Looking for Hitch: A Frenzied Strategy for Research

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The Movies Begin
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A Fascination with Moving Shadows
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The Earliest Messing Around with Shadow and Light

Camera Obscura (Dark room)

• Late 5th Century BC Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti
  describes the phenomenon of an upside down image
  beamed thru a small hole in the opposite wall of
  a darkened room
• 350 BC - Aristotle tells of watching an image of
  an eclipse beamed onto the ground through a
  sieve.
• c. 1490 - Leonardo DaVinci describes a structure
  that would produce this effect.
• c. 1610 - Johannes Kepler refers to a
  construction that utilizes this phenomenon as a
  camera obscura.

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The Earliest Messing Around with Shadow and Light

Shadow Plays
Balinese Shadow Plays (Wayang)
Ombres Chinoise
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The Earliest Messing Around with Shadow and Light

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Visual Toys and Amusements Magick Lantern

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Visual Toys and Amusements Magick Lantern

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Visual Toys and Amusements
Phenakistoscope (1833) Joseph Plateau (Brussels )
The Zoetrope (Daedalum -- "wheel of the Devil") -
credited to William George Horner (1834)
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Rise of Photography 1820s and 30s

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Sequence Photograph Etienne-Jules Marey
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Sequence Photograph Eadweard Muybridge
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The Pre-history of Documentary Film
Thomas A. Edison
Black Maria
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The Pre-history of Movies, The Pre-history of
Documentary Film
Auguste and Louis Lumière
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Films of Travel and Exploration
Edward S. Curtis
Robert J. Flaherty
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Films of Travel and Exploration
Herbert Ponting
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Origins of Soviet Documentary
Sergei Eisenstein
Dziga Vertov
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1920s Experimentation Dada and Surrealism
A Young girl commits suicide. Because of What?
DADAThe spirits are telephoned. Who invented
it? DADASomeone walks on your feet. It's DADAIf
you have serious ideas about life,If you make
artistic discoveriesand if all of a sudden your
head begins to crackle with laughter,If you find
all your ideas useless and ridiculous, know
that IT IS DADA BEGINNING TO SPEAK TO YOU
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1920s Experimentation
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British Documentary Movement
John Grierson
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The Great Depression
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Walker Evans
Ben Shahn
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Documenting the Depression
Pare Lorentz
Paul Strand
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Documentaries go to War Britain
Humphrey Jennings
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Documentaries go to War Spanish Civil War
Ernest Hemingway Joris Ivens
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Documentaries go to War Germany
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Documentaries go to War US
1.To foster a firm belief in the right for which
we fight. 2.To foster a realization that we are
up against a tough job. 3.To initiate a
determined confidence in our own ability and the
ability of our comrades and leaders to do the job
that has to be done 4.To instill a feeling of
confidence, insofar as is possible under the
circumstances, in the integrity and fighting
ability of our allies 5.To create resentment,
based on knowledge of the facts, against our
enemies who have made it necessary for us to
fight 6.To foster a belief that through military
victory, the political achievement of a better
world order is possible.

Frank Capra
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Post-War Documentary
Edward R. Murrow

Italian Neo-Realism
British Free Cinema
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Cinema Verite / Direct Cinema
Al Dave Maysles

Fred Wiseman
Ricky Leacock
Jean Rouch
Robert Drew
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War in Vietnam

• 1965 to 1968 Escalation of the war mass
  protests at home.
• 1968 Tet Offensive US embassy compound in
  Saigon seized by NLF
• 1968 Lyndon Johnson declines to run another
  term Nixon elected. "The greatest honor history
  can bestow is the tittle of 'peacemaker'. . .
  after a period of confrontation we are entering
  an era of negotiation."
• 1969Draft lottery instituted
• 1969-72 Vietnamization program gradual
  withdrawal of US troops military aid to South
  Vietnam. US invasion of Cambodia and Laos
  renewed bombing of North mass protests at home.
  
• 23 Jan 73 - President Nixon announced an
  agreement "to end the war and bring peace with
  honor in Vietnam and S.E. Asia."

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Feminist Documentary Reclaiming History