A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of trained and captive animals. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema medium. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series.
Magic lantern slides brought the world to life in pictures. The first lantern slides were created in the 1600s, around 200 years before photography was invented and they provided spectacular entertainment and education in the way that cinema does today. The first slides were made by painting images on to small pieces of glass and people viewed the slides by shinning candlelight or gaslight through them.
Before the widespread use of digital non-linear editing systems, the initial editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film workprint (cutting copy in UK) by physically cutting and splicing together pieces of film. Strips of footage would be hand cut and attached together with tape and then later in time, glue. Editors were very precise; if they made a wrong cut or needed a fresh positive print, it cost the production money and time for the lab to reprint the footage. Additionally, each reprint put the negative at risk of damage. With the invention of a splicer and threading the machine with a viewer such as a Moviola, or "flatbed" machine such as a K.-E.-M. or Steenbeck, the editing process sped up a little bit and cuts came out cleaner and more precise.
Oil has been found in the poverty-stricken African country of Uganda. Much of the oil is located under protected natural parks that provide water and food for people and animals. The French oil company Total is driving people from their land to access that oil. Total's investments are protected by an investment treaty between the Netherlands and Uganda. And that protection makes Total supreme. People, animals and the environment are the victims of this.
Super 8mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format.
Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this subgenre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.
A home movie is a short amateur film or video typically made just to preserve a visual record of family activities, a vacation, or a special event, and intended for viewing at home by family and friends. Originally, home movies were made on photographic film in formats that usually limited the movie-maker to about three minutes per roll of costly camera film. The vast majority of amateur film formats lacked audio, shooting silent film.
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After the 2nd World war, films of the acclaimed documentary film directors Bert Haanstra and Herman van der Horst dominated Dutch cinema. Their work is internationally known as the ‘Dutch Documentary School’. A feature of the documentary films of this era is the use of human beings as a metaphor. Van der Horst and Haanstra both won prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Van der Horst's most famous movie is Faja Lobbi (1960), while Haanstra gained international fame for his renowned documentary Alleman (The Human Dutch, 1963). Other directors of the Dutch Documentary School are Charles Huguenot van der Linden, and John Fernhout.
Found footage is a cinematic technique in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were film or video recordings
recorded by characters in the story, and later "found" and presented to
the audience. The events on screen are typically seen through the
camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by
their real-time, off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.
During the 1620s Jan Pieterszoon Coen in particular insisted that families and orphans be sent from Holland to populate the colonies. As a result, a number of single women were sent and an orphanage was established in Batavia to raise Dutch orphan girls to become East India brides. Around 1650, the number of mixed marriages, frequent in the early years of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), declined sharply. There was a large number of women from the Netherlands recorded as marrying in the years around 1650. At least half the brides of European men in Batavia came from Europe. Many of these women were widows, already previously married in the Indies, but almost half of them were single women from the Netherlands marrying for the first time. There were still considerable numbers of women sailing eastwards to the Indies at this time. The ships' passenger lists from the 17th century also evidence this. Not until later in the 17th century did the numbers of passengers to Asia drop drastically.
