Running Time 105 mins
Certificate 15
Directed by Peter Wintonick

Synopsis

Cinéma Vérité pioneer Terry Macartney-Filgate moves through Toronto on a streetcar, a tiny digital camera in his hands - filming the crew that’s filming him. ‘This is pretty wobbly,’ he says. ‘Wobbly ... but real.'

A feature documentary about documentary, Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment is a major retrospective of some of the century’s finest non-fiction films, and a celebration of the contemporary legacy of the Cinéma Vérité revolution of the late 1950s and 1960s.

The revolution had many names: Free Cinema, Direct Cinema, Candid Eye, Cinéma Vérité. It broke out simultaneously in England, France, the USA and Canada. Wherever it appeared, the form marked a completely new way of understanding film, the audience and the world.

Part road movie, part history, part celebration, part nod to the future, the film travels across North America and Europe in search of the greats who changed the way we see the world - and changed the world we see. We follow director Peter Wintonick and his crew on their own quest for truth: the truth of what really happened during the vérité revolution.

The world of Cinéma Vérité film making was created by a group of driven, dedicated rebels. All of the movement’s key players, including Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, Al Maysles, Donn Pennebaker, Hope Ryden, Wolf Koenig, Jean Rouch and Michel Brault are featured in the film. Their use of lightweight, hand-held cameras and portable sound equipment, along with their unfailing commitment to recording reality as they saw it, revolutionised the documentary.

'Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment', looks at some of the most exciting and influential documentary films of the twentieth century. Footage from films such as Primary (John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail), Lonely Boy (Canadian superstar Paul Anka in Vegas) Jane (Fonda, before her Broadway debut), Don’t Look Back (with Bob Dylan) Salesmen (door-to-door with Bible hustlers), Pour la Suite du Monde (on beluga fishermen in Quebec) and Chronique d’un Eté (the story of one summer in Paris) are all featured.

Cinéma Vérité was a television-style technique of recording life and people as they really are, using hand-held cameras, natural sound and the minimum of rehearsal and editing.

Cinéma Vérité literally means ‘film truth’ in French and was a style of film making developed by film directors in the 1960s. The film directors of the Cinéma Vérité movement strove for immediacy, spontaneity and authenticity in their films, primarily through the use of portable and unobtrusive equipment, such as small, hand-held cameras and the avoidance of any preconceived narrative line. Cinéma Vérité was characterised by the use of real people, as opposed to actors, in unrehearsed situations. Sets and props were never used and everything was shot on location.

The term cinéma vérité was coined by Jean Rouch to describe the film he made with Edgar Morin, Chronique d’un Eté (1960), which is considered the first of these works. Some other examples of films which fit into the Cinéma Vérité movement are Le Joli Mai (1962) by Chris Marker and the documentaries of Richard Leacock and the Maysles brothers.

How do the documentaries of the Cinéma Vérité movement differ from the major blockbuster Hollywood feature film?

You may want to consider factors such as script, actors, budget, cameras and storyline.

Find out as much as you can about the Cinéma Vérité movement and Cinéma Vérité’s major film makers.

• In your opinion, to what extent did they influence the history of the documentary film?
• Where can you see their legacy today?

You may like to consider music videos, films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' and docu-soaps.