Use Of Clay In Sculptures Throughout History

The use of clay in sculptures throughout history

The words ‘sculpture’ and ‘sculptor’ both came into English from a Latin word meaning ‘to carve’. A sculptor is therefore first of all a ‘carver’, an artist who carves figures and objects out of solid substances such as wood or stone. However there is also another kind of sculpture, which is called ‘modelling’. Instead of cutting the material the modeller shapes it with his hands using something quite soft like clay, which he later bakes hard or copies in a metal like bronze.

Sculptures always have depth and should be looked at from different positions, from the sides as well as the front and sometimes from all round. They are also quite often nice to touch with your hands.

The kind of sculpture an artist makes depends on the material he chooses to use. Clay is soft and pliable, so the sculptor can use his hands to shape it and therefore clay can be moulded more delicately than for instance stone, which has to be cut with a chisel.

Clay is very fine particles of dirt, which float in a stream or river and then sink to the bottom where they press on each other and stick together. You usually find clay along the banks of a river or stream where the river is pulling dirt down off the mountains or hills and dropping it in a quiet part of the river lower down. So people who live in river valleys like the Harappans or Egyptians generally find a lot of clay.

Clay therefore is easy and cheap to get, it’s squishy when wet and can be moulded into any shape you like. It quickly dries in the sun as the water evaporates. The clay pots or sculptures are then put in a fire or oven called a kiln and baked at a high temperature to make it even harder. This is called ‘firing’.

The prehistoric people of Japan made clay figures intended as funeral sculptures. The figures derived their power from early peoples love of monumentality.

Above: Venus Of Willendorf

In Ancient times, the earliest clay figure ‘Venus of Willendorf’ dates back to about 24000 to 22000 B.C. and is a female figure approximately eleven centimetres high. The ‘Woman with Raised Arms’ from the 7^th century shows a typical funerary offering.

Above: Woman With Raised Arms

People first started to fire clay about 6000 B.C. when early nomadic cultures began to establish the first civilisations. The ancient civilisation of Egypt and Mesopotamia, which began about 5000 years ago, produced great builders and sculptors. Small sculptured forms of servants and animals used to be placed in Egyptian tombs so that the dead person should not go alone and unattended into the next world. Sculpture was also used to decorate the walls of the tombs.

The Greeks created the noblest and most beautiful sculptures of the ancient world. They were aimed at copying the life and movement of the human body.

                       

The potter’s wheel was first used in the Bronze Age around 3000 B.C. and then a newer, faster version appeared in Asia and Europe in 2000 B.C.

The different civilisations began to develop their own distinctive style and patterns of clay sculptures, depicting deities and forms found in nature. Clay was also used for cooking pots and drinking vessels.

The Chinese are also famous for their clay sculptures, which include realistic and lively figures of horses, camels, men and strange beasts.

Above: Chinese Terracotta Soldiers and Horses

In India most of the sculpture was done as part of buildings, particularly of temples. Carvings of animals and birds, gods and men, dancing figures, monsters and demons covered the walls.

The races of ancient Mexico produced more clay sculptures than any other people. The custom was that all clay figures and pottery had to be destroyed every fifty-two years to mark the end of a cycle or period, and so each time artist and potters started all over again to replace them.

Clay sculptures from Southern Africa can be traced as far back as 600 A.D. These figures have both human and animal characteristics.

In 1499 Da Vinci used his knowledge of animal anatomy to design and produce a very large clay model of a planned bronze sculpture.

Sculptors of the eighteen hundreds like the Renaissance sculptors worked in large workshops with student assistants, and during this period the industrially developed technique of sand-mould casting was used to mass produce bronzes.

Sculptors today use very different methods and materials from those used in the past. Most sculptors these days work alone and are trained in schools not in workshops as apprentices. Sculptors show collections of their work at art galleries and very few carve using wood or stone.

Modellers using clay use their hands and trimming and shaping tools. As soft clay cannot support its own weight when drawn into thin shapes, modellers overcome this by building a framework called an ‘armature’ to support the figure. An armature consists of wire for small figures and metal tubing for larger ones. To give the sculpture permanence, a casting must be made. This is a highly specialised and expensive process that few sculptors can do themselves. Most of them make a model and take it to a foundry where an enlarged copy is cast.

Today potters and sculptors use different glazing techniques, or no glaze at all before firing their creations in kilns. Artists use wood-burning oil and gas kilns to fire their clay sculptures, which make them incredibly hard and impervious to water.

Patrick Johnson 11S1

LO3.1- Clay Animal Sculptress Nick Mackman

Clay Animal Sculptures: Nick Mackman

·        Born 1972 in Beverly, Yorkshire

·        Took Foundation Course in Art and Design- York College Of Art and Technology. Originally painted on canvas, then discovered clay on this course.

·        HND- ceramics- Carmarthenshire College of Technology Of Art- awarded distinction, Trudy Norman Award, and “Student Of The Year 1993”

·        University Of Wales Institute Cardiff- Ceramics degree

·        1997- Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award

·        Great love for animals, especially dogs.

·        Worked as a rhino keeper in Chester Zoo during HND course, which allowed her to observe the mannerisms of animals, get involved and study the nature of a wide variety of them. This is evident in her sketch and photography work, with reference to, and research from wildlife documentaries, books and magazines. Enjoys studying everyday life of animals including activities such as courtships, relations between mothers and children etc.

·        Has also travelled to Botswana, Madagascar, and Nepal to observe wild animals, which she represented in photographs and sketches.

·        Was invited to visit the Luangwa National Park in Zambia by the Bushcamp Company in 2010.

·        She uses T-material (strongest type of clay), with paper pulp for a lightweight but strong result. The pulp achieves it’s lightweight advantage by burning out in the firing, which then allows for more structural possibilities.

·        Uses papier mache, which is unbreakable and lends itself to clay, on more delicate extremities. Bristles are also used sometimes to complete some of her pieces.

·        2010- won Open Category in Wildlife Artist Of The Year Competition, a small, yet effective charity which funds African and Asian projects working to help save wild critically endangered animals.

·        Raku fires most of her pieces, to give a natural, rich crackled glaze.

·        Focuses more on the beauty, humour and tenderness of animals rather than their ugliness or aggressive nature.

·        Widely exhibited.

·        Accepted British Airway and Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Competition commissions, in which she created trophies for the award winners.

·        Regularly undertakes animal sculptural commissions for private collectors and corporate clients.

·        Celebrities such as John Cleese, Judy Dench, David Shepherd, Chris Packham and Viscountess Serena Linley, as well as others, own sculptures which she has made.

·        Lives in Devon, South West England, with her husband, two dogs and twin children.

Quotes relating to Nick and her work:

“Some of my animals are relatively unknown or highly endangered. It is with these animals that I try to bridge the gap in current public perception. I aim to enlighten people to the beauty, humour and tenderness of those animals that are largely seen or represented as purely aggressive, dangerous or ugly. Above all, I hope that humankind will feel the individuality of each animal and appreciate its intrinsic beauty.


“The passion which powers my work has evolved from my awareness, awe and wonder of the strangeness of the animal kingdom and its complex survival structures and systems. I hope that my pieces will encourage understanding and compassion from the human individual which in turn will result in a deeper level of enjoyment, respect and admiration for the beauty in the beast.”


Patrick Johnson 11S1

LO3.4 Strengths And Weaknesses Of Clay Artefact

Strengths And Weaknesses Of Clay Artefact In More Detail

When I decided to craft an owl out of clay, I thought it would be quite easy, as long as I kept it relatively 2d, and didn’t try and do anything overly complex. Once I had finished my rough sculpture of an owl, I felt that it wasn’t too hard to complete, and that I could easily do another one, and only need to make it look a bit smoother and more professional looking. I felt proud of the owl I had created, as well as the texture on it’s wings and the grooves I had created for eyes, a nose and other features.

However, after advice from Mrs Kearns to create a snake, I realised that this was probably the best idea, as, even though my owl looked decent enough, it would look more professional to create an animal in 3d, and to do this with an owl would prove rather difficult for me, as I am by no means an expert in clay modelling.

Despite my feelings that a snake would prove one of the easiest 3d animals to sculpture out of clay, my original attempts proved useless. The snakes were hopelessly flimsy, contained no filling at all and were just skeletons of clay.

One of the main problems was that, with no previous experience of crafting artefacts out of clay, I was not quite sure what techniques to use to make my artefact better and easier to create. After asking Mrs Kearns, she advised that I used a newspaper filling as the body, and then used a substance called slip (mixture of water and clay) to help the clay exterior attach better to this.

I decided to keep with the idea of starting off with smaller models, and then moving on a larger snake when I was more confident and had mastered the techniques involved. A further mistake of not making the newspaper filling thick enough caused the snakes to develop cracks, and even snap off in certain sections.

Even if these problems hadn’t occurred, the snakes I had created so far still looked rather ugly and not very well made. The edge seemed rather jagged in places and not very smooth. Part of the problem was that some of the clay I was using was soft, and some more hardened. The softer clay proved easier to craft and looked much better, whereas the more solid clay proved difficult to mould into rounded shapes and stuck out more.

I then decided to identify all my weaknesses and make my next snake much better. I wasn’t keen on ripping out huge chunks of clay and sticking them on as in my previous attempts, as although this got the overcoat done quicker and easier, it promoted problems such as cracks and a bumpy surface later on. I decided to be more inventive in my approach, and for my next small snake, I added the clay exterior in small, better formed scales. This may have taken longer than the other method, but it proved more effective both visually and structurally.

This next snake also proved stronger, as I used a thicker bulk of newspaper tied together with masking tape. Once finished with the whole body covered in clay and significant features such as the eyes and tongue made clear, I observed the snake I had created. It was much better than my previous attempts, stronger and more compact, and, although the texture wasn’t smooth, it was deliberately that way and looked more realistic than previously.

I then repeated this for the larger snake.

When both snakes had been fired, the painting and dabbing processes proved rather easy, and I enjoyed being creative with the shades of lighter and darker colours I varied around the snake’s body. This created an ancient and dirty texture which worked in making the final snakes look weathered, wild and camouflaged.

Patrick Johnson 11S1

Artefact Unit Progress Clay Documentary

Artefact Unit Progress Log

Artefact Unit Progress Log

3^rd October 2010

I have researched various animals which I could create in clay, including crocodiles, fish and lizards, printed out images of them and brought them into school along with a model owl. However, I liked the idea of creating an owl, and thought that a fish may prove rather too easy, and that I would not get marked as highly for it than a slightly more complex and textured animal. I had considered doing either a crocodile or lizard, but thought that the legs might prove quite fiddly and hard to make stable and bulky enough to successfully attach to the rest of the body. After help from Marjan to create the basic shape and perch for the owl, I began creating the wings out of separate pieces of clay, and once I had perfected the shape, I added them to the owl, and then proceeded to engrave the basic shape of the owl’s face into the clay using a knife. I then used the other end of a blue sharp object to create holes for the eyes and engraved the shape of the nose. Once I had done this, I engraved lines on the edge outside the circle to create a furry texture, and began to create small miniature scales to stick onto the chest of the owl to create a scaled texture. Once I had completed and added enough scales, I set about engraving a similar texture onto the wings. Unfortunately, that was all the time I had that day, but I plan to complete my owl in future diploma lessons.

4^th October 2010

Today, Mrs Kearns advised me that it would be much easier for me if I decided to create a snake instead. So, I spent today’s lesson finding the best picture of snakes on the internet, for which I found several different ones, some coiled, some of just the snake’s head, some with it’s mouth open and teeth on display etc. Unfortunately, the printer wasn’t working until near the end, so it was not worth starting to do any actual clay work.

5^th October 2010

This lesson, I decided to experiment with different textures in an attempt to try and find the best one to use on my snake. I used a variety of different materials including small rolling pins with square, and diamond shaped imprints, as well as similarly shaped netting with a variation in hole sizes. The method I used to do so was to roll out a slab of clay and test one or a mixture of textures onto this, and once I had tried out one texture, I smoothed out the clay and tried another one. I repeated the process numerous times until I finally decided on a simple, yet effective red netting with more circular shaped holes than the other netting. This proved to be rather alternative, yet just as effective.

8^th October 2010

This lesson, I gathered the necessary equipment of a mat, rolling pin and clay and began work on creating a small snake from the images I had collected. Firstly, I flattened and rolled out a clump of clay until it was quite long and narrow, and split it in half down the middle. I took one of these halves, curled up the edges, folded these both inwards, and attached them at the top. I then joined them both at the end to create a tail, and moulded a separate head shaped part which I attached to the other end. I repeated the same procedure with the other half of clay, and then asked Mrs Kearns if this was the right way of going about making them. She said that it was good as a practise attempt, but when I attempted to create a larger snake, it would be best if I first created a bulk of newspaper, bound together with masking tape, which was as long as I planned the snake to be, and then added the clay round the sides of that, to give the whole thing a bit more structure and sturdiness.

11^th October 2010

Today, I compiled a collection of newspaper from a drawer in L10, screwed this up into a film, twisted and gnarled shape, got some clay, rolled different layers out, and added different bits at a time to the newspaper.

12^th October 2010

This lesson, I continued rolling out more clay and added this to the newspaper until I had created a full outer layer. However, this did not seem very thick, and so I began adding another layer which was thicker on top of this.

15^th October 2010

In today’s diploma lesson, I continued adding an extra layer of clay to my snake, and by the end of the lesson it was almost complete.

16^th October 2010

This lesson, I completed the new layer of the snake, but, after trying to attach another piece of newspaper to this to create more of a body, I realised that I would have to create the full newspaper shape first and bind this with masking tape at the start instead of as I was going along. I decided I needed to start again.

19^th October 2010

Today, I gathered together more newspaper and began joining separate strands together using masking tape to create a firm and solid body to begin with. Mrs Kearns also advised me, once I had rolled out a section of clay, to score one side of the slab with a knife around the edges and then cover the edges with a mixture of clay and water called schlip in order to make the clay stick and attach better to the newspaper bulk. By the end of the lesson, I had covered about a third of the snake with clay.

22^nd October 2010

Today, I managed to cover most of the rest of the snake, not including the head.

23^rd October 2010

Disaster struck today, as when I got my snake out of the cupboard, I discovered that it was very flimsy at one end, and this was when I decided that the newspaper bulk needed to be made of more newspaper have more masking tape on it. I even considered doing a coiled snake as Mr Bigland suggested this to me when he saw my images of research. However, I consulted Mrs Kearns on the matter and she thought it would be easier for me to create a normal straight snake.

1^st November 2010

Today I tried again, and managed to create a thicker, firmer and sturdier wad of newspaper with more masking tape, including a ball- like section representing the head at one end. Once I had created this, I realised that the shape of the newspaper would have to be fatter towards the head and gradually get thinner as it reached the tail. I squashed together the newspaper with my hands at the end and added more newspaper in attempts to thicken the other end.

4^th November 2010

This lesson, I started to add some clay to the body of the snake using schlip. However, instead of just piling the clay on in layers like my previous attempts, I thought about how to make my snake look more artistic. Unlike my previous tactics of imprinting the scaly texture of the snake onto the clay using different patterns and materials, this time I decided to initially craft scale shaped segments out of clay and then attach them to the snake’s body, and began doing this.

5^th November 2010

Today, I resumed my work on the creating and attaching the scaled segments onto my snake’s body, with variation on different sizes. By the end of the lesson, I had placed scales upon the full body of my snake.

8^th November 2010

This lesson, I set about adding the finishing touches to my snake including creating two ovular shaped segments of clay to represent the eyes, and then used a knife to create slits in the middle of each to act as pupils.

Patrick Johnson 11S1

The History Of Clay

The History Of Clay

When you put clay into a kiln, this hardens the substance, and is also known as firing. It can then be used to make bricks or tiles. 6000 BC was round about when people first began to fire clay, and the first evidence of the production of bricks was more than 5000 years ago, in the time of the Babylonians.

They were first used in their unbaked form, and just left to dry in the sun. They then proceeded to mix straw with the clay to help it stick together better, in order to build “mud-brick” houses.

It wasn’t until 2500 BC when people began to bake clay to be used as bricks. As stone wasn’t always available, and crafting proved difficult and time consuming, clay was the obvious option, as it was easy to mould, allowing the builder to create bricks of all different sizes. This led to different trends in architectural design in different periods in history and even separate trends in particular places.

Terracotta bricks (created with the natural material elements of clay, sand, water and then fire), were used by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and furthermore throughout history.

Terracotta bricks are also evident in the Po Valley in Italy dating back to the 2^nd Century BC, as clay was more common than stone or marble in this area. It was used to imitate marble, by coating the clay with plaster and then decorated.

However, kilns set up around Piedmont in Italy, dated much earlier, show evidence of featuring slit like handles (“handle bricks”), which made bricks easier to carry.

The 12^th Century saw the introduction of bricks from Italy to Germany, and this started the style of “brick gothic”, a reduced style of Gothic architecture which soon grew popular in Northern Europe and around the Baltic Sea, where there are no natural rock resources. The style of “brick gothic” consists of buildings built almost entirely of bricks, and examples can be found in Denmark, Germany, Poland and Russia.

Above: Brick Gothic Architecture

In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the brickwork on houses was often covered by plaster, as visible bricks had become unpopular.

The introduction of canals, railways, and roads meant that bricks could be transported much more easily over long distances, a great improvement on the previous method of horse and cart.

The demand for bricks grew during the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and in the mid 18^th century, visible brick walls again became more popular. Furthermore, there was a building boom in the mid 19^th century in certain American cities such as Boston and New York, and locally made bricks were used instead of the usual brownstones of New Jersey and Connecticut.

Towards the beginning of the 19^th Century, brick office buildings fell out of favour, as there was a trend for building offices upwards from materials such a cast and wrought iron, steel and concrete.

However, brick is still used to day for low to medium rise structures, or as a thin cladding over steel and concrete buildings, or for internal non- load bearing walls.

People have also used fired clay over time to create dishes, plates, cups and cookpots. They also fired their roof tiles, as these needed to be more waterproof than the walls. Below are some notes on the history of clay in pottery:

·        First started making pottery about 6000BC, near the beginning of the Neolithic period.

·        This was lightly fired in a fire of dry weeds.

·        People made pottery as a way of showing their social identity and uniqueness.

·        Many of the pottery designs were based on cloth, and this helps to define a certain group of people at a particular time in history.

·        3000 BC (beginning of the Bronze age)- people started to use slow potters wheel.

·        They built the pot on platform of wood, so that you could sit down and turn it round easily.

·        By 2000 BC, the slow wheel had been replaced by the fast wheel almost entirely in Europe and Asia, which span on an axle once you set it going. You could then start moulding the plot gradually out of the spinning lump of clay.

·        Some Indo-Europeans introduced the fast wheel to Greece, Italy and China when they migrated there.

·        Around the 5^th to 6^th Century BC, the Greeks were the best and most sophisticated around, plus their pottery has survived to this day better than any other pottery at that time. They introduced black figure and red figure patterns to their pottery.

·        At the start of the Roman Empire, people began painting pottery red instead of black, and then began making pottery in moulds instead.

·        After the Phoenician’s invention of glass blowing, lots of items such as cups and bowls, were made out of glass. This meant that glass was a serious contender with pottery, and was also very cheap.

·        100 AD- most of the best made and more attractive pottery supplied to the Roman Empire was made in North Africa, and shipped by boat all over the empire.

·        North African pottery trade ceased in 700 AD after an Arab invasion.

·        Round about this time in Sui Dynasty China, potters began to make porcelain cups and pitchers, which became popular in both China and West Asia.

·        West Asian potters then invented lead glazes which gave ordinary pots a white, shiny appearance, and was a lot cheaper than porcelain pottery. It was created as an alternative to porcelain, as this was expensive to transport from China to West Asia, and took a long time using only camels and donkeys. The glazes also caught on after a while in China and Europe.

·        1200 AD- Yuan dynasty potters in China used different colour glazes to create designs on pottery. Once again, this was imitated by the West Asians using the same colour glazes, and that in turn was imitated by Europeans.

·        In the 14^th Century, Majolica the first tin glazed earthenware seen in Europe reached Italy, and by the 1500s, engravings from famous paintings were being copied onto dishes, which were reserved for decoration.

·        In the 13^th- 16^th Century, Japanese pottery evolved to form it’s own styles to rival those of the Chinese, which began by the creation of 200 kilns in the district of Seto. Temmoku (stoneware cups and bowls with a iron-brown or black glaze), became increasingly popular in the samurai class of the tea ceremony, and was an imitation of the contemporary Chinese style.

·        In 1588, Tanaka Chojiro, one of a family of Japanese potters, created pottery which had a dark tone, thick lead glaze and sometimes flashes of colour, plus were made entirely by hand. These were primitive and uneven, but perfect for the Tea Ceremony at that time, and christened raku by the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

·        The Japanese Kakiemon style of the 17^th century, featuring elegant and brightly coloured motifs become hugely influential in Europe, thanks to imports from Japan to Europe by the Dutch. This is possible due to the introduction of the Chinese system of overglaze painting in Japan.

·        In the early 17^th Century, the Dutch East India Company had begun to transport Chinese goods in large quantities, and the Ming dynasty were creating beautiful ceramics with blue decoration on a white background. Delft in Holland, was at that time a centre of developing ceramic industry, and their imitations of these Chinese styles receive great commercial success.

·        In 1785, during the Industrial revolution, Stoke On Trent became known as The Potteries, and it’s two thousand pottery manufacturers employed 20,000 labourers.

·        English pottery workers in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, were led by Josiah Wedgwood, who was energetic, ambitious and enterprising in his work. This included jasperware (a durable unglazed porcelain), improved creamware, black basalt, and a series of fine figures created by famous modellers and artists working for him.

·        19^th century potters began to create successful and beautiful wares decorated in pate-sur-pate (paste-on-paste- invented by Marc-Louis Solon, involving colours being laid on top of one another in reliefs of white or translucent tinted slip).

·        Due to mass production, the development of new technology and machinery, the quality of pottery suffered in the early 20^th century, with inartistic shapes, excessive design and tasteless colouring being seen as fashionable.

·        Revived to it’s original form and decoration in the 1930s when ceramic artists experimented greatly with different techniques and materials.

·        Largely influenced after World War 2 in both Europe and the United States by individual artists and artisans, who demonstrated striking originality, with tablewares and other commercial products reflecting their styles and patterns.

 Above: Josiah Wedgwood

Statues have also been created out of clay, most particularly by the North Italian Etruscans from around 700 BC.

Patrick Johnson 11S1

History Of Documentaries

Auguste and Louis Lumiere’s most famous actuality film is L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, or The Arrival Of A Train At La Ciotat Station, in which a continuous camera shot depicts a train arriving at La Ciotat station. At the first public film screening of a collection of Lumiere’s films in the Salon Indien of the Grand Café, Paris in 1895, legend has it that the fear and horror of the train advancing towards them proved too much for the audience, and that they jumped up, and moved back in a wave of panic. However, this remains unconfirmed, and another notable documentary by the brother’s is La Sortie de I’ Usine Lumiere a Lyon (Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory), a 46 second film, in which mostly female workers leave the Lumiere Factory after completing a days work.

In 1903, Edwin S Porter created the film The Life of an American Fireman for the Edison Manufacturing Company, in which a fireman rescues a woman and child from a burning building. The film was the first to merge shots of both inside and outside the house, and blends stock footage of a fire engine leaving a station with staged sequences of the woman’s rescue. Also in that year, Porter went on the create The Great Train Robbery, a highly praised and historically important film. It was partly a documentary film, as it was based on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s robbery of a train, with it’s most famous scene consisting of an outlaw firing his gun directly at the camera, causing a natural ducking reaction from the audience at the time.

In 1906, The Story of The Kelly Gang, based on the true story of notorious outlaw Ned Kelly, was made in Australia, and at 70 minutes long, was the longest narrative drama/ biography seen ever in Australia and possibly even the world. In 1914, In The Land Of The Head Hunters was created by Edward S Curtis, concerning the world of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of the Queen Charlotte Strait region of the Central Coast Of British Columbia, Canada. However, to call the film a documentary is a controversial issue, as although it is very accurate in it’s representations of the people’s art, culture and technology, there is a strong possibility that it may be mostly fictional.

Nanook Of The North, a 1922 documentary concerning the life of an Eskimo inuit (indigenous people inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada) named Nanook and his family. The film is largely regarded as a masterpiece and the first feature length documentary, despite the possibility of some events being deceptively staged.

A few years later, the film Grass was influenced by Nanook Of The North, and was created in 1925, in which a poor nomadic tribe called the Bakhtiari attempt to herd their livestock up a series of snow covered mountain passes to get to the grazing lands on the other side of the mountains, hopefully before their animals die from hunger. It was a wonder how the filmmakers even managed to keep up with the tribe, as they strive on climbing 12,000 foot snow covered mountain, ford an icy stream and climb up an almost sheer rock wall (all barefoot), let alone set up camera shots. Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack then went on another film similar to their last masterpiece and came up with Chang: A Story Of The Wilderness, a film documenting a native family’s struggles for survival in the daunting environment of the Siamese jungle.

While Nanook Of The North embraced Romanticism, various other documentary sub genres were also born including Kino Pravda, powered by film makers who believed that video cameras could render reality even more accurately than the human eye, and newsreels which were usually re-enactments of events such as battles which had already happened.

City Symphony, which focused on humans in man made environments, was also born at a similar time, with avant garde influences, with films such as Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, which focused on a day in Berlin, from dawn to midnight, depicting how the city had overcome the enormous depression, and The Man With A Movie Camera, offering a similar dawn to dusk technique, this time focusing on several cities, including Moscow, Kiev and Odessa.

In the 1930’s quite a few propaganda films were created to persuade an audience to agree with a particular point, with the most notorious of these being Triumph Of The Will, a record of the 1934 Nazi Party Convention in Nuremburg in which Hitler is characterised as some sort of God, probably the most powerful propaganda film ever made.  

Later in the 1930’s, The Plow That Broke the Plains served as a wake up call attempt to make people more aware of the dust bowl disasters affecting farmers in Oklaholma and Texas at that time, and The River focused on making people aware of natural disasters including floods from the prehistoric times to the Depression era. On the other hand, 1939’s The City, focused on the plans of development of the perfect city of the future, concerning a huge modern development which would hopefully improve the lives of people living in New York and Chicago, amongst other cities.

Round about this time, the National Film Board Of Canada was created and focused on creating newsreels to act against Nazi propaganda at the time. Frank Capra’s Why We Fight was a series of newsreels created between 1942 and 1944 in attempts to try to convince the US public to go to war.

Round about this time, the documentary film movement was created by John Grierson and featured directors such as Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, Basil Wright and Humphrey Jennings. Their main ambitions were to successfully blend a poetic artistic approach, with education, information and propaganda techniques.

The end of the Second World War brought about a decrease in the size of the budgets filmmakers could afford and due to this and the fact that the government no longer required propaganda documentaries, the amount of documentaries made also decreased.

The Louisiana Story, about a Cajun boy and his family who live next to an oil derrick, backed by the company Standard Oil, was made in 1948. However, it remains controversial whether the film can actually be regarded as a documentary, as the events and characters featured in the film are fictional and amateurs were handpicked by professionals to act out their roles.

Round about this time, numerous documentaries were also created to inform the public about the methods of surviving nuclear attacks, and to attempt to reassure people that they were safe despite the danger and reality of nuclear weapons during the Atomic Age.

At the end of the 1950s, documentaries were also being shown on television. One particularly memorable and famous short film of the 50’s was 1955’s Night and Fog which documents the hellish world inside the German concentration camps in WW2. Even at only 32 minutes long, the film is an unforgettable masterpiece which incorporates a relatively calm narration which only adds to the horrors and reality of the holocaust.

In the 1960s, the cinema verite movement, in which filming techniques such as voiceovers or lighting are kept to a minimal, and handheld cameras are often used, originated from France as an observational style of film-making depicting ordinary people in every-day situations. The movement was encouraged by the new invention of more lightweight, hand held cameras with synchronised sound, including the development of the first fully portable 16mm synchronised camera and sound system in 1959.

Examples of famous films in the movement include Primary (1960), Grey Gardens (1976), and Don’t Look Back, a 1967 documentary covering Bob Dylan’s 1965 United Kingdom concert tour.

The late 1960s brought about a number of documentaries due to the rise of political, social and sexual activism with added emphasis on Civil rights, anti war movements and the women’s movement. Independent, radical film collectives were also created to document and chronicle recent political and social events and to produce political protest films.

The 1970s introduced a new style of documentary filming- in first person. This allowed the audience to view what was on screen literally through the eyes of the speaker, was more realistic, and emerged as something of a unique genre. First person documentary techniques would later be explored in films such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield.

1971’s The Sorrow and the Pity was about the French Resistance during WW2, and the collaboration between the French Vichy government and Nazi Germany during the war. At a total length of 251 minutes, it was made in two parts, and only released on French television in 1981, after being banned for years. It won both the Special Award from the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Best Foreign Film Award from the National Board Of Review, as well as being nominated for Best Documentary Feature by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It successfully blended a mix of archive footage and contemporary interviews to great and original effect.

Also in the same year, New Day Films Co-operative was formed by filmmaking feminists Liane Brandon and Amalie Rothschild, which distributed independent social issue films made by independent filmmakers. It was the first distributor to be run entirely by and for other filmmakers.

1973 brought about An American Family, the first reality TV show which was aired in 12 episodes cut down from almost 300 hours of footage, and concerns the lives of the Loud family, including the divorce of Pat and Bill Loud, and the lifestyle of their homosexual son Lance in New York.

In 1983, Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out Of Balance was created as the first of the Quatsi trilogy of films which all feature no dialogue or voiceover narration, and include soundtracks by Phillip Glass. The film itself consists of stock footage and time lapse (where each frame of film is captured at a much slower rate than it will be played back) stock footage of many natural landscapes and cities in the USA. Powaqqatsi followed in 1988, and Naqoyqatsi in 2002. The films became known as documentaries without words, and other films such as Bodysong and Baraka are further examples of this form.

1984 saw the release of a classic rock mockumentary called This Is Spinal Tap, the story of a fictional heavy metal band. Although not an immediate success, it gained universal critical acclaim from critics, and is now regarded as one of the best mockumentaries ever made. Another mockumentary, Zelig was made the year before and was the first film to insert actors into real historical footage.

Also in 1984, Ken Burn’s 11 hour documentary series The Civil War, shown on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), averaged the most viewers ever for that channel with an average of more than 14 million viewers each evening.

Another critically praised film of the 1980s was 1985’s Shoah, a five hundred and seventy minute documentary on the Holocaust. It consists mostly of interviews with survivors, witnesses and ex- Nazis and features no archive footage, and is now regarded as one of the best historical documentaries ever made.

In 1987, PBS showed a documentary series which featured independent films which included strong political or social points of view, and allowed viewers to respond to them, called P.O.V (Point Of View).

The ITVS (Independent Television Service) was established after negotiations with the government in the early 1990s, to ensure that diverse voices are represented on public television.

On 3^rd March 1991, George Holliday, an amateur film enthusiast shot a twelve minute videotape depicting the actual arrest and beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles Police after a high speed chase, and this was shown so often on the channel CNN, that one CNN executive called it “wallpaper”.

Other famous/ critically acclaimed documentaries of the 1990s included 1994’s Hoop Dreams and 1995’s Anne Frank Remembered, plus the making of of Apocalypse Now, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse (1991), and Nirvana Live! Tonight! Sold out!! (1994), a 90 minute video album which was partly compiled by Kurt Cobain until his death.

DVDs were also introduced in the 1990s and reality television was also created, which was based more on fictional or staged occurrences than those used in other documentaries.

In the early 20^th century, cameras were improving to become even more portable, and this encouraged the 2004 film Voices of Iraq, where a total of 150 video cameras were distributed during the war so that the Iraqi people could record themselves and to give them “a voice”.

Other famous documentaries of the 21^st century include Fahrenheit 9/11, March Of The Penguins, Super Size Me and An Inconvenient Truth. Reality TV programmes also increase in numbers with programmes such as The Osbournes, Big Brother etc.

Patrick Johnson 11S1