A feature documentary about documentary, Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment is a major retrospective of some of the century’s finest non-fiction films, and a celebration of the contemporary legacy of the Cinéma Vérité revolution of the 1950s and early 1960s. The revolution had many names: Free Cinema, Direct Cinema, Candid Eye, Cinéma Vérité – and it broke out simultaneously in England, France, the USA, and Canada. Wherever it appeared, the form marked a completely new way of understanding film, the audience and the world. The world of Cinéma Vérité filmmaking was created by a group of driven, dedicated rebels who did for documentary what Henri Cartier-Bresson did for photography. All the key players, including Michel Braulty, Robert Drew, Wolf Koenig, Richard Leacock, the Maysles brothers, Donn Pennebaker, Pierre Perrault, Jean Rouch, Hope Ryden, and Fred Wiseman, are featured in this film. Their use of lightweight, hand-held cameras and portable sound equipment, along with their unfailing commitment to recording reality as they saw it, revolutionized not only the documentary form, but all forms of movie-making. Set against the stilted, lecture-style documentary that preceded them, these works remain evergreen – equally fresh and original as when they first appeared. (源自: TIDF 2024)