Looking for the Real

What is documentary film? Documentaries allow us to travel to faraway countries and visit other cultures. They can also help us see things that are familiar to us with fresh eyes. The invention of film made it possible to record the world in motion in completely new ways and show it somewhere else. These potentials were utilized in the early years of the medium's history. Stories were told, experiments were made and cinema was used to convey rhythms, details and a sense of wonder in the face of reality. In all of these cases, we can ask where the reality is in what we see and what is created by film itself – the expression of both a subject and a technology. (sh)
 
Presented by Film Museum staff member Stefan Huber