Don't+Look+Back+-+Group+1C

__Presentation Write-up: 'Don't Look Back'.__
Presentation by Carrie Stephens

===="The Cine-eye thanks the American adventure film with its ostentatious dynamism, the dramatisations of the American Pinkertonism, for their rapid shot changes and close ups. They are good, but disorderly: not based on a precise study of movement. A cut above the psychological drama but nonetheless insubstantial. A cliche. A copy of a copy.====

We declare the old films, the romantic, the theatricalised, to be leprous." (Vertov, Dziga 1922, cited in Taylor, Richard and Christie, Ian (eds) 1988)
//Don't Look Back// is a 1960's documentary that followed and filmed Bob Dylan on his triumphant 1967 tour of England. The documentary was filmed by D.A Pennebaker who tried to capture the essence of Dylan's music and life. John Wasserman once quoted that the documentary "is pure cinema vertie. Pennebaker lugs his 16-mm camera into any available cubby hole, lurks still until be blends into the background, waits for a moment of vertie, then rolls."

The documentary is heralded as "a revolutionary step and breaking point in the recording of reality in cinema". So what is cinema vertie? And how does it contribute to the recording of reality in cinema?


 * Cinema vertie**: a form associated with developments in France
 * Direct cinema**: work associated with the United States

- both in the 1960's constituted profound influences on documentary film making

Richard Barsam emphasized the similarities of the two forms:

"Both cinema vertie and direct cinema share objectives and characteristics, they are committed to... **the advantages produced by the use of light weight equipment; to a close relationship between shooting and editing and to producing a cinema that simultaneously brought the film maker and the audience closer to the subject**."

Is there a difference between vertie and direct? Cinema vertie, it was claimed, provoked subjects into action while direct cinema, it was argued, filmed life as it enfolded before the camera.

For practitioners of direct and vertie questions of theory and issues of practice centered on the crucial issue of 'truth' which in this context refers to the camera capacity to depict or revel authentic movements of human experience.

Whilst watching the documentary I jotted down some notes that I thought would present recorded reality. I noticed long, sustained shots that contribue to Mise en Scene, a form of creative filming, that can be a part of the truthfulness of film. I also noticed that Pennebaker spent most of his recording following Dylan during the traveling stages of his tour. He recorded Dylan in real situations and actual events, therefore it would have been difficult to stage these events. The creative use of camera shots, for example close ups, zooming in and out, these show an edgy/different way of showing reality though expressions and emotions.

However, it can be argued that //Don't Look Back// isn't an example of cinema vertie or direct cinema because of some of the elements of the documentary. It seems that Dylan has too much control over what is being recorded. For example, during the interview with the BBC, the shot is cut to an earlier shot of Dylan, so we can no longer see the interview that is taking place. Does Dylan has something to hide? And therefore does this mean the 'actuality' of the documentary and the events are false?


 * ' I know more about what you do- and you don't even have to ask me how or why or anything- just by looking, than you'll even know about me. Ever.'** -Bob Dylan

Beattie, Keith. (2004) //Documentary Screens//. Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillian

Grant, Barry Keith and Sloniowski, Jeannette (eds) (1998) //Documenting the documentary: Close readings of documentary film and video.// Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan.

Nichols, Bill. (2001) //Introduction to Documentary.// Bloomington, Indiana University Press

Taylor, Richard and Christie, Ian (eds) (1988) //The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Union documents 1896-1939.// London, Routledge and Kegan Paul LTD.