Comments on the Jeanne Hall article & Primary

The Jeanne Hall article looks at how Primary claims to be a more truthful representation of reality in documentary form, because of the creation of the cinema verite technique. Throughout the article she points out the many flaws still present in the film, illustrating that it is still a construct, with some elements of Hollywood still present, such as a non-diegetic soundtrack and continuity editing. Some of this criticism seems unfair, because as Grierson defines it (and most film academics also support his definition), documentary is the "creative treatment of actuality". It would seem that the creative part of that often goes overlooked. For there to be a pure, unbiased, non-directed documentation of an event on film, one would need to record a subject without their knowledge of any filming taking place (preventing any "acting" on their part), and it would have to be an unedited long take (preventing any possibility of the Kuleshov effect, thereby creating a meaning that's not really there). The result of this would be quite uninteresting to most people, save for the voyeurs.
Primary, even with all of it's claims of being a truer representation of reality, is still a breath of fresh air in comparison to so many staged documentaries that came before it, most notably Flaherty's Nanook of the North. It took what a documentary could be in a different direction, and as a result took the form to another level with films trying to copy the verite style, or films trying to rebel against the verite style.