Narratology of Iran's 80s documentary cinema based on David Bordwell's ideas - the working title of the documentary film Bibi, Happy Birthday

Academic Dissertation in Master Degree in Cinema

Abstract

There are countless theories and narrative forms in the world, the diversity of which is amazing, as if the whole world can be considered a vessel for narrating human stories. From the past to the present, especially in the last few years, many theorists have commented on narrative, one of them being David Bordwell. For cinema, he identified four modes of narration, and these four modes were set as examples and models for the narrative analysis of Iranian documentaries in the 80s. Iranian documentary cinema is as old as the entire Iranian cinema. In the late 70s and early 80s, this cinema, with its free cinema activities, film festivals and sometimes economic, social, political and cultural pressures, provided an opportunity to produce films in the field of documentary cinema that can be considered and examined in terms of narrative. The word "narrative" mentioned in the title is a relatively new term, but the discussion of narrative is not only a new category, but in the Western tradition, its history goes back to Plato and Aristotle. Narratology examines the similar and different aspects of different narratives from a structural point of view. In this article, an attempt has been made to examine the films from another perspective by analyzing the narrative of the documentaries of this decade.

Keywords:

narrative, documentary cinema, eighties, neo-formalist, narrator, character, David Bordwell

Introduction

The famous sentence "Man lives within the narrative" shows the emphasis on the inclusiveness of the narrative and is an emphasis on This is the point that in our daily life we ??are faced with all kinds of narratives. On the other hand, yes, it is true that mankind has always been the subject of narration, both individually and collectively. The narrative begins with human history. As long as there is a human being to live, there is also a narrative. Throughout history, you cannot find people who are without narratives. There are countless stories in the world. Everyone has their own narrative in every order, region and situation. Basically, people will enjoy hearing and narrating to each other.

The stories and legends, legends and myths that have been told to us in the past are mixed with our childhood memories and beliefs in our lives, and this is a precious legacy from our fathers that is engraved in our minds forever. Maybe not everyone knows how to narrate well, but everyone knows how to narrate. In addition, they distinguish all narrations from non-narratives and easily know what is a narration and what is not a narration (Prince, 2009: 5). Nazi lives, which are of course possible; It means that there is a potential possibility of their realization in the past, present or future. It seems that our first encounter with the narrative originates from this desire to experience other lives or, as it is said today, the possibility of living in parallel worlds. While reading the narrative, we temporarily enter the lives of others, the characters of the story. In the first place, this entry is due to curiosity, which is apparently one of the instinctive forces in human existence, which later we will reach issues such as knowledge gathering and gaining experience or just aesthetic pleasure. Author, tell a story. Narrator, live in the world of the story, live its sorrows and joys. Character, listen, watch and want the story to continue. Spectator. These elements are an integral part of the narrative in all eras and common among all nations, and the absence of one of them causes that there is no narrative.

As much as a person grows intellectually, he is looking for more coherent structures of the narrative to describe the world as a cause and effect system of events. Today, the position of narrative in the seventh art is related to two important perceptions of human understanding of reality: the rational factor and intuitive insight.

The influence of the rational factor can be seen in the patterns and features of the story that are repeated in the narrative, good and bad characters, unforeseen events and objective and everyday themes. But the intuitive insight is not compatible with the rational human factor to establish a logical structure, in order to justify the events of the world.But the intuitive insight is not compatible with the rational human factor, to establish a logical structure, in order to justify the events of the world, but it is a collection of apparently single and separate thoughts that manifests in a special way every moment and is watered from the endless source of imagination. Based on this thinking, narration has made significant progress throughout history and has attracted a large number of analysts and theorists in many countries. In this thesis, considering the rational factor, narration in the documentary films of the eighties of Iran will be examined. For each narration, features are considered that if those features are present in that movie, we can apply the desired narration to that movie. For example, a person like David Bordwell who believes that any theory is useful only if it has internal unity and the breadth of empirical opinion and the clean power of historical evolution, counts four ways of narration for a fiction film and determines characteristics for each one. For example, in the classical narrative, there is no news of the loosening of the link between cause and effect and permanent gaps at the end of the film, but in the narrative of art cinema, this factor is considered one of the main characteristics of the narrative of art cinema. In the narrative of the cinema based on the historical materialism of the Soviet Union, in spite of the fact that due to the use of montage, discontinuities and ruptures appear in the work, the narrative is often clear and rarely creates ambiguity at the level of the concepts of cause and effect. In the parametric narrative, the style of the film can be assumed to be separate from the plot when it can be justified by resorting to a purely artistic perception. In this case, the style must be considered as an element whose presence is for its own existence, and the purpose of the film is to make the style obvious and noticeable.

Of course, in the following chapters, I will explain each of these methods in detail and in this regard, I will briefly describe some theories presented by other theorists. I give.

The documentary film, like the fictional film, uses a structural element called narration. Basically, the theories that are examined about narrative in cinema and literature are also applicable to documentary cinema. It seems that aesthetic developments have taken place in the Iranian documentary cinema of the 1980s, which has led to changes in documentary filmmaking. The mobile camera, impromptu conversations, casual, informal and surprising encounter with the subject - have destroyed the barriers between the filmmaker, the subject and the audience, and the recording of reality, not its distortion, during the event, nor what happened in the past, has become more important in the documentary film. 

In Iran, apart from documentary aesthetics, two external and internal factors have been influential. External factors such as: the change of technical tools and the emergence of the digital phenomenon in the documentation process, especially in the field of editing and image, and internal factors such as the change in the taste of Iranian documentarians and the arrival of new ways of expression. To prove this claim, an important variable such as narration is used. In other words, by examining the changes in the narrative of Iranian documentary cinema, such as the change in the information process from linear to spiral and the use of intersecting narrative lines, the aesthetic characteristics of this decade of Iranian documentary cinema will be examined. In the last one or two decades, it has been affected by technology more than any era. This era, which started in the early eighties, should be called the "digital documentation era". The characteristic of this era is the transition to the "digital" video system. Due to the relative cheapness of filmmaking in this period, filmmakers did not need much support from government institutions and mostly made their films with personal budgets and without government supervision, so the films were made more personal, more realistic and of course more rushed and there were fundamental changes in the narrative of documentary cinema of this period which was completely different from the previous periods. But one of the negative points of this decade was that the documentary filmmakers of this period, as soon as a plan came to their mind and was attractive to them, they immediately took their camera and started filming, and like before, they were not obliged to think about the plan of their films, evaluate it in their minds and try to improve it to a higher level, to the extent that the documentary maker appeared on the filming set without having a plan. This issue created a problem of merits and demerits in the narrative of documentary films of this period, which can be examined and pondered.