American documentary can be thought of as a child of the Depression that came of age during World War II. The war years marked a high point of achievement in this mode: more filmmakers made more nonfiction films for larger audiences than ever before. Given this vastly increased activity, with films being used in all sorts of new ways, it was assumed by most that the trend would continue onward and upward. And indeed production of nonfiction, nontheatrical film-educational, promotional, and industrial did increase enormously in the postwar years. But there were severe cutbacks in key areas: in the amount of money available for the kinds of social documentary production that had existed earlier, in the number of documentary filmmakers employed, and in the quantity and quality of the documentaries produced.
Accompanying this contraction were losses in morale and leadership, and uncertainties about postwar purposes and subjects. Up to the end of the war, documentary had thrived on crisis and disaster, criticism and attack. Following the war, the great documentary causes of the 1930s (unemployment, rural poverty, conservation of land and water, housing, and urban planning) and early 1940s (the fight against fascism) were no longer relevant or popular.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 10,482 words (approx. 35 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our American Documentary Access Pass.
