The Cinema and the Wind and Photography(1991)

movie - first aired/released 1991-01-01 - audience 5.8

Directed by Hartmut Bitomsky

How should one define the relationship of documentary film to reality? Does it aim at authenticity or is it rather an “exile of reality”, a “foreign homeland of reality”, where the pre-filmic, stripped of its immediacy, comes to its own right in the first place? Where in its mis-en-scène would be the line drawn to a fictional film, if drawing a line would succeed at all? These are the kind of questions this film essay on the history and aesthetics of documentary film deals with in its seven chapters.