A2 Film Studies Revision Guide | Legacy Spec

CINEMA VERITE What is Cinema Verite?

Cinema Verite is a French film movement, which took place back in the 1960s. This film movement forced the movie industry to pay more attention towards incorporating natural actions and authentic dialogue into the movies, which showed people in day to day lives.

Basically, the movement was about observing and capturing life as it was or finding truth in the moving images.

Before this movement, filmmakers recorded footage, interviews, and actual conversations separately. The camera was usually handheld. Then they would review the footage and cut them all together. However, this technique did not have the ability to give life to realistic looking movies.

Many different factors influenced the production of documentary movies in the 20th century. Post World War II, neorealist movement, and the British independent documentaries hold a prominent place out of them. In fact, all these reasons contributed significantly towards the rise of Cinema Verite during the 1960s. However, film industry elites heavily criticized the Cinema Verite movement at that time.

That’s because it focused more in reportage instead of showing the expressions of the artist. However, the primary objective of the Cinema Verite movement was to direct movie industry into greater realism. The method made it possible to create a tremendous impact on the documentary filmmaking, which can even be seen today.

Cinema Verite was able to give life to some of the outstanding productions in the history of French Cinema. Chris Marker’s Le Joli Mai and Jean Rouch’s Chronique d’un ete, which were released during the early 1960s, are perfect examples to prove the above-mentioned fact.

A movement that is similar to Cinema Verité was originated in the United States as well.

It was powered by the introduction of 16mm equipment, which had the ability to record audio and video content in a synchronous manner. This equipment was portable and relatively inexpensive when compared to the other devices that were being used in the movie industry at that time.

The movement that took place in the United States was also known as Cinema Verite, but it became popular as Direct Cinema, because of the obvious language barrier. The primary objective of this movement was to capture the movements and expressions of a person in a realistic manner. This movement was against the rearrangement of the camera.

The pioneers of this movement include the Maysles brothers, Donn Pennbaker, Frederick Wiseman and Ricky Leacock. The immense contributions they did to the Cinema Verite movement in the United States delivers positive results even up to date.