1+3=3.5

According to Ricky Leacock there are three approaches to cinema. The first is pure cinema that could be summed up as the tradition of Melies. The second is impure cinema that could be summed up in the tradition of Porter, and the third would be the realist and is summed up in the tradition of Lumiere. Basically there is fiction, art and documentary. I know that its not that simple or easily defined but even if we were to delve deep into each of the categories I believe that the films we have been studying this semester would be left out. It is too easy to just dump the films into either documentary or fiction and it doesn't make sense to dump them into art film. The course is defined as a documentaryfiction study course and that is exactly where these two films fit. They are documentary and they are fiction. They are both. They are one genre of genre blurring films that only create half an approach to cinema. While they don't fit into narrative fiction or documentary they do fit into both so the genre, while is a completely new approach has been done before, not fully, but still has. Overall I believe that while we can't give it a full credit as a new approach to cinema, we can give it half.