#2 History of Documentaries and Film

I joined this degree a bit later than the most of us that are enrolled in this program. However, I made sure I caught up to everything that was going on in the weeks that I was not a part of. My classmates were kind enough to give me a recap of everything that they were taught during the weeks I was not present. 

In this week, they studied about the history of Film and documentaries, our professor for the course, Sir Sarmad made them watch a documentary on a very famous pakistani drama called "Ainak Wala Jinn". The documentary comes out as "Beyond the Spectacle", which is directed by Hamza Bin Tahir. 

I further went on and watched that documentary on my own. It showed the way it was made, the studio the production and what all was invested in making a block buster serial known as "Ainak Wala Jinn". A film documenting the creation of one of the most recognisable and culturally significant drama serials of all time. It looks back at the influence the play had on each of us during our childhood, and the emotional attachment of the people associated with the play.

Below is a screenshot of the documentary itself that is available on YouTube.

The story line of Ainak Wala Jinn consisted of a genie that came to earth from the mountains for the treatment of his eyesight problems; when he lands, he happens to meet a daring young boy who loves fantasies. The boy takes him to the doctor who prescribes power glasses. Then the boy, along with his father, takes the genie home; the genie is in the shape of a tall handsome man with special features of a genie on his face. He starts living with humans and the interesting interaction starts, he meets magicians, witches, other genies, space people and real life characters. These interactions give birth to a very interesting story line which entailed comedy, magic, morals and learning for children. 

Below is a screenshot of their main screen logo. 

I even asked my mother about the show and how it left a huge impact on her childhood during her teenage.

Other than that, I had made a massive research on the topic "History of Documentaries and Film" myself as well. The first official documentary or non-fiction narrative film was Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), an ethnographic look at the harsh life of Canadian Inuit Eskimos living in the Arctic, although some of the film's scenes of obsolete customs were staged.

• 1926 - the first recorded mention of the term "documentary" (by Scottish-born filmmaker John Grierson) to describe a non-fiction film.


• 1930’s & 1940’s – the documentary becomes a valuable propaganda tool for governments such as Nazi Germany, America and Britain, especially during WWII.


• Cinéma Vérité and Direct Cinema (1950’s – 1970’s) - with the advent of new technology and lighter camera equipment, new filmmaking styles emerged to capture more "spontaneous" events.


• 1960’s – 1990’s - Television becomes an important outlet for documentary filmmaking, putting more of an emphasis on journalistic and educational programs (i.e. Ken Burns’s Civil Warseries, 1990)