This talk was given by Vanessa Raison. Ness’s back ground of teaching Media Studies and a particular interest in the history of film-making led her to explore the contribution of women to documentary film.  Her talk covered the origins of the first ‘documentary’ made in 1878, through the development of celluloid, to capturing moving image for early cinema in the following decades.

The early influence of French film pioneers was strong and the first woman mentioned, Alice Guy Blache , created narrative cinema, the first person to realise that a film could tell a story with her 60 second film La Fee aux Choux made in 1896. She directed over 1000 films during her career.

By 1895 there were more women in production and acting than today, and more women owned production companies than men. Mary Pickford, actress turned producer, was a notable example, earning around 1 million dollars a year as a producer within the early Hollywood Studio system.

In the 1920s with the revolution of sound in film, movie production, distribution and exhibition became big business. It attracted male dominated Wall Street money and power, and women’s involvement declined.

Ness then introduced us to a number of talented women filmmakers who, with their husbands, were actively and equally involved in film production but never officially recognised in any credits. Many were pioneers of documentary filmmaking. Amongst them were Robert Flaherty and his wife Frances who created a new kind of film, essentially a documentary, about an Inuit family. Made in 1922, it was a dramatic reconstruction filmed in the Arctic but described ‘ordinary people, doing ordinary things, just being themselves’.

 Leni Riefenstahl’s sophisticated and controversial ‘art’ documentary of the Nuremberg Rally– Triumph des Willens – brought subsequent lively discussion among those attending. Made in 1934, it won accolades at the Venice Biennale and the World Exhibition in Paris. However, as a piece of powerful Nazi propaganda it was highly inflammatory.

We continued the talk to the close with the questions posed by the above:

• Do film makers have a responsibility as to how their films will be used and to the subjects, especially if they are vulnerable, poor, powerless?
• What makes a good documentary?
• Voice or voyeurism?
• Is it important to tell the truth? 

The discussion was wide ranging and introduced the work of more contemporary women documentary film makers such as Elizabeth White producer and director of Islands for BBC’s Planet Earth II, the Canadian Molly Dineen who inspired Felicity Anne Sieghart to start the Aldeburgh Documentary Film Festival, and the current Festival producer Diane Gueho.  (Summary: Kerstin Davey)