eye”(Cine-Eye). One oftheinnovative techniques he first introduced in Kino-Eye— and later developed further in Man with a Movie Camera—was the composition of sequences according to the laws of poetry. Instead of editing scenes in strict chronological order, he interwove episodes according to musical rhythm and his own visual concepts2. Kino-Eye is regarded as the first poetic-style documentary film. Vertov’s fundamental principle in the world of documentary cinema was to portray reality without distortion, without taking sides, and without promoting a specific ideology. His film Man with a Movie Camera reflected the joy of continuously experimenting with the camera’s ability to film, edit, and re-edit street life. The contribution of the film Man with a Movie Camera to world cinema is invaluable. It demonstrated the possibility of filming with free movement, the absence of ideological constraints for the filmmaker, and revealed to the audience the true artistic value of documentary cinema. In this regard, film scholar and critic Kirill Goryechok, in his academic article “Dziga Vertov and Walt Whitman: Poetic Imagery in Documentaries,” analyzes Vertov’s work as follows: “In his early manifestos, the director developed the idea of combining organic and mechanical evolution. Technology allows humans to make the next evolutionary leap; it extends their senses: the movie camera sees what is beyond the human eye. Thus, cinema is tasked with expanding the viewer’s consciousness and their perspective of the surrounding world.” Additionally, theorist and film scholar M. Bleiman notes the following about Dziga Vertov’s creative work3: “Although Vertov rejected the art of staging, he strived to create a new form of art based on real-life facts. There was indeed a contradiction here. In particular, inKino-Eye and Man with a Movie Camera, he attempted to discover new structures for cinematic expression,