The Documentary Spirit Of Direct Cinema And China's New Documentary Movement

As a genre of the documentary, Direct Cinema originated from the United States in the 1960s. Under the special technical and socio-political and cultural context, the Direct Cinema developed into a classic way of creating documentary and formed the salient features which distinguished itself from contemporary French school of Cinema Verite through the efforts of the Drew group who has created a new form of television documentary. The features of artistic media of Direct Cinema were the basis of formation of this distinctive school. The creators of Direct Cinema always carried out their work as humble observers, and always adhered to the moral bottom line of documentary films. The aesthetic characteristics of Direct Cinema was a spiritual pursuit of humanistic connotation, and their creations were the pursuit of concerns of humanistic and social reality, which tried to eliminate the discourse of hegemony, to provide the audience with the interpretation of multi-dimensional space and embody a kind of intellectual identity and position. In addition to methods, the Direct Cinema more represented a kind of documentary spirit. Starting from 1990s, China's new documentary movement has coincided with the Direct Cinema in the process of self-development and practice. Through the absorption of the creative methods and aesthetic pursuit of the Direct Cinema, China's new documentary movement further enriched and developed the spirit of the documentary connotation so that the documentary spirit was unprecedentedly publicized. Behind this publicity, the danger of misunderstanding the form of the documentary was lurking, which resulted in the decline of documentary section and the loss of the documentary spirit. Facing the tide of market capitalization and the advent of the digital age, a new confusion emerged. True reproduction, objective reproduction, fiction, entertainment, etc not only represented the emergence of new documentary practices, but also embodied the spirit of a lost documentary spirit. Direct Cinema was not just an objective observation of the creative methods of documentary. Fiction and entertainment should not become the subject of documentaries. The documentary spirit carried forward by the Direct Cinema and China's new documentary movement should be the essence and the theme of the documentary, which were not only reflected in the innovative process of documentary creators, but also were displayed in their works.At present, for the documentary, television programs remain as its main means of communication and publicize a kind of documentary spirit, which play a significant role in shaping the classic culture of Television. It also embodies a sense of social responsibility for television media, which can also regarded as the spirit of a professional documentary creator. Especially under the current technological advances, the universality of DV and more developed social background, there is some confusion in both documentary film theory and practice. The concept and content of the documentary has been misrepresented or even emptied. Therefore, the determination of this kind of creative and professional documentary spirit plays an important role in establishing a norm of documentary creation and improving the quality of documentary creators.