Unveil and Record the World Through Documentaries: An Exploration to Seminal Theories in Man with a Movie Camera and Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory
Though documentaries only have less than 200 years’ history, they are important to human beings’ society, and they have significantly contributed to the development of human civilization. The original aims of documentaries are to document reality for the purposes of education, recording history and instruction, and so on. With the development of this form of art, people have found that documentaries served more vital purposes. This paper explores and analyzes the significance of documentaries based on seminal theories and Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. Focused on two documentaries, Man with a Movie Camera and Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, this paper argues that documentaries are important and meaningful because they help people explore the truth of the world, observe the society and freeze moments and time.
First of all, based on Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, we know that documentaries are important and meaningful because they help people explore the truth of the world. Two thousand years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (2005) had reminded people that “Behold! Human beings are living in underground cave” (p. 24). In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, he compared the world where human beings live to an underground cave, and in the cave, human beings were forced to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the, there was a fire, so the shadows projected onto the wall were all the things people can see and observe. Since no one ever got out of the cave, people in the cave believed what they saw were all the truth of the world. However, they never saw the truth outside the caves, and they remained ignorant about what they had known. Inspired by the allegory, we could know that every one of us can be a prisoner in a cave. If we refuse to explore the outside world or see various things, images, or objects around us, we will be too ignorant to know the truths of the world. Documentaries can be a method that leads people to get out of their “cave”. When we watch a documentary about a foreign culture, strange people’s lives, and new thoughts and ideologies of the society, we will be critical of the “shadows” in front of us and then explore the truth of the world. For example, Man with a Movie Camera is a 1929 Soviet silent documentary film. It records the lives of people and scenes in Soviet cities such as Mosco, Kyiv and Odesa, and so on. For audiences from the US or other countries, watching this documentary is like to get out of their own “cave” to see a new while strange world. US audiences may be shocked by the documentary, and they will know that the Soviet Union was not as horrific as the US government depicted, in this socialist country, people can also enjoy their free and modern life. Therefore, documentaries enable people to get out of their “cave”, and the strange, new, and pioneering things they learn from the documentary are the steps for them to approach the truth.
Secondly, documentaries enable people to observe and know ourselves so that human beings can approach truth and wisdom. Carl Linnaeus (1751) in his Philosophia Botanica notes that “the first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists of having a true idea of the objects” (224). Observation can be the first step towards wisdom, knowledge, and truths. By recording people, stories, objects, and events, and so on, documentaries provide people with precious resources and opportunities to observe the world and ourselves. Moreover, recording and presentation through documentaries are also the basis of “opening”, and such opening is the light cast into the dark “cave”. As Martin Heidegger (1927) in his On Time and Being notes, “There is no light and no brightness without the opening. Even darkness needs it (p. 102)”. Through documentaries, things such as culture, people’s lives and activities, different thoughts and ideas, and even different eras throughout history can be opened to the entire human beings. For example, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory is the pioneering documentary which first recorded people’s real lives and enabled people to observe ourselves. In this 46-second film, there was no plot, no story, and no characters. What people can only see is the people who got out, got in or passed by A French factory in 1895. When watching the film, people can observe how they walked, what they wore, the environment of the factory, and the atmosphere of the society in 1895. All the tangible information gained through observation will inspire us to better understand ourselves, our society, and our history. Even today, the observational documentaries only record normal people’s lives just to observe them and at the same time to know ourselves in the process of observation (Sauder, 2007). Similarly, Man with a Movie Camera can be regarded as an observational film that enables people to observe people’s lives in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. More importantly, Man with a Movie Camera made the lives and society of Soviet open to the public. Such openness can be the strongest weapon to defeat ignorance or rumors. Today, more and more documentaries took the responsibility to unveil the social injustices and environmental issues such as Under the Dome by Chai Jing that unveils the air pollution issue in China and the 13th by Ava DuVernay that unveils the racism in US criminal systems. In the future, documentaries will also serve the purpose of documenting facts and events, enabling people to observe people and society and make social issues open to the public.
Last, but not least, documentaries can freeze moments and develop a new form of life for mortal things. In On Photography, Susan Sontag (1977) claims that “all photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s or thing’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability” (160). This statement by Sontag indicates a vital function of documentary—too freeze moments and to testify time’s relentless melt. In my opinion, what documentaries, indeed, record, is time rather than human beings, objects, or scenes. Time keeps flowing and soon passes by, only the cameras can record the time by maintaining comprehensives elements in it. For example, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory is an example that proves that photographs can participate in other people’s mortality and mutability. When watching the documentary, audiences will be moved by the truth that, all the figures recorded in the film, had died for a long time. Thanks to documentary, their physical figures, appearances, and activities at that moment are recorded and will be preserved for a long time despite the mortality. Thus, documentaries give a new form of life to the mortal people and transient time. Though lives are vulnerable, and time passes by, documentaries make them everlasting in images and pictures.
All in all, based on the seminal theories and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we can conclude that documentaries are important and meaningful because they help people explore the truth of the world, they enable people to observe and know ourselves so that human beings can approach truth and wisdom, and they freeze moments and develop a new form of life for mortal things.
Reference:
Heidegger, M. (1927). Being and Time. London: Oxford University.
Plato. (2005). Republic. New York: New York University Press.
Sauders, D. (2007). Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties. London: Wallflower Press.
Sontag, S. (2014). On Photography. New York: Penguin Classics.
