Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité
Cinéma vérité has many resemblances to Direct Cinema. The hand-held style of camera work is the same. There is a similar feeling of real life unfolding before the viewer's eyes. There is also a mutual concern with social and ethical questions. Both cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema rely on the power of editing to give shape, structure and meaning to the material recorded. Some film historians have characterized the Direct Cinema movement as a North American version of the cinéma vérité movement. The latter was exemplified in France with Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer (1961). For these historians cinéma vérité is characterized by the use of the camera to provoke and reveal.
Direct Cinema, on the other hand, has been seen as more strictly observational. It relies on an agreement among the filmmaker, subjects and audience to act as if the presence of the camera does not substantially alter the recorded event. Such claims of non-intervention have been criticized by critics and historians.
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