Comparing my undergraduate notes about major art historical movements with Stam's coiling of art and film histories, (Film Theory: An Introduction) I notice that the formation of cinema coincides with "Realism" and Naturalism movements in literary and visual arts. My first impulse is that to what degree it is useful to think of such connections when making sense of non-fiction" or (using Dan's term) "non-theatrical" films? While "Realism" is considered as artistic response to Romanticism of aristocratic novelties, it faces a crisis when juxtaposed with the rendering of the "real" as a mere biological construct (promoted by Naturalism). To what degree non-fiction actualities fall into a field of contention and crisis already present through Realism vs. Naturalism discourse? Stam explains how well cinema incorporates the modernism and realism, the technological apparatus and old-fashion romantic melodrama related to Realism. This happens while literary and figurative arts are moving away from "Realism" to Modernism. This factor is highly present in feature documentaries we have seen so far. It seems to me that we can trace both "Realism" and Naturalism in non-fiction films, but is it helpful to draw ourselves further into art history problematics? I mean, does this help us to make a better sense of actualities?
Moreover, associating Orientalist readings to non-Europeans solely (as Stam does) is also problematic. Dan's coiling of "non-exotic" term to both Europe and Africa draws the attention toward the shortcomings of geographically loaded "reductionist" terms. Should we separate the discourse from the geography altogether? Isn't this where Third Cinema was heading? Can we take the idea and apply it to early cinema?
More I think about the term "non-fiction" more I find it problematic. Non-fiction term implies that it tell stories that seem to be predicated on an indexical and authentic relationship with the world outside of the film but that is yet to be verified. Furthermore, they all (maybe not all but mostly) tell stories but we associated them as "real" not "fiction" in similar ways that historiography is communicated through storytelling. But in both cases, the story must be verified and chances are (good chances are) that the stories are not authentic. But even if they are, the stories are nevertheless subjective against "objective," outside of us, facts, or based on Plato's definition of "universal truth." Non-fiction somehow resembles a film that is not a feature fiction film, at least that is what it reminds me, but then who can call Flaherties films or Grass non-fiction? Documentary as a rubric for them simply opens another can of worms. I prefer Dan's "non-theatrical" as a less problematic term, but it does not work for everything that is not "theatrical" by definition. In case of films like those of Flaherty, maybe we should stick with documentary while gently throwing the terms subjective, fictional, and quasi-indexical into it.
hadi