"Salesman" Blog

The film Salesman is a documentary made in 1969. It was basically the first film to start laying the foundation for direct cinema filming. This film brings a mix of emotions to its audience by it being depressing and sad but yet humorous. This documentary filmed by the Marsyle brothers is a film about bible salesman and their struggles to make ends meet. There are no narrations used besides the titles of the men’s names at the beginning. The filmmakers attempt at making the documentary as real as possible by doing observational filming, but it is obvious that it is not 100 percent realistic. We know this because people do not always act the same when a camera is on them as oppose to a normal situation. A few scenes in the film, you could sense the awkwardness of the customers as they sit there being filmed and also pestered into buying an extremely expensive bible. It was interesting that the filmmakers picked this subject to film because it is a job that has mostly died off in recent years.

Although the salesmen are liars and very pushy, I cannot help but feel sadness for Paul Brennan (The Badger). He is the loser salesman of the group, and is older than the rest and has the most trouble selling bibles. He is the one who gets turned down by most of the customers and ends up losing his job. This documentary was somewhat interesting, but for the most part really boring.

San Soleil blog

San Soleil, meaning sunless in French is a post modern documentary made in 1982 directed by Chris Marker. This specific documentary is unique because it uses a female voice to narrate. This documentary was really confusing for me to understand what they are trying to get through to people, but it seems that they are trying to show industrialization in Japan. The film was all over the place with its images. There were many times when the story that the narrator was explaining did not match the footage that was being played in the film. It showed a variety of footage from different places: Iceland, Japan, Africa then back to Japan again. The cameraman seemed to travel quite a bit. It seems that the film might also being trying to say that someone who is always traveling, time and place begin to lose its meaning to them. San Soleil was interesting, but very hard to understand. It bounced around so many subjects that it was difficult to evaluate what message it was attempting to send. All in all, I really did not like it at all.

Prison Terminal Blog

The educational documentary Prison Terminal by Edgar Barrons is a sad, but inspiring film. I find it inspiring because it is a relief to see dying men in prison treated with a little care and respect while they are on their death bed. I agree with the point that Mr. Barrons is trying to make that just because they are prisoners, does not mean they should be neglected and not treated humanely. People make mistakes and some make awful mistakes. Everyone still deserves to be treated right. I really like how the documentary focused on one dying prisoner and followed him through his last days of life. It made the film more sentimental and meaningful. The documentary is strictly an observational film because it was relaxed and not at all scripted. It was inspiring to hear the hospice prison volunteer confide that he could see himself taking care of sick people, but it took him till he was in prison to realize it. I think that hospices are great and that this documentary does a great job in showing hospices in a good light.

The World at War & Times of Harvey Milk Blog.

The World at War film did not really catch my eye when I was watching it. I thought it was very boring. All the film consisted of was archival footage and a “voice of god”. I did not like how there was no personal stories or interviews involved, it would have made it more interesting. The film was objective narration because it was just telling it how it is. However, if the enemy country would have made this film it would have been subjective because they would twist up the facts to make them look better.

The Times of Harvey Milk has probably been my most favorite documentary we have watched so far. It was a nice touch to have Harvey Fierstein as the “voice of god” because he was someone who could relate to Harvey Milk. The filmmakers want someone who can show emotion towards Harvey since the documentary is subjective narration. They want to guide people’s feelings towards the film; therefore, they are going to use a narrator with strong feelings towards the subject of the film. It was a tear jerker when they played the tape recording of Harvey Milk’s voice right after they showed a clip announcing his death. I really like the use of interviewees who actually knew Harvey. It was another was to add emotion to the film. The film was made to persuade the audience to be upset about the death of Harvey Milk and feel that the sentence that Dan White was given was very unjust. This film definitely did the job at persuading because it left me feeling sad.

Millhouse: A White Comedy

The film documentry by de Antonio is like all his other films in regards to the footage he uses in the documentry. Like all his other films, he uses already filmed footage which he buys off of corporations and he also uses news reels. This is called "collage junk", because he rearrange many different clips of film to prove a point. This documentry was made in 1971 and is all about the scandals of Richard Nixon. The documentry makes a very firm point right at the opening of the film by showing footage of the wax dummy of Nixon being put together. This signifies Nixon's obsession with his appearance and the way the public percieved him.

de Antonio's clear motive in this documentry is to exposed Nixon for who he really is. de Antonio uses no narrations, but simply puts together footage of Nixon and then uses interviews of others to narrate it. News reels were also used quite a bit in the documentry. The news reels gave a rather unbiased outlook on Nixon, but still played the part in showing Nixon as the real scumbag he was. The two biggest impacts of this documentry was that it exposed Nixon by simply laying out the true facts and it also changed the way political campaigns were made. After the making of this documentry, political campaigns take footage of their opponents and manipulate it to make them look bad.

In the Year of the Pig

This film is a documentry about the Vietnam War. The film tries to state their opinion on the subject of whether to support the war or not. This film supported the anti-war movement and made this known through the footage that was gathered and used in the film. The film starts off with a picture of a American Civil War soldier, which I believe links our civil war to the one in Vietnam. Although, unlike the civil war in the America, the war in Vietnam was not our war to fight and that was why so many Americans opposed of it. One way that de Antonio sets the mood in the film is by using certain noises. He uses a very annoying helicopter sound in the very beginning of the documentry. This noise causes irritation and displeasure which sets the foundation for the rest of the mood towards the film, which is about the Vietnamese war.

I really liked how de Antonio still does not use narration in his films, but this time he used interviews to narrate the film, I found this very interesting. The film kept your attention because there was always something different being shown on the screen. de Antonio did not keep the focus on one thing for very long. He would use the interviews of important American officials to narrate the film and would film them for a few seconds but then show images that related to what they were talking about. The way he did this was very intriguing and kept my attention.