"Utopia Of Documentary--A Study Of Robert Flaherty's Films"

As a self-taught film master, Robert Flaherty is unique in his way of filming. Whereas by recording what he finds before his eyes, his film had brought him to a Utopia world abundant with fantasy and poetic feeling. The Utopia of documentary indicates the nature of the Flaherty's films which on the one hand is a subjective idealism world and on the other hand is created by the method of documenting.Firstly, this article has made a close study of the humanity and philosophy background of Flaherty, both of which are believed to be the answer for his creation of the documentary Utopia. Brought up in the United States of 20 century, Flaherty showed completely different spirit with his time and society but reflected something belonged to the Victoria time or the end of Edward's, which could be explained in part by the experiences he had in childhood and the philosophy background of his career. The great distance between the reality and the ideal had been the gear for the creation of his cinematic world.On the one hand, his training from early youth as an explorer and mining surveyor must have developed him a firm belief in the objective world as well as the attitude toward it. That is: observing but never imposing. In terms of filming, it's expressing such a belief that no shape or form should be imposed on the subject pictured, which is also the nature of the documentary. On the other hand, the romantic version he had made him always look backward and spare no efforts to pursue a life of primitive simplicity. It is the romanticism that eventually makes his works a yearning for Utopia.Secondly, from the point of view of cultural study, this paper gives a close study to the Utopia elements incorporated in the films. There are three features with the documentary Utopia that Flaherty's created: In terms of characteristic of space, his stories always happened in some remote places which were not only far away from the rest of the world but shut off from it. In terms of the relationship between people, he selected the family as the basic structure of the society and thus made the family a symbol of the Utopia world. The image of boy as a symbol of love and purity indicated what the perfect human nature is like in his eyes. Brought up in the United States of 20 century, Flaherty showed completely different spirit of his time and society but reflected something belonged to the Victoria time or the end of Edward's, which could be explained in part by the experiences he had in childhood and the philosophy background of his life. The great distance between the reality and the ideal had been the gear for the creation of his cinematic world.Thirdly, Flaherty's films had showed a distinct feature in regards to the question of fiction and nonfiction which in his films seem more confused than clearly separated. The paper will approach this topic by concentrating on the following topics including the position of the camera, the nature of reenactment as well as the unpredictable feature of the action. In the process of filmmaking, Flaherty encouraged those being filmed to participate fully in the production period and by involving them in playing themselves, he created a kind of interactive relationship with the subjects. Here comes the difference between Flaherty and the traditional practice.In his whole life, Flaherty had developed a tradition that before the filming he had to spend a long time with the subjects and during the shooting he would involve them into every aspects of the filmmaking, which established an interesting relationship between the filmmaker and the subjects: the director is neither a manipulator nor 'a-fly-on-the-wair. In such a case, the boundary between fiction and fact become confused and disappearing. Therefore, the question is whether it could be seem as another explanation to the truth.Last but not the least, the question of what Robert Flaherty has to do with today's filmmaking is the ending of this paper. From the predicament of Flaherty had been confronted, the paper will analysis the general problem for the documentary filmmaking and search after the way to break out. Of course as the father of independent filmmaker, the experience of Robert Flaherty is a great inspiration especially to the contemporary Chinese independent documentary filmmakers. Confronting with the post-modernism and when truth become suspicious and couldn't been secured by any techniques or methods, the study of Robert Flaherty could only find its value in the approach to search for the original sense of documentary.