Documentary Film Quotes

“For his inability to control his movements, WE temporarily exclude man as a subject for film.
Our path leads through the poetry of machines, from the bungling citizen to the perfect electric man.
In revealing the machine's soul, in causing the worker to love his workbench, the peasant his tractor, the engineer his engine—
we introduce creative joy into all mechanical labor,
we bring people into closer kinship with machines,
we foster new people.
The new man, free of unwieldiness and clumsiness, will have the light, precise movements of machines, and he will be the gratifying subject of our films.”
― Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye

“Another thing, documentary is not enough. It has its contribution - a valuable one - to make; in education, in exposition, in social argument, in training artist and audience to a feeling for physical material, in extending and sensitising kinetic responses, in extracting and communicating relevant paces and rythms from national life. But the effect of documentary, though it may be inspirational, will always be limited. John Grierson, Scotland's one cinematic genius and founder of British documentary, still leads the movement with his theory. He is, though he would hate to think it, an idealist with a naïve, little-boy feeling for the marvel and complexity of social organisations. He believes that Man has only to limit his vision and see himself and his world in a certain light and he will attain a kind of happiness. Regrettably or otherwise, Scotland has not the habit of half shutting its eyes to what it values as precious, and while it has appreciated and employed documentary for the potentialities listed above, it has not squared its shoulders very perceptibly before Mr. Grierson's simplifications.”
― David Angus, Jabberwock: Edinburgh University Review, Volume 3, No. 2: Summer 1950