Conceptul gustian de film documentar
Dimitrie Gusti’s Concept of Documentary Film

Summary/Abstract: The sociological documentary is a film genre developed in the 1930’s, based on an original idea devised by the sociologist and professor Dimitrie Gusti. This article analyzes the texts on the sociological documentary written by Dimitrie Gusti and some of the members of, what would be later called, The Sociological School in Bucharest. The aim of the article is to reveal the intentions and particular features of the sociological documentary. It has been defined by its creator in 1932, in a press article which I consider to be a programmatic statement. The documentary represents a methodological tool used in the monographs grounded in field-based sociological research, in the rural area of the interwar period. This new type of film was created as a polemic response to the contemporary studio films and to the trends of idealizing the rural life of that time in Romania. Out of all the features of the sociological documentary, this article examines its affiliation with realism, the concepts of script and direction, which underpinned its creation and gives it originality and value. Thus, the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti proves to be a filmmaker, producer of documentary films that he created and co-directed with his collaborators.

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