The beginnings of the documentry film

Today in our lecture we watched some old documentry films in relation to our up coming documentry assignment. We looked at some of the earliest pioneers of the documentry style filming. Thomas Edison creator of the kinetoscope spoke of the archivaland instructional value of the motion picture. One particular early documentry film maker was Louis Lumiere, he offered audiences glimpses of everyday life e.g. a train arriving at a station and workers leaving a factory. Robert J Flaherty is one particular film maker we looked at. He was a documentry maker by chance. We looked at on production he made called 'The Man of Aran'which looked at the way of life on the Aran Islands.
We disscussed the film amongst the class, which showed that a lot of people felt it was not a documentry as most of the shots where staged and people from outside areas where cast for partsin the film. Flaherty was often critised for being a romantic documentry filmmaker. I thought that it could be seen as a documentry up to a certain degree as it portrayed the way of life of the people even though they where not in the film and was set in the area which the production is mostly based on e.g. sea land island. I personally found it boring to watch but it did generate good disscusion. Some people felt very strongly about what Flaherty had done and seen it as some sort of outrage, no harm was done by doing what he did. There was no political propaganda agenda and reality was not greatly distorted, so I don't see what the big deal is all about.