From a Screen Document to a Poetic Image. Making Sense

The usually opposed concepts document and image are treated here as parts of an art system which relies on the specific character of documentary image combining an account of events and the implicit metaphorics of the captured reality. Throughout the history of cinema documentary filmmakers have always tended to move beyond the strict adequacy of representation giving their personal interpretation of reality in terms of a poetic text. Documentary film poetry is most notably related to Dziga Vertov who strived to overcome the flatness of sheer chronicle breaking through to a kind of screen versification. Vertov’s recipe was based on distancing, his messages could not be understood just by automatic perception of events, but only in view of polysemic symbolical and metaphorical content of every single shot camera angle accentuations. Editing and rhythmic connotations, exquisite camera angle accentuations, blankverse rhythmic captions turned observation of the ordinary course of life into abstractions, as exemplified by “A Sixth Part of the World”.

The experience of poetic documentaries based on organic combination of literary verses and screen imagery is evidenced by Alain Resnais and Paul Éluard’s “Guernica” and Joris Ivens and Jacques Prévert’s “The Seine Meets Paris”, two films featuring two personal models of documentary poetry perceived as expressive transformation of reality viewed through the lens of Pablo Picasso and Alain Resnais and as lyrical outbursts in the movie by Ivens. Contemporary forms of documentary poetry are exemplified by Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, Ron Fricke and their modern followers.