In France in 1961, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin directed a film ("Chronicle of a Summer") in which they interviewed a group of diverse Parisians about whether or not they were happy, in a series of man on the street interviews, boozy dinner parties, and casual conversations, with the directors themselves onscreen as moderators of sorts. They then screened the footage for their group of subjects, and watched the fur fly as these people were forced to confront themselves and their peers onscreen. This film would go on to change documentary form and launch the cinéma vérité filmmaking movement. The title of "cinéma vérité" is often incorrectly used to describe observational, fly-on-the-wall style filmmaking, which should actually be called Direct Cinema (e.g. the Maysles Brothers, Frederick Wiseman). Cinéma vérité refers to the practice of the filmmaker engaging or provoking their subjects in conversation/scenarios that allow the filmmaking process to be apparent or even part of the...
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