A2 Film Studies Documentary Introduction

Introduction to Documentary

 Tales we label fiction offer imaginative answers; those we label nonfiction suggest possibly authentic ones.

Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries, p. ix

What makes a film a documentary? We can begin to answer this question by identifying some of the basic premises film spectators normally hold about documentaries:

· Firstly, the events filmed must be unstaged; that is, the events must exist above and beyond the activity of filming them. In fiction films, by contrast, events are staged for the express purpose of being filmed. The unstaged nature of the events in documentaries therefore suggest that the events have an existence independent of the cinema. This is what gives them their authenticity.

· Secondly, documentaries are conventionally understood to be non-fiction films. In other words, they must be sharply distinguished from fiction films. The world depicted in the documentary is real, not imaginary.

· Thirdly, it is often assumed that the documentary filmmaker simply observes and makes an objective record of real events.

In recent times, all three assumptions have come under attack. Today I shall question in particular the third point. It is now commonplace to argue that the very presence of the camera influences the filmed events.

Moreover, documentary film makers employ a wide variety of techniques in putting their films together; they do not simply point the camera towards their subject and let the camera roll.

The documentary film maker cannot simply observe and objectively record because he or she makes technical choices – What to Shoot, How to Shoot and How to present the Shot

This seems to make the documentary personal and subjective. The selection and emphasis ( montage, mise en scene) of particular events by means of film techniques seem to betray the documentary film maker's particular perspective on the filmed events.

What is valorised by the auteur critics in relation to Hollywood fiction films is condemned in documentary films.

But by what standard of objectivity are documentary films being judged? All films necessarily involve selection and editing. No film is therefore purely objective - if by objectivity we mean that the events are seen from no particular perspective. This is an unreasonable standard by which to judge documentary films.

The issue is not so much whether they are based on selection but: How do the selections made by the documentary film maker manipulate the events?

Because all documentary films 'manipulate' events, then it may be better to use a more neutral term, such as 'shape' events. We can reserve the term 'manipulation' for documentaries that can be categorised as propaganda - those that hide from the spectator the processes they use in shaping events.

In the following sections, we shall see how Bill Nichols has divided up the documentary cake into five slices. Each type of documentary is defined and distinguished according to how it shapes the events being filmed by means of particular techniques selected by the film maker.

Whereas particular genres are defined in terms of their invariant iconic and narrative attributes, types of documentary are identified according to the particular techniques they use.

I shall follow Bill Nichols' theoretical discussion of the five types of documentary, although I have endeavoured to summarise and simplify his conceptual discussion and have added case studies to give substance to each category.

The five categories Nichols identifies are: the expository, observational, interactive, reflexive and the performative documentary. I shall illustrate each respective category with the following: Coalface (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935). High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968), Roger and Me (Michael Moore. 1989), Man wit/i a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1928) and The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1998).