The Role of the Personal Voice in Spanish Earth and Coalface

The Role of the Personal Voice in Spanish Earth and Coalface

Introduction

When it comes to talk about documentary films of ancient times, the role of personal voice cannot be underestimated. It has been a concern of great importance in film making, that how to tell a story altogether to reveal the innermost thoughts. The art of storytelling or narration is an essential part of film making. The voice-over technique is useful in narrating story in a film, and it is a predominant track in the film that originates from the objects in the film frame. The Spanish Earth and Coalface are among those famous movies in which the voice-over played a crucial role. Both films conveyed a real life story to the audience. The Spanish Earth is a double documentary that shows Spanish people's effort to turn their seized lands into communities. This propaganda film made during the Spanish Civil War in support of the democratically elected Republicans. Whereas, Coalface is a documentary that lime lights the dangerous working conditions in a Welsh coal mining community.

Discussion

The Spanish Earth and Dr. Joris Iven

Joris Iven was one of the famed names in Dutch documentary filmmaking. His father had a photo supply shop, and when Iven started to go to his father shop, his interest in filmmaking started developing. When he was 13 years old, he completed his first film. Iven studied economics as initially he had the goal of continuing the business of his father, but an interest in filmmaking made him deviated from his initial goal. When he started his career, he made numerous short films in which he did impressive cinematography and featured a number of characters, but provided no information about them. Industrial Symphony for Philips Electric was one of Iven's films in which he made use of great technological beauty. The Spanish Earth is one of his anti-fascist and other propaganda films.

Spanish Earth in White House

Spanish Earth is one of the masterpieces that Joris Iven created. On July 8, 1937, this documentary was shown at the White House when Joris Iven and his team of Spanish Earth had a dinner with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. President loved the film and the propaganda that it showed.

The Spanish Civil War

The former perspective of Spanish Civil War shows that this war resulted in the opening battle of World War II. That was the time in history when the World encountered with fascism. The Spanish Civil War was a prolonged period of national political turmoil, as the conditions of terrible poverty in the country were at the fullest and were unable to alleviate. Catholic Church's hierarchy was in control of secondary education, and they were against women's education. The goal of universal literacy was a danger for them. The hierarchy typically included the wealthy landowners and not the Spanish people. In all these worst conditions, Spanish military were the only supporters of Spanish society's core values and were against civil ...