The American nonfiction film of the 1960s has both traditional and experimental roots.1 Although 1960s' filmmakers continued to produce the traditional documentary film, it was in the development of direct cinema, an experimental departure from these roots, that the nonfiction film genre was revitalized. What, in the 1930s, John Grierson called "the documentary idea," namely the use of film for reality-based didactic purposes, yielded in the 1960s to direct cinema and the idea of a new cinematic realism. This realism was grounded in the exploration and use of film for its own sake. The new approach evolved more from aesthetic than social, political, or moral concerns, which constituted an astonishing phenomenon considering the documentary film tradition and the social transformation outside cinema that was taking shape during the decade.
The rebirth of the American nonfiction film in the 1960s was brought about by various factors: the Anglo-American nonfiction film tradition; the influences and achievements of nonfiction filmmaking in the post World War II years; the beginnings of a stronger and more independent system of nonfiction film production and distribution; the emergence of television as a medium with serious potential for exhibition of nonfiction film; the experiments in the United States and abroad with cinematic forms seeking a free, direct expression of the realist impulse; and the technological developments that produced lightweight, mobile equipment.
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