Exposé:
Breaking Into the Black Box
Science and industry use filmic media to present certain pictures of what happens inside their laboratories and production factories. Films are constructed with particular narratives in mind; the goal is to encourage widespread public support for funding of the laboratories in question. Journalists and documentary filmmakers may attempt to get a different picture of what is happening inside the laboratory. With the advent of sync-sound filmmaking technologies in the 1960s, it first became possible for individuals to break into the black box of the laboratory. Certain documentary films made using these technologies in industrial and laboratory spaces incited controversy. The work of Frederick Wiseman, for example, exposed a host of ethical and safety issues implicit in the work of laboratories and governmental institutions.
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Frederick Wiseman's Primate (1974)
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