Documentary and journalism: old productions can be innovative

Abstract

The expressive possibilities in the audiovisual field are unlimited nowadays. Nevertheless, most news stories and documentaries shown on TV and the Internet follow conventional formats. This text examines innovative constructive strategies in documentaries of last century, such as Chapeleiros (1983) by Adrian Cooper, Ó xente, pois não (1976) by Joaquim Assis and A João Guimarães Rosa (1969) by Marcelo Tassara. Even adopting cinematographical formats, this three movies show some photograms with fixed photography esthetics, including the portrait format.