project 16 - other narratives

Documentaries can be divided in two types, those which have a story to tell and those which are observational.

Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman 1967

Titicut Follies is an example of observational documentary. The director and a camera man got invited to film the mental institution in the 1960s and edited a marvellous and appalling movie. Not recommended for sensitive minds.

The narrative can be summarised as below:

Intro: we see a show. We can see it is a bit awkward, the performers do not show fully comfortable and the show is somewhat childish.  
1st part: Shortly we see this must be some mental institution or penitentiary. We see how the inmates are ordered to strip out. The documentary continues as we see the different protagonists, the psychiatric of the institution, who is very unprofessional and judgemental, the guards, who frequently verbally abuse and bully the inmates.  
Break: A short break shows more images of the show, where the policeman also act.  
2nd part: In the second part the stories continue. Particularly shocking is one of the last stories, when the doctor force feeds a man who has not been eating. We can see how the doctor intubates him, smoking, with the but of the cigarrette almost falling. The shot is cut with scenes of a man being shaved - this is very weird in a first instance, why this shot so suddenly? - then the force feeding continues, being cut by the shots of the other man cleaning and preparing the other man. Then you realize the other man is dead! it's being prepared for his funeral... and you also realize it is the same man tha is being force feeded. 
The documentary ends with the end of the show .  

Searching for Sugar Man, Malik Bendjelloul, 2012

The documentary is built up around the amazing story of Sixto Rodriguez, a singer in the 1970s. 

The director must have heard about the story and wants to tell us, unfolding the information carefully and misleading us to assumptions, to then surprise the audience at the end (or rather second half of the movie). 

INTRO - We see a man in a car, driving by a cliff, music is on and he's singing. He is in Cape Town and says that song was important for him in his youth as he was nicknamed Sugar after that song. He says the song is from a singer in the 1960s that dramatically killed himself on stage.  
BACKGROUND USA - The image changes to Detroit, and then immediately they place you in the past and you hear the story about Rodriguez. How he was discovered, how talented he was.  
His history is told with a mix of his songs. 
Decadence, then first record,really good, but he never got success in the USA. 
BACKGROUND SOUTH AFRICA- They move you back to South Africa, they tell you how they think the Lp arrived there, how successful and important for the young and revolution their songs were "anthem for a revolution". The man for them was a mistery. They show how he was censored by some radios. 
INVESTIGATION - Back in present Sugar begins to be curious about who he was, where he was from, how he died (legend says he shoot himself, or he burnt himself on stage). They begin an investigation. How was publishing his songs in Africa, where was the money coming? 
Following the labels they end up calling people who knew him in 1997. 
They find out he was alive!!  
AFTERMATH - So they begin to tell the story of him nowadays, we meet his daughters, they end up paying a flight for him to South Africa, make a concert, we meet Rodriguez, he goes to TV shows and gives interviews… 

END - The story ends up saying how things have not changed much economically for Rodriguez, as he has seen little of the money of the previously sold records in Africa, and has shared the money he has make visiting SA. Very happy / sour story. 

project 15 traditional narrative - viewing

I've seen two older Hollywood classics to analyse the three act narrative:
Act 1, beginning that establishes the background and introduces the characters. It is in equilibrium and the intention is informative.
Act 2, where climax builds up and events unfold. Act 2 usually brings threads together and generates more complex plots.
Act 3, the end, the final resolution plays out and everything returns to an equilibrium.

CASABLANCA

Casablanca is a very good example of the three act approach to narrative. The narrative is broken by a flash back in the middle of Act 2, but aside from that, the pattern is mostly followed. 

THE BIG SLEEP

As opposed to Casablanca, The Big Sleep has a quite complicated plot. I had actually to read out the wikipedia storyline before finalising the exercise. The three acts are somewhat followed, and we can easily identify a first act, until the action (and the music) rump up. There is a "false" act 3, where detective Philip Marlow gets paid for his services and apparently the film is coming to an end, but then the plot complicates even more until the very end, where we find a very short and not quite closed act 3.