Cinéma Vérité — Lies that tell the truth? How “film truth” has become perverted by the rise of unreal Reality TV and despots.
Prior to watching the documentary film Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment, if you were to ask me what cinéma verité was, as a style of filmmaking, I would have had no idea and not been able to tell you. However, upon watching the documentary, I slowly began to understand what this experimental form of filmmaking was, and I began to realize, through examples shown in the film, as well as films I would later ponder on about afterwards, that I have seen a number of cinéma verité films and adored them for being so innovative. This includes The Blair Witch Project, as referenced in the documentary, and to a certain extent the film Tangerine, not referenced in the documentary, but one I could point to as a 21st Century example of the influences of this specific filmmaking technique. The way the technical innovations of cinéma verité, also known as direct cinema, changed the documentary form was by allowing documentary filmmakers to insert themselves into the film itself without any fear of the consequences.
By treating the documentary medium less like a conventional feature film and more like a journalistic-meets-experimental filmmaking exercise, the end result is a documentary film that appears to be a lot more natural and unstaged and less manipulated. This isn’t to say that cinéma verité films are not manipulated, as many filmmakers who work within this style of filmmaking have admitted that everything is manipulated as soon as it is captured on film and put through editing software and cut. As quoted by Wolf Koenig during an interview with Peter Wintonick in the documentary film Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment, “Every cut is a lie but you’re telling a lie to tell the truth”. To me, this means that the aim for this style of filmmaking is to try to tell as close to a truth as possible, despite the limitations to do so, as being completely truthful in any film is simply impossible.
There is plenty of good that has come from cinéma verité in terms of impact on the filmmaking world, as the medium of cinema and the audience have been introduced to a wide range of groundbreaking films that have revolutionized the film industry. Perhaps the genre of Found footage films wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the foundation of cinéma verité. This genre is largely considered to have been birthed through the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project, which shocked mainstream audiences and showed the new possibilities for amateur filmmakers to potentially make hundreds of millions of dollars on a small budget film. This film in particular banked on clever marketing and an innovative form of filmmaking and blurred the line between reality and fiction. Another example of a good impact that cinéma verité has made possible, is the relative commercial and critical success of the 2015 film Tangerine, shot entirely on iPhone. This film told a story that humanized the black transgender sex worker community in America and presented characters at the lead of a setting and story that would previously be marginalized and pushed into obscurity. The film was directed by Sean Baker on a budget of just $100,000 USD, who would then go on to produce and direct The Florida Project, which along with Tangerine, became one of the most important films of the 2010’s for depicting serious societal woes in the United States, but both films chose to show these complicated characters involved in a sympathetic and sensitive light.
Some potentially negative results of cinéma verité, in my opinion, could be argued that the form of filmmaking gave way to the eventual rise of cheap and lowbrow Reality TV in the 2000’s and 2010’s, which depending on who you’re talk to might be a positive thing if they’re a fan of these types of television shows. The problem with Reality TV today, however, in my perspective, is that it almost seems as though some of the audience have forgotten that the show must be manipulated, instead focusing on the term “reality” and becoming easily convinced that these characters must be completely unprovoked, non-actors without any sort of direction in front of the cameras. Of course, plenty of people are able to recognize that even “reality” TV is manipulated and does not actually reflect real life in its purity, due to all forms of narrative audio-visual productions consisting of manipulation, as mentioned earlier. The large amount of money that is involved and available to make in the sensationalized entertainment industry has only further propelled the ridiculous and the controversial to the top of TV ratings lists. My personal fear is that Reality TV could become propagandized, and there could be some examples of this being true already with examples like The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, a series that was produced and presented (and undoubtedly manipulated) by Donald Trump, the eventual president of the United States. It now makes it possible for any potential future leader of a democratic nation to present themselves in whatever manner they want, staged and scripted, while presenting it as “reality”. There are plenty of ways those with power and ambition could find ways to present a version of their “truth” to mass audiences even if most of the experience is a lie. How quickly would the leaders of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany try striking a Reality TV deal if they would have had the massive self-aggrandizing tool at their disposal in the 20th century?
