DA Pennebaker's Dont Look Back

Factual America

14 Jan

Written By

As a tribute to documentary film pioneer DA Pennebaker, who passed away in August 2019, Factual America explores his groundbreaking Dont Look Back (1967), considered one of the best documentary films of all time.

Dr Stella Bruzzi, author of the acclaimed New Documentary, demonstrates how the film about Bob Dylan is a shining example of the direct cinema style pioneered by Pennebaker and in the process shows us why people like Michael Moore have called him the “grandfather of modern American documentary filmmaking.”

“It’s a scientific truism, that the minute you look at something or intervene you change it, and it doesn’t mean to say it’s untruthful...it’s just a different truth.” - Stella Bruzzi

Time Stamps:

01:14 - Who Professor Bruzzi is and what she’s done.
02:09 - DA Pennebaker, and some examples of the films he’s worked on.
03:28 - Why Dr Bruzzi decided to focus on the film ‘Dont Look Back’.
05:17 - A brief synopsis of the film.
07:23 - What ‘Dont Look Back’ is really about.
08:52 - Analysing the ‘lightbulb’ clip.
15:25 - The dismissal of Joan Baez, and Pennebaker’s clever take on this.
19:46 - The ‘Joan Baez singing’ clip.
21:37 - How Dylan and Baez both appear in this scene.
23:36 - The beginnings of observational documentaries, and their limitations.
27:17 - Pennebaker’s awareness of Dylan’s performance.
29:08 - The ‘Donovan’s song and Dylan’s reply’ clip.
31:45 - Our interpretations of the clip.
36:12 - The cult of personality surrounding Bob Dylan.
38:10 - The legacy of the film and of Pennebaker.
42:25 - The uniquely American aspects of the film.
44:50 - The legacy of direct cinema.

Resources:

Dont Look Back
New Documentary: A Critical Introduction
Alamo Pictures
18 Best Movies to Watch on Netflix in 2022

Transcript for Factual America Episode 4 - DA Pennebaker's Dont Look Back

You're listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals were attending and how to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk. And now, enjoy Factual America with our host Matthew Sherwood.

Matthew: Welcome to Factual America, a podcast that explores the themes that make America unique through the lens of documentary filmmaking. I'm your host Matthew Sherwood and each episode is my pleasure to interview documentary filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Today we will be dedicating the show to D. A. Pennebaker who Michael Moore described as the grandfather of modern American documentary filmmaking. Before going deeper into that, I would like to welcome our guests today. And it is my pleasure to welcome professor Stella Bruzzi. She's a fellow of the British Academy, executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London, which means she basically has no free time. And so even more thankful for her to make time for us to come today. And her expertise is right in line with what we're talking about today - documentary film at television, costume fashion film, masculinity and cinema, representations of the law and true crime in film and television. We'll have to have you back I think for some of these other topics coming up. She's written new documentary, a critical introduction and Seven Up, which looks at the up series of documentaries here in the UK and we are coming to you from Spiritland Studios in King's Cross, London, England. So let me welcome you, professor Bruzzi. Thank you for coming on the show.

Stella: Thank you, Math.

Matthew: As I said, we're going to be looking at D.A. Pennebaker. Now he's it could take an entire podcast just to go through his whole filmography, but I think, his body of work is certainly seen as the documentarian of countercultural 60s, Monterey Pop, but even the 70s and onwards, Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars, certain looked at politics, he was a filmmaker, editor, I think on Robert Drew's Primary, the 1960 documentary, filmmaker, cameraman on crisis behind the presidential commitment that is 1963 did the war room with his partner and wife Chris Hedges 1993 and was executive producer at Al Franken God Spoke and that's just six out of films he's worked on. But, Professor Abruzzi, you've picked, probably his most well known film to look at. And that's Don't Look Back from 1967. It's been preserved at the Library Congress and deemed culturally historically and aesthetically significant. And in a sight and sound pole, it was judged the joint ninth best documentary of all time. So why did you choose this film?

Stella: And why did I choose this film? You've kind of summed up nicely what one thinks of Don Pennebaker. He is a filmmaker who looked at performance, and defined in a way how documentary captures performance, and worked on politics. And in a sense, I mean, it's politics with a small p that you've got there, but you've got one of the best films ever, about performance, and I don't mean about Dylan as a concert performer, I mean, it was the tour of the UK 1965 that is the subject of the film. But actually, Pennebaker is not interested or not as interested in Dylan on stage as he is as Dylan as a performer in the sense of how he interacts with others, knowing I would suggest that the camera was there. So that's the aspect of performance that is crucial and key and really interesting about in Don't look back is Dylan negotiating. When clearly tires, wire doing other things, breaking up with Joan Baez, everything else, but he never I don't think drops. He never forgets that he's being filmed. And it's one of the best films possible, one of the best documentaries is to actually use as an example of that.

Matthew: I think may be hard for us, to you and I, to believe, but there's going to be listeners out there who maybe have never seen this or don't even really know much about it. So

Stella: they're in for a treat

Matthew: Yes. Well, indeed I completely agree. And do you mind giving us a brief synopsis of the film?

Stella: Yeah, Synopsis. It's kind of it basically follows Dylan and his entourage. And in that sense that through this tour of the UK through Drizzly, Manchester, London, go further north come further debt, lots of trains. Quite basic hotel rooms. It's a really interesting. This is Dylan becoming really famous. Someone at the beginning says you've just been in the UK and you've come back and now you're a star. He is a star. He hasn't quite gone electric yet. It's the times they are changing, which comes up again and again. But the fact that they're in these quite basic hotel rooms with Joan Baez eating a banana in the corner and a whole load of people, you know and whining about getting a cup of tea. It gives you a really interesting insight. It hasn't really got a structure beyond following them. Yeah. And in that centre, all it's doing is following Dylan following others. And this is the kind of you know, I mean, we'll talk about observational documentary and what it brought, but following the subject is what this whole film is about. It kind of wherever Dylan takes you, Pennebaker follows and ascent. So it's got a very loose structure.

Matthew: And for those who haven't seen it, I mean, it's not too much to say it's an icon of the genre. It's, in fact, I think we were discussing previously, either even elements of it that have almost become pastiche or you know, people be familiar with the the the opening scene which was actually filmed at the end I guess, with him singing subterranean homesick blues and doing the flashcards and things and that's been parodied so many different times and watching it again, I was seeing even other I've even seen references to it and this is Spinal Tap. It's a very loose structure, but what do you think, what is this film really about?

Stella: It's kind of about how someone is in front of a camera, knowing that there is this intrusion, but no one wanted to show it. And there are a lot of subtexts. And what is so interesting about the film is that you never know whether you're right about your interpretation of the subtext. You know factually what's going on. You also know that Dylan is less likely than almost anybody to tell you anything honest

Matthew: Yeah

Stella: About himself. You kind of know that. Even young you can tell that and you've talked to anybody who's made films with Dylan, they don't expect to get the big reveal. They expect to get an interesting interpretation of sort of performative Bob Dylan, they expect, they don't know which one it's going to be, but they're not. That's what's interesting is that it's very satisfying to sit down and think, to try and interpret scenes. And I know that we'll talk about a couple of sequences but you never actually ultimately know whether your interpretation is actually accurate.

Matthew: And I think that actually, this is a very good point to maybe show that or discuss the first clip which you've chosen which is a about five minutes into the film is having a news conference. He's just landed in in the UK. And he's got these Fleet Street reporters. For those who are not from UK that's where all the newspapers used to be. They're not there anymore, but it's what we still call journalists these days. They're all from Fleet Street. So all these Fleet Street reporters, they're asking these questions. And let's, watch that clip.

Clip 1 (from the movie Don’t Look Back)

Matthew: I think that's a great clip. Stella, what does what is D.A. Pennebaker showing us there? What do we to make of that scene?

Stella: Well, there were two bits I think that really exemplified what it is. It's obviously... And there were several dark cinema, cinema verite over the 60s in the States films that look at formal moments like this. Someone being interviewed. Because this isn't them just being themselves in inverted commas is then being interviewed. And these interactions are quite interesting. There were two moments I think, which exemplify. One is at the beginning of the interview, Dylan has sat down with this huge light bulb on the desk. And someone says, where's that for me says, or a kind friend, or someone gave it to me? Yeah, just me. And then it says, Well, you know, asked what is real messages? He then says, to keep a good head and always carry a light bulb. I'm not suggesting Dylan is not too quick to not be able to amplify lines like that, but it's very interesting. He's obviously bought this prop along

Matthew: mhm

Stella: You feel the whole time that his mocking all these people asking these questions, and there are some hilarious questions like the woman who asks, do you think all the young people who buy your records understand what you're talking about? And he's really quite polite. You know, he doesn't respond in a way that you'd expect. Then the same woman at the end

Matthew: maybe even references a Beatle song

Stella: Yeah, he does lose his rag later. You see him losing his rag big time with someone someone's trying to glass out of the window of the hotel.

Matthew: He was channelling my inner dad.

Stella: It really is. He becomes this father of all these ne'er-do-wells. That's quite an interesting moment. Because you can see, he decides not to say I'm cleverer than you. Which would be very easy to say. And the young people are cleverer than you as well. But she comes back later in probably the most interesting bit of that clip, which is when she whispers with his read the Bible. And they then have this much more interesting conversation about the Bible and this is what observational documentary can do is the dynamics of what's going on. She's, I think it's fair to say, flirting I think. And I think it's fair to say that he's quite intrigued by this. I think it's also fair to say that there's this incredibly cruel edit to Joan Baez, who is Dylan's partner at the time. He's just about to spit out. She's on the periphery of things. Now, it is an edit, it is not a pan over to that. So you don't actually know. But Pennebaker has made it so that he hasn't said anything. And this is what this film can do. He hasn't said anything about Joan Baez or about the situation with the whispering woman. But what is sort of setting up is the disappointment Joy Byers, but then there's an interesting moment when agenda says, Who are you? and Joan Baez says, and she spells her name. Oh, I've been looking for you all day. Great. How wonderful. And in a way, I've always interpreted that. I mean that Pennebaker saying. I think this is as much about Joan Baez and actually William Hoffman's essay on the Don't Look Back. He's clearly completely in love with Joan Baez. He writes about Joan Baez forgets Dylan. But Pennebaker is setting this up. It's a very, very neat sequence, flirtation into jilted partner. But who's then recuperated as it were, by someone, by this kind of man who looks overwhelmed suddenly realizing his with Joan Baez.

Matthew: Hadn't even thought about that. And that's true art to be able to do something like that. It is an edit. It's not a pan, but still to quickly capture that just by filming what's happening there

Stella: The dismissal, because I think that's what it is of Joan Baez that you get through the film and the marginalization of her is something which I think Pennebaker is himself tussling with. Dylan is more talented. Perhaps people would disagree. I mean, she's got a very nice voice, but he is a genius. And he's treating her very badly.

Matthew: Yes, definitely. And it's not explicit, or pretty explicit, but it's not quite you know, it's very subtle because it seems like it's not going to be a show about Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, but there always seems to be another attractive young woman in the room. Who's sitting in the corner ... Who's she, where does she come from, kind of that ...

Stella: Absolutely. With the whispering journalist at the beginning, he could be saying anything. Also that particular question to Robert Zimmerman is very interesting. You know that she hasn't really thought through that conversation about the Bible at all. She's just trying to, you get an impression, to ask Dylan just to keep the conversation going. But the treatment of Baez... You see quite a lot of Joan Baez singing. And there's a wonderful sequence later, where you see her singing, turn, turn again, turn, turn, turn again. In that sequence, there is Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and there's Dylan hilariously at a typewriter. Typing. I mean, presumably he could just be typing Allah The Shining.

Matthew: All work and no play.

Stella: Yeah, well, you assume because of the context that his typing some amazing lyrics with someone singing different lyrics in background. But back to Joan Baez and the fact also that Benny Baker didn't put artificial lights, so Joan Baez is even in the wonderfully restored version. That one can see now. She's pretty dark, and Dylan's got his back to her typing. And Albert Grossman is not engrossed at all and what Joan Baez is doing and yes, there's this woman on the couch. You assume waiting for Dylan to stop typing, you know? And it's just, it's so painful. I mean, if you empathize with Joan Baez, it's not just a gender thing, but I mean, if you're a woman watching it, she's been treated so badly and yet she's got great dignity. She carries on singing and being Joan Baez, and you just think you were famous before he was, but it's the way that the camera can, without dictating, just pick up on this very complex interpersonal relationship.

Matthew: Well, since you've so brilliantly described the scene and everything, maybe this would be a good time to actually play that clip.

Stella: Okay.

Matthew: And then we can come back out. But without further ado, let's watch that clip that Stella has just set up for so nicely.

Clip 2 (from the film Don’t Look Back)

You're listening to Factual America, subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures to keep up to date with new releases and upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. And now back to Factual America.

Matthew: Welcome back to Factual America. So we've just watched that clip with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the hotel room. I think it's in London. So is there something here? I think maybe we sometimes forget, we have the benefit of time. Where a I hate to put it this way, but we're maybe we're more educated audience or less naive audience. But if you put it back into the context of 60s, I guess people can react two ways to being filmed. And you have someone like Baez, who is I think just keeping her dignity and not playing up to the camera. She's just being who she is. And you've got Dylan there who even when he's at the typewriter, it reminds me of my 14-year-old son, you know, he's kind of got his head moving back and forth, not doing his homework. Oh, do you want to say something about that?

Stella: Yeah, there's one look where he looks over at Joan Baez, it's kind of saying, well, I interpret it as Can you just shut up?

Matthew: Yeah.

Stella: Because then you have some more singing and he's kind of lolling about and he is very absorbed, but he's also very self consciously absorbed. And in that sense, it's like watching an actor, play someone who is asleep, and they don't look asleep. They look like someone who's performing someone who's asleep. And you're very aware of the layers when you're watching Dylan, not so much with other people. You always think... I think you can see throughout the film, a brain working of how am I coming across, and if that's even more painful, because you sit down and think if he's thought this through his coming across as a not very nice person and he doesn't care. Maybe it's a bit, to get to the point, I'm thinking, isn't that what observational cinema supposed to be? It's just to show you the truth, yet we've got constructs here, we've got him with the light bulb at the press conference, we've got him playing to the camera. Can you actually ever be truly observational? Or I guess you can't when you're filming Dylan, but maybe that's the point. I think what you see in the film Don't Look Back, which is relatively early in the 60s, a major era of discovering observational documentary, up until 1959. You couldn't record sync sound easily because the sound equipment just wasn't portable. Cameras had got much lighter, so 16 millimetre cameras, you could use them. And I think there was a sense in which having realized what this meant, this meant you could follow the subject, you could go out into the world and film it and capture it. And you get a film like Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer. Where the first sequence is a woman being followed by a camera, her sound equipment, going out asking people are you happy? And she gets quite excited around Paris. Different answers and it was a moment when I think filmmakers really did think we can put a camera in a situation and we can film it we can show people what reality is like, what the truth is like, what you get in Don't look back is the complete failure of that as a mission because actually, it's much more interesting because what you get in Don't look back is the only truth the documentary can ever capture, which is what's happening in front of the camera. The truth that would have unfolded in that hotel room with Joan Baez, had the camera not turned up, would have been different. She might have sung the song, he might have carried on typing. But it would have been different. You will never know what it is. And what I think Donn Pennebaker and Albert Maysles and Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, all the others that they worked with believed, weren't naive enough to believe I think, at the time was that you could collapse the difference between the two. Between the world before the camera and the world when the camera was there. In that sense, we do know better. We know that it's a scientific truism that the minute you kind of look at something or you intervene, it will change it. And it is a change. It doesn't mean to say that it's untruthful. I think people in the 90s especially kind of said, Oh, this is all a fiction. It's not a fiction. It's just a different truth.

Matthew: I even remember when Roger Me came out, before I even went and saw it, all this criticism, well, that one scene actually happened before that other scene. And I think if you watch Don't look back close enough, maybe that's actually a hotel in London, but yet I know they're supposed to be in Birmingham or something like that, but it doesn't get in the way.

Stella: It only gets in the way of what they say the film is about. So when they say we didn't falsify anything, and then you say, precisely. This is not the Manchester hotel room. It doesn't matter because actually, it's a film about performance. It's not an accurate film, following sequentially someone for a tour.

Matthew: Do you think Pennebaker was on the joke? But it was he in on the joke, he must have realized what Dylan was doing.

Stella: He must have realized what Dylan was doing. But like any good filmmaker, he won't let on just as Dylan's not letting on. Because if you let on, that you understand the rules of the game, Dylan would change the rules of the game.

Matthew: And what's interesting, the whole reason this happened is because Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, asked Pennebaker, to come in and film it.

Stella: Because he realized

Matthew: what this could do?

Stella: Yeah. And it's kind of cemented Dylan's image from that era early.

Matthew: There's one last clip from the film that I think helps illustrate all these points. And that's the one where we hear a lot about the Scottish, well, they called him a folk singer, he later went electric too and all the stuff, but the Scottish singer, Donovan, throughout this piece and it seems to be a running joke with Dylan and his entourage. They see references to it in the tabloid press and then they just... He's even taped up headlines on his hotel wall and things like that. We here in this podcast try to make a Paul Brennan from Salesman references in every podcast and I think Dylan and his crew said, Well, we got it in every scene were filmed. You got to mention Donovan or something like that. So what happens is if there is a structure, maybe we finally get to a point where we get the two of them together in a room, and that's kind of where the of... It not really, but it kind of leads us to that. So let's watch this clip where first Donovan plays a song and then Dylan replies with his own song

Clip 3
(from the movie Don't Look Back)

Matthew: So I think that's one of the classic scenes from Don't Look Back. Stella, what do you want to say about that clip in terms of what we've been talking about?

Stella: About the Donovan clip? It's well, it is leading up to it. As you indicated, you're expecting this, Dylan has been mocking and making fun of Donovan all the way through. And Donovan, Who's this Donovan, Nino? And finally Donovan arrives or struck, starstruck, this kind of his kind of American icon has come in and he's sitting there in this hotel room and he's asked to sing, and so Donovan does. And I think it's nice when Donovan starts singing. You think this is a nice song, and he ends with the line to sing for you. And it's really interesting watching that because firstly, although it starts off with the camera looking at Donovan, very quickly Don Pennebaker is not nearly as interested in Donovan, as he is and Dylan. And there were a couple of moments when you hear Dylan say, nice song, great song. And you don't know how to take that. But then when you have a look at him and just sitting there listening, he's not tapping his feet or doing anything is not responding to the music. And I think the implication is sort of I'm waiting for you to finish. And then he does finish. And the guitar is handed over. It's like some kind of strange form of not jousting. It's kind of some form of courtly ritual where you don't know it's some game going on. It is a macho game, but they're not being very mature about it. And then Dylan starts up and instantly the first cause when he starts playing Baby Blue, you think it just blows Donovan out the water, and you just think, oh. And it's a very crisp moment. Again, you you don't quite know how you've got that there's nothing that tells you definitively that it is this kind of masculine rivalry moment, but it really is. There's a very nice moment when Dylan singing, and the camera then goes over to Donovan's face and Donovan looks down and I've always thought that that's the moment of realization, Donovan realizes that he's never going to be Dylan. But it's also it's such a moment, which in capital, it's one of those moments that really exemplifies the film because you can never know what that look's about. At the end of Salesman, for example, there's no poor Brennan looking out of the window, I've always thought he's just about to be stacked, and he is very depressed. He might just be hungry. And here, Donovan might just be thinking, Oh, yeah, now this is quite a nice film. But actually, I'm a bit hungry too.

Matthew: Or forgot to tie my shoe

Stella: There's no way in which is, and so that's what's so liberating about these films, and about this moment, is that you can read an entire subtext. And no one's going to tell you whether you're right. But my interpretation of it is that Dylan is saying, I'm now going to show you how it's really done.

Matthew: Yeah.

Stella: And he just does it very nonchalantly. I could do this all day everyday whether someone's singing in the background or whatever, I'm just Dylan

Matthew: And for someone who with his talent is cutting, his ability to just do it so with such nonchalance, that just makes it even worse for someone like Donovan. If indeed he's sort of put down by the whole thing

Stella: But also you realize that Donovan represents someone who wants to copy Dylan and is just about to disappear. I hadn't done my Dylan homework I'm afraid, but it goes into Blonde on Blonde is just after this and he starts to have a bit of electric and...

Matthew: Sorry for you Dylan fans out there, don't take us to test, this is not a podcast about Bob Dylan where I will get names of songs incorrect, will get dates wrong, when he went electric, when he didn't, and all these sort of things, but at the same time, again, in this whole idea of cult of personality that i think it's hard to get beyond. You can't discuss this film without discussing the personality that is Bob Dylan.

Stella: Yeah, you can't. In terms of nations and rivalries it's quite interesting because we in Britain, Scotland, England, whatever, couldn't rival Bob Dylan in terms of folk singing. But than we had the Beatles, when it comes to 60s music. And I suppose there were the Stones as well. What we didn't have...

Matthew: And Stones fans don't take offense to that comment either.

Stella: Yeah, but this is a moment where the Gulf is quite marked. This is something which we didn't rival. And you get this here. I mean, especially with lyrics, they know kind of Dylan's lyrics are much more complicated, obviously than anything you've heard Joan Baez sing and you hear Donovan sing.

Matthew: But it's interesting because I even came across a quote from Donovan, we interviewed many years later and he said, I think bit of maybe a bit of sour grapes. He's like, Look, these American folk singers were just taking the old Celtic songs that we had had, and they were taking him running with them. I mean, obviously, there's new growth spirituals and these sort of things at the time. But, then at the same time, you have the British invasion, which was taken American rhythm and blues, perfecting it and going and taking it back to America. So it's kind of this fluidity across a wide chasm that is the Atlantic ocean. I think this is a good point to start talking about sort of, what is the legacy of this film, what is the legacy of D.A. Pennebaker, I think we've already touched on it that what was document filmmaking like before. No one happens in a vacuum. There were others at around this time. That must have been quite a group that drew us and associates who are doing all that work for time life. And you had the Albert Maysles is on there, Pennebaker is on there. But looking at the, even that top 100 list, there's a couple films from the 1920s Nanook of The North, Man with a Movie Camera, the Russian one, I don't use my Russian, and then you have this gap. And there's one from the 50s a French film and then then you get the next one on that list, in terms of chronology is Don't Look Back. What was documentary filmmaking like before Pennebaker, and then after he

Stella: I think there's a reason for the huge gaps before 1960, which is that a film like, Don't look back hasn't lost its modernity, because it actually still, it's in black and white and everything else, it's subjects were young, and it's filmmakers now sadly dead, but though... We recognize that as a style, and we'll get there in a moment. It's as if kind of everything before is like it has become kind of BC as opposed to AD, and that moment was quite an interesting one. It's the moment when documentary filmmaking became responsive, as opposed to didactic films before were much more didactic. They are more formally experimental in some ways. Man With a Movie Camera is unstructured. Again, it just goes out, films whatever bits of life are there. But one got very used to certain things. One got very used to for example of pretty didactic voiceover, something like the march of time for the World War, is a classic. Yeah, Time marches on. And reconstruction. Nanook of the North is a classic example when couldn't get to reality. So what brought it to the studio? And what you got with Drew associates, and we mustn't forget Frederick Wiseman, who wasn't part of that group that was part of the movement. His films different, but he is part of the observational movement. And in France, you had cinema verite a to kind of genre-ish movement influenced by anthropology and by observation, by the desire to scientifically, in a sense, observe people and in Britain don't it's marginalized. It's less important, but the free cinema movement where filmmakers such as Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson started and you see there that same transition towards the difference that portable cameras and sync sound make, I mean, every day except Christmas about Covent Garden fruit market is Lindsay Anderson's film is all posts sunk. And We Are the Lambeth Boys Khalil Rice's film from 59 is most fit sink sound and the difference is phenomenal. So the difference is that it feels natural, and that we are in the space with the people. And that was a completely revolutionary concept.

Matthew: And you mentioned the British filmmakers, we talked about cinema verite, but with what Pennebaker and others are doing, is this something uniquely American about this? Was this something that would only have happened in America or what was it? What do you think?

Stella: Well, would it have only happened in America? The short answer is probably no. But what is definitely yes, is that it was by far the most important example of the cinema verite, a movement. I don't want to get stuck up on terms but the American movement was actually direct cinema and that in a sense is much more useful term. It's actually cinema that is direct access to the world cinema, cinema verite, cinema of truth, it actually goes back to what you saw in France and that's much more reflexive. At the end of Chronicle of a Summer you get the people who are in the film, critiquing themselves watching the film saying, Oh, I didn't realize I was coming across like that. I don't like myself. Now, I don't like that post. You know, that is cinema verite. But it became the catch all term. By far the most influential group of filmmakers were the Leacock, Drew, Pennebaker, Maysles group. And what came out of that was discussed at the beginning is what Pennebaker represents, which is how to film performance and how to film politics. And that's the outstanding legacy of direct cinema, really.

Matthew: For you geeks you can google these terms. And there's a Venn diagram actually out there that tries to show you. It's a actually an academic piece that someone's done. Showing the way how they all sort of fit in together, if you into Venn diagrams, not that I'm suggesting you should.

Stella: Visit the centre, Donn Pennebaker.

Matthew: Well, yeah, it's cinema verite versus direct cinema. And I forget the third

Stella: People always forget the British one. It's quite interesting. Those films from the late 50s, are very interesting.

Matthew: Well, when we become factual Britain, we will make a move that direction. I think we unfortunately have to start bringing things to a close here. What is Pennebaker's or even direct cinemas sort of lasting legacy? I know, you deal with a lot. You teach courses and you've a lot of interaction with young filmmakers. What is the legacy here? May even if they don't know the names, do they, still pay homage to them? And are they still influenced by them?

Stella: Filmmakers? You started off by mentioning Michael Moore announcing the death of Don Pennebaker. Yes, they're very different. But Michael Moore and filmmakers, like the British filmmaker, Nick Broomfield, whose our version of Michael Moore, they wouldn't exist without filmmakers like Donn Pennebaker. Yes they are in front of the camera. But actually, that's the real legacy of observational documentary, is that we've got to understanding that what you get in front of the camera is a performance. And so what did the extension of that is the filmmaker acknowledging that by being in his or her own films. Doesn't mean to say that the interaction with the real world has gone away? I think that it might seem like a slightly... It's a long and convoluted journey, but the journey from Pennebaker through to Michael Moore is actually quite a direct route. Because, we see Dylan performing, then we see Michael Moore performing - very different performances. But what they're both suggesting is that that's what you get is the truth in front of the camera, is what you can hold on to.

Matthew: Yeah. I think that's a very good place to come to an end and just wanted to thanks. Stella, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. If you agree, we'd love to have you again.

Stella: It's been great.

Matthew: I've really enjoyed this. If someone wanted to buy your new documentary book, how would they go about that?

Stella: Well, it is still available. The second edition. The first edition is not. So, various different outlets.

Matthew: Okay, we don't have any plugs. We don't have any sponsorship agreements yet. So go look for I think it's a New Documentary critical introduction revised edition routledge 2006.

Stella: Yeah. Makes it sound very old. But I like to feel that I'm going to go back there

Matthew: Well, I think you probably will. And I think it's probably what you wrote back then is timeless. So I just wanted to ask all our listeners, thank you again for joining us. Please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family, wherever you happen to listen to podcasts. And this is Factual America signing off.

You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guest and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures, to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals were attending and to conduct with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk

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DA Pennebaker's Dont Look Back

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DA Pennebaker's Dont Look Back

Time Stamps:

Resources:

Connect with Dr Stella Bruzzi:

More from Factual America:

Interesting Reading from Factual America:

Transcript for Factual America Episode 4 - DA Pennebaker's Dont Look Back

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