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This book is a study of documentary series such as Michael Apted's world-famous Seven Up films that set out to trace the life-journeys of individuals from their earliest schooldays till they are fully grown adults. In addition to Seven Up, the book provides extended accounts of the two other best known longitudinal series to have been produced in the last three or four decades. It includes Winifred and Barbara Junge's The Children of Golzow and Swedish director Rainer Hartleb's The Children of Jordbro. The book first examines some of the principal generic features of long docs and considers the highly significant role that particular institutions have had on their production, promotion and dissemination. It then explores a study of how the individual works originated, with a special emphasis on the nurturing role of particular institutions. The book also explores the affinities that long docs have with soap opera texts, which have similar aspirations to neverendingness. Both long docs and soaps rely on an episodic mode of delivery and both seek to persuade their audience that they are attempting to chronicle real-time developments. Finally, the book explores the variety of ways in which long doc filmmakers contrive to bring their work to a satisfactory conclusion.
and of different broadcasting or filmmaking traditions. Seven Up 1 The Seven Up series had its origins in May 1964 when Granada Television transmitted a one-off ‘special’ in their World in Action series. Granada was already making a reputation for itself as a company with a clear, left-leaning political agenda and World in Action was its flagship current affairs programme. Michael Apted, later to become director of the Seven Up series, had a relatively junior role to play in the making of this World in Action special. Having only joined Granada the previous year on a
agencies is discernible as each of these long docs gradually gathered momentum. One way in which the influence of an institution can be discerned is by considering how the works in question can be perceived to fit 72 Taking the long view in with the programming or production policies of particular organisations. In the case of Seven Up, for instance, Granada Television was well aware that a follow-up to the original World in Action programme would be the kind of programme likely to speak to members of its core audience. In the course of the 1960s Granada had rapidly
longitudinally (as was the case with Rainer Hartleb ’s Jordbrö series), there can still be reluctance on the part of the broadcaster or funding body to enter into a long-term contract with the film or programme maker until the series has proved its worth in audience Getting started 49 ratings’ terms.3 All the more reason, therefore, to pay especially close attention to the precise genesis of the chosen works to consider in what ways the circumstances of the works’ origination may have influenced the course of their further development.4 Seven Up Whatever the conditions under
Introduction The origins of this book go back to the autumn of 2005 when I attended a joint presentation given by Michael Apted and Granada Television producer Jemma Jupp at the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival. Apted had recently completed the seventh film (49 Up) in his well-known Seven Up series and used the occasion to reflect back on more than 40 years’ involvement in a project that is perhaps the best-known example of a ‘longitudinal documentary’ (which for the sake of brevity I shall from now on refer to as ‘long doc(s)’). In the course of
form of documentary activity that has sharpened filmmakers’ awareness of what their works have actually achieved. The original remit of Seven Up, it will be remembered, was to ‘give a glimpse of Britain’s future [in the year 2000]’. Now, when he looks back on how the project has evolved over the years, Apted is careful to use more circumscribed terms in describing what he sees as the actual achievement of the series. In an interview he gave in 2006 he suggests, for instance, that any attempt to extract a wider meaning from the work will have to take into account that
in the case of the Seven Up series, after the screenings of 21 Up, 28 Up and 35 Up, thousands of viewers were moved to write to Apted or to Granada Television to express their concern at what was happening to Neil, the once perky little boy whose life now appeared to be spiralling out of control (Apted, 1998). What increases the likelihood that audiences will be moved to express their concern in this way is that longer-stay viewers will have developed a strong sense of sharing in subjects’ lives. The idea that we have an imaginative involvement in the life of an
saga will bring (Junge, 2004: 259, 274, 308). Likewise with Seven Up, most observers are also agreed that much of the series’ enduring appeal lies in the way it succeeds in combining the attributes of a compelling social history and the more homespun qualities of a soap-like drama of everyday life. As Jonathan Freedland has written of 49 Up: [The film] is a full, revealing social history. And yet that is not the source of its power. That, and its intense poignancy, comes instead from the universal human story these lives tell. To see people ageing Concluding remarks
The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, historical re-enactments, designer packaging and corporate authorship. The book consists of a set of essays, each focused on a particular theme derived from the author’s own experience as a filmmaker. It provides a practice-based, critical perspective on the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, questions of aesthetics, and the intellectual and emotional relationships between filmmakers and their subjects. It is especially concerned with the potential of film to broaden the base of human knowledge, distinct from its expression in written texts. Among its underlying concerns are the political and ethical implications of how films are actually made, and the constraints that may prevent filmmakers from honestly showing what they have seen. While defending the importance of the documentary idea, MacDougall urges us to consider how the form can become a ‘cinema of consciousness’ that more accurately represents the sensory and everyday aspects of human life. Building on his experience bridging anthropology and cinema, he argues that this means resisting the inherent ethnocentrism of both our own society and the societies we film.
his long doc subjects now view their involvement. In one interview he has even observed that he is fearful lest some of his subjects seek to exploit what they see as their commodity value by demanding much more ‘performance’ money than he currently pays them3 (see Freedland, 2005b). When I asked Apted, however, whether he felt that the Seven Up series in any way pre-empted or foreshadowed the reality shows that began to dominate television schedules in the late 1990s, he was – understandably enough – keen to deny the existence of a link between a type of television