Jean Rouch's and Edgar Morin's film Chronicle of a summer was a great way to understand and incorporate the reading of last week The voice of documentary in film form and understand what it was really all about. The film is a classic example of cinema verite, juxtaposing images of the city with real interviews from real people that took place during the course of a summer. It is an experimental approach that tries to answer the question of how people live, what is happiness and above all what is true and what is a performance, moving away from classic film making
The film makers tried to record with their cameras "the truth" or an angle of the truth and then put together those images to allow the audiences to decide what they feel about it. They didn't try to construct an illusion or a narrative, but they choose to tell the story of the people who participated in the experiment. The film makers even appear in the film discussing their process offering a really meta-moment. Regarding the sound they use all three approaches that were explained in the text, interview in the city, interview by person, voice overs and free discussions between the participants. Whatever the film makers's intentions were, the film is still a cinematographic illusion.They had to cut and paste different frames, make a choice of their material and make connections between images and sounds that already creates new interpretations and offers a new approach to the reality. I believe that film unfortunately will never be able to capture the truth, but only fragments of reality that when they are reunited again in an assemblage(film) form some kind of illusion or simply a representation of reality.
The film makers tried to record with their cameras "the truth" or an angle of the truth and then put together those images to allow the audiences to decide what they feel about it. They didn't try to construct an illusion or a narrative, but they choose to tell the story of the people who participated in the experiment. The film makers even appear in the film discussing their process offering a really meta-moment. Regarding the sound they use all three approaches that were explained in the text, interview in the city, interview by person, voice overs and free discussions between the participants. Whatever the film makers's intentions were, the film is still a cinematographic illusion.They had to cut and paste different frames, make a choice of their material and make connections between images and sounds that already creates new interpretations and offers a new approach to the reality. I believe that film unfortunately will never be able to capture the truth, but only fragments of reality that when they are reunited again in an assemblage(film) form some kind of illusion or simply a representation of reality.
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