Birth of the Brute Light Beast

[Terrance]

Terrance wrote: The machine-age concept of the
> individual has been transmuted and diffused; now--along with factoiry
> labor--individual white-collar workers, consumers and even corporate
> officers disappeared into an anonymous network of economic activity.
> 
> _Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine_
> Karen Lucic

Vertov was largely forgotten in the West and reviled in Russian by the
time of his death in 1954. However, his influence revived in the early
1960s with the rise of cinéma vérité -the very term being a French
translation of his Kino-Prevada. 
At the very beginning of the 1960s a series of technical innovations in
sound and camera equipment completely revolutionized the documentary
film. Up until that time all documentaries had been shot using bulky,
virtually immobile 35mm cameras, but now manufactures began to improve
their 16mm stock, making it acceptable as a professional format. 
Because 16mm cameras were much smaller, more manageable and mobile,
cameramen were suddenly able to shoot with an ease of access and
fluidity they could never have obtained before.  Simultaneously, the
increased speed of the new 16mm film stocks meant that less light was
required in order to obtain and acceptable image, so film lights could
be dispensed with, and most situations filmed in natural light. This
again gave rise to a new sense of spontaneity and freedom in filming.
The advocates of Direct Cinema were always quick to codify exactly what
they thought was the "right" way to make a documentary and what was  the
"wrong" way, drawing up a kind of filmic Ten Commandments: thou shalt
not rehearse; thou shalt not interview; thou shalt no use commentary;
thou shalt no use film lights; thou shalt not stage events; thou shalt
not eat cheese danish; thou shalt not dissolve. Paradoxically, the film
making movement which seemed to stand for iconoclasm became one of the
most codified and puritanical. 
Gradually the use of interviews, lights and stages-events seeped it. The
grandchildren of those original Direct Cinema films are the endless
"documentaries" about firemen, hospitals and vets which clog our
televisions. 

_Imagining Reality: The Faber Book Of Documentary_ 
Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins
Chapter 9, "The Grain of Truth"