Documentary film

A documentary film is a non-fictional motion-picture

intended to "document reality, primarily for the
purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a
historical record"[1] - compare documentary theatre.
Bill Nichols has characterised the documentary in
terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition,
and mode of audience reception [that remains] a
practice without clear boundaries".[2] Documentary
films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one
minute, or less. Over time, documentaries have
evolved to become longer in length, and to include
more categories; some examples being: educational,
observational, and docufiction. Documentaries are
meant to be informative works, and are often used A 16 mm spring-wound Bolex
within schools, as a resource to teach various "H16" Reflex camera - a popular
principles. entry-level camera used in film
schools
Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have
provided an avenue for the growth of the
documentary-film genre. These platforms have increased the distribution area and
ease-of-accessibility; thereby enhancing the ability to educate a larger volume of
viewers, and broadening the reach of persons who receive that information.

Contents
Definition
History
Pre-1900
1900–1920
1920s
Romanticism
City-symphony
Kino-Pravda
Newsreel tradition
1920s–1940s
1950s–1970s
Cinéma-vérité
Political weapons
Modern documentaries
Documentaries without words
Narration styles
Other forms
 Hybrid documentary
Docufiction
Fake-fiction
DVD documentary
Compilation films
Observational
Types
Educational Films
Translation
Working conditions
Terminology
See also
Some documentary film awards
Notes and references
Sources and bibliography
Ethnographic film
External links

Definition
Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski
was among those who identified the mode of
documentary film. He wrote two of the earliest texts
on cinema Une nouvelle source de l'histoire (eng. A
New Source of History) and La photographie animée
(eng. Animated photography). Both were published in
1898 in French and among the early written works to
consider the historical and documentary value of the
film.[3] Matuszewski is also among the first
filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive
to collect and keep safe visual materials.[4]

In popular myth, the word "documentary" was coined

by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in
his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926),
published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926,
written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for
Grierson).[5]
The cover of Matuszewski book
Une nouvelle source de
Grierson's principles of documentary were that
l'histoire. (A New Source of
cinema's potential for observing life could be History) from 1898 the first
exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor publication about documentary
and "original" scene are better guides than their function of cinematography.
fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world;
and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be
more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary
as "creative treatment of actuality"[6] has gained some acceptance, with this position
at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is"
(that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or
surprised by the camera).

The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as "a factual film
which is dramatic."[7] Others further state that a documentary stands out from the
other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, and a specific message,
along with the facts it presents.[8]

Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It

refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production
strategies in order to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and
choices that arise as they make documentaries.

Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism, advocacy, or personal

expression.

History

Pre-1900

Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were
single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or
factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the
term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those
made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length, due to
technological limitations (example on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O
46gJxy4K_E)).

Films showing many people (for example, leaving a factory (https://www.youtube.co

m/watch?v=DEQeIRLxaM4)) were often made for commercial reasons: the people
being filmed were eager to see, for payment, the film showing them. One notable film
clocked in at over an hour and a half, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. Using
pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented the entirety of a
famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States.

In May 1896, Bolesław Matuszewski recorded on film few surgical operations in

Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis
Doyen invited Bolesław Matuszewski and Clément Maurice and proposed them to
recorded his surgical operations. They started in Paris a series of surgical films
sometime before July 1898.[9] Until 1906, the year of his last film, Doyen recorded
more than 60 operations. Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct
professional errors he had been unaware of. For scientific purposes, after 1906,
Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations, two of which survive, the six-
film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulées (1906), and the four-film Les
Opérations sur la cavité crânienne (1911). These and five other of Doyen's films
survive.[10]
Between July 1898 and 1901, the Romanian professor
Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in
his neurology clinic in Bucharest:[11] Walking
Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy (1898), The Walking
Troubles of Organic Paraplegies (1899), A Case of
Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis (1899),
The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion
Ataxy (1900), and Illnesses of the Muscles (1901). All
these short films have been preserved. The professor
called his works "studies with the help of the Frame from one of Marinescu's
cinematograph," and published the results, along with science films (1899).
several consecutive frames, in issues of "La Semaine
Médicale" magazine from Paris, between 1899 and
1902.[12] In 1924, Auguste Lumiere recognized the merits of Marinescu's science
films: "I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in
studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving "La Semaine Médicale," but
back then I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological
studies. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded
them to me. Unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way."[13][14][15]

1900–1920

Travelogue films were very popular in the early

part of the 20th century. They were often referred
to by distributors as "scenics." Scenics were
among the most popular sort of films at the
time.[16] An important early film to move beyond
the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the
Head Hunters (1914), which embraced
primitivism and exoticism in a staged story
Geoffrey Malins with an aeroscope
presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of
camera during World War I.
Native Americans.

Contemplation is a separate area. Pathé is the

best-known global manufacturer of such films of the early 20th century. A vivid
example is Moscow Clad in Snow (1909).

Biographical documentaries appeared during this time, such as the feature

Eminescu-Veronica-Creangă (1914) on the relationship between the writers Mihai
Eminescu, Veronica Micle and Ion Creangă (all deceased at the time of the
production) released by the Bucharest chapter of Pathé.

Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolor—known for the feature
With Our King and Queen Through India (1912)—and Prizmacolor—known for
Everywhere With Prizma (1919) and the five-reel feature Bali the Unknown (1921)—
used travelogues to promote the new color processes. In contrast, Technicolor
concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for
fictional feature films.

Also during this period, Frank Hurley's feature documentary film, South (1919),
about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was released. The film documented
the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914.
1920s

Romanticism

With Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North in

1922, documentary film embraced romanticism;
Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic
films during this time period, often showing how his
subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not
how they lived right then. For instance, in Nanook of
the North, Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot
a walrus with a nearby shotgun, but had them use a
harpoon instead. Some of Flaherty's staging, such as
building a roofless igloo for interior shots, was done
to accommodate the filming technology of the time.

Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of

Flaherty's Nanook and Moana with two romanticized
documentaries, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), both
directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.

City-symphony Nanook of the North poster.

The city-symphony film genre were avant-garde films

during the 1920s and 1930s. These films were, particularly influenced by modern
art; namely Cubism, Constructivism, and Impressionism.[17] According to, art
historian and author Scott Macdonald[18], city-symphony films can be described as,
"An intersection between, documentary and avant-garde film: an avant-doc";
However, A.L. Rees suggests, to see them as avant-garde films.[17]

Early titles produced within this genre include: Manhatta (New York; dir. Paul
Strand, 1921); Rien Que Les Heures/Nothing But The Hours (France; dir. Alberto
Cavalcanti, 1926); Twenty Four Dollar Island (dir. Robert J. Flaherty, 1927); Études
sur Paris (dir. André Sauvage, 1928); The Bridge (1928) and Rain (1929), both by
Joris Ivens; São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole (dir. Adalberto Kemeny, 1929), Berlin:
Symphony of a Metropolis (dir. Walter Ruttmann, 1927); and Man with a Movie
Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov, 1929).

A city-symphony film, as the name suggests, is most often based around a major
metropolitan city area and seeks to capture the life, events and activities of the city.
It can be abstract cinematography (Walter Ruttman's Berlin) or may utilize Russian
Montage theory (Dziga Vertov's, Man with a Movie Camera); yet, most importantly, a
city-symphony film is a form of cinepoetry being shot and edited in the style of a
"symphony".

The continental tradition (See: Realism), focused on humans within human-made

environments, and included the so-called "city-symphony" films such as Walter
Ruttmann's, Berlin, Symphony of a City (of which Grierson noted in an article[19] that
Berlin, represented what a documentary should not be); Alberto Cavalcanti's, Rien
que les heures; and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. These films tend to
feature people as products of their environment, and lean towards the avant-garde.
Kino-Pravda

Dziga Vertov was central to the Soviet Kino-Pravda

(literally, "cinematic truth") newsreel series of the
1920s. Vertov believed the camera—with its varied
lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to
slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion—could
render reality more accurately than the human eye,
and made a film philosophy out of it.
In this shot from Walter
Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of
Newsreel tradition a Great City (1927), cyclists
race indoors. The film is shot
The newsreel tradition is important in documentary and edited like a visual-poem.
film; newsreels were also sometimes staged but were
usually re-enactments of events that had already
happened, not attempts to steer events as they were
in the process of happening. For instance, much of
the battle footage from the early 20th century was
staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site
after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.

1920s–1940s

The propagandist tradition consists of films made

with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience In this shot from Man with a
of a point. One of the most celebrated and Movie Camera, Mikhail Kaufman
controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's acts as a cameraman risking his
film Triumph of the Will (1935), which chronicled the life in search of the best shot
1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by
Adolf Hitler. Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri
Storck directed Borinage (1931) about the Belgian coal mining region. Luis Buñuel
directed a "surrealist" documentary Las Hurdes (1933).

Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) and
Willard Van Dyke's The City (1939) are notable New Deal productions, each
presenting complex combinations of social and ecological awareness, government
propaganda, and leftist viewpoints. Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942–1944) series
was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to
convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. Constance Bennett and her
husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature-length documentaries, Legong:
Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali, and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) filmed in
Indochina.

In Canada, the Film Board, set up by John Grierson, was created for the same
propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national
governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi
Germany (orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels).

In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson.

They became known as the Documentary Film Movement. Grierson, Alberto
Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, Basil Wright, and Humphrey Jennings amongst others
succeeded in blending propaganda, information, and
education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to
documentary. Examples of their work include Drifters
(John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Fires
Were Started, and A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey
Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W. H. Conference of "World Union of
Auden, composers such as Benjamin Britten, and documentary films" in 1948
writers such as J. B. Priestley. Among the best known Warsaw featured famous
films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face. directors of the era: Basil
Wright (on the left), Elmar Klos,
Film Calling mr. Smith (1943) was anti-nazi color Joris Ivens (2nd from the right),
film[20][21][22] created by Stefan Themerson and being and Jerzy Toeplitz.
both documentary and avant-garde film against war.
It was one of the first anti-nazi films in history.

1950s–1970s

Cinéma-vérité

Cinéma vérité (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some
technical advances in order to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable
sync sound.

Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader
perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting
on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave, the
filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld
cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded.

Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important
differences between cinéma vérité (Jean Rouch) and the North American "Direct
Cinema" (or more accurately "Cinéma direct"), pioneered by, among others,
Canadians Allan King, Michel Brault, and Pierre Perrault, and Americans Robert
Drew, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman, and Albert and David Maysles.

The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of

involvement with their subjects. Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-
involvement (or at least no overt involvement), and Perrault, Rouch, Koenig, and
Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary.

The films Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker),
Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles), Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman),
Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by Robert
Drew), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple), Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig
and Roman Kroitor) are all frequently deemed cinéma vérité films.

The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a
moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no
sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished
product) is very high, often reaching 80 to one. From there, editors find and sculpt
the work into a film. The editors of the movement—such as Werner Nold, Charlotte
Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovde—are often overlooked, but
their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits.

Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs,[23] Showman,

Salesman, Near Death, and The Children Were Watching.

Political weapons

In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon
against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but
also in a changing Quebec society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces,
from 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Arnold Vincent Kudales Sr., influenced a
whole generation of filmmakers. Among the many political documentaries produced
in the early 1970s was "Chile: A Special Report," public television's first in-depth
expository look of the September 1973 overthrow of the Salvador Allende
government in Chile by military leaders under Augusto Pinochet, produced by
documentarians Ari Martinez and José Garcia.

A 28 June, 2020, article by The New York Times talks about a political documentary
film ‘And She Could Be Next’, directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia. The
documentary not only brings focus to the role of women in politics but more
specifically to the women of color, their communities and the significant changes
they are bringing about in the American politics.[24]

Modern documentaries

Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly
successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me,
Food, Inc., Earth, March of the Penguins, Religulous, and An Inconvenient Truth
among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films,
documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film
companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.

The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema
verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound
equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line
blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such
as Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix
expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than
historical materials.[25]

Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's
Civil Rights Years (1986—Part 1 and 1989—Part 2) by Henry Hampton, 4 Little Girls
(1997) by Spike Lee, and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded
independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice
but also a perspective and point of views. Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by
Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me
placed far more interpretive control with the director. The commercial success of
these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form,
leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called
documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-
ganda."[26] However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been
noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic
ontological foundations.

Documentary filmmakers are increasingly utilizing social impact campaigns with

their films.[27] Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by
converting public awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action,
largely by offering the audience a way to get involved.[28] Examples of such
documentaries include Kony 2012, Salam Neighbor, Gasland, Living on One Dollar,
and Girl Rising.

Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of
the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production
remains elusive. Within the past decade, the largest exhibition opportunities have
emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the
tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding
source.[29]

Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the
development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but
more often veers to the fictional or staged. The "making-of" documentary shows how
a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes,
it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.

Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly
aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first
film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices
of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to
Iraqis to record themselves.

Documentaries without words

Films in the documentary form without words have been made. Listen to Britain
directed by Humphrey Jennings and Stuart McAllister in 1942 is a wordless
meditation on wartime Britain. From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka
could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to the images, but no
spoken content. Koyaanisqatsi (part of the Qatsi trilogy) consists primarily of slow
motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the
United States. Baraka tries to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and
swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies.

Bodysong was made in 2003 and won a British Independent Film Award for "Best
British Documentary."

The 2004 film Genesis shows animal and plant life in states of expansion, decay, sex,
and death, with some, but little, narration.

Narration styles

Voice-over narrator
The traditional style for narration is to have a dedicated narrator read a script which
is dubbed onto the audio track. The narrator never appears on camera and may not
necessarily have knowledge of the subject matter or involvement in the writing of the
script.

Silent narration

This style of narration uses title screens to visually narrate the documentary. The
screens are held for about 5–10 seconds to allow adequate time for the viewer to
read them. They are similar to the ones shown at the end of movies based on true
stories, but they are shown throughout, typically between scenes.

Hosted narrator

In this style, there is a host who appears on camera, conducts interviews, and who
also does voice-overs.

Other forms

Hybrid documentary

The release of The Act of Killing (2012) directed by Joshua Oppenheimer has
introduced possibilities for emerging forms of the hybrid documentary. Traditional
documentary filmmaking typically removes signs of fictionalization in order to
distinguish itself from fictional film genres. Audiences have recently become more
distrustful of the media's traditional fact production, making them more receptive to
experimental ways of telling facts. The hybrid documentary implements truth games
in order to challenge traditional fact production. Although it is fact-based, the hybrid
documentary is not explicit about what should be understood, creating an open
dialogue between subject and audience.[30] Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010), Joshua
Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (2012), Mads Brügger's The Ambassador (2011
film), and Alma Har'el's Bombay Beach (film) (2011) are a few notable examples.[30]

Docufiction

Docufiction is a hybrid genre from two basic ones, fiction film and documentary,
practiced since the first documentary films were made.

Fake-fiction

Fake-fiction is a genre which deliberately presents real, unscripted events in the

form of a fiction film, making them appear as staged. The concept was introduced[31]
by Pierre Bismuth to describe his 2016 film Where is Rocky II?

DVD documentary

A DVD documentary is a documentary film of indeterminate length that has been

produced with the sole intent of releasing it for direct sale to the public on DVD(s),
as different from a documentary being made and released first on television or on a
cinema screen (a.k.a. theatrical release) and subsequently on DVD for public
consumption.

This form of documentary release is becoming more popular and accepted as costs
and difficulty with finding TV or theatrical release slots increases. It is also
commonly used for more "specialist" documentaries, which might not have general
interest to a wider TV audience. Examples are military, cultural arts, transport,
sports, etc.

Compilation films

Compilation films were pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the
Romanov Dynasty. More recent examples include Point of Order (1964), directed by
Emile de Antonio about the McCarthy hearings. Similarly, The Last Cigarette
combines the testimony of various tobacco company executives before the U.S.
Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking.

Poetic documentaries, which first appeared in the 1920s, were a sort of reaction
against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction
film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized
images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of
time and space. Well-rounded characters—"lifelike people"—were absent; instead,
people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the
material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption
of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the
day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic
narrative. The "real world"—Nichols calls it the "historical world"—was broken up
into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form. Examples of this style
include Joris Ivens' Rain (1928), which records a passing summer shower over
Amsterdam; László Moholy-Nagy's Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930), in which
he films one of his own kinetic sculptures, emphasizing not the sculpture itself but
the play of light around it; Oskar Fischinger's abstract animated films; Francis
Thompson's N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city symphony film; and Chris Marker's Sans Soleil
(1982).

Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an

authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong
argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the
viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God)
commentary often sounds "objective" and omniscient. Images are often not
paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses
upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this
mode deliver an unproblematic and "objective" account and interpretation of past
events.

Examples: TV shows and films like Biography, America's Most Wanted, many science
and nature documentaries, Ken Burns' The Civil War (1990), Robert Hughes' The
Shock of the New (1980), John Berger's Ways Of Seeing (1974), Frank Capra's
wartime Why We Fight series, and Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke The Plains
(1936).
Observational

Observational documentaries attempt to simply and

spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of
intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this
subgenre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract
and the expository mode as too didactic. The first
observational docs date back to the 1960s; the
technological developments which made them
possible include mobile lightweight cameras and
portable sound recording equipment for synchronized
film team at Port of Dar es
sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over
Salaam with two ferries
commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music,
or re-enactments.[32] The films aimed for immediacy,
intimacy, and revelation of individual human
character in ordinary life situations.

Types

Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking

to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the
approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker
part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or
altered by their presence. Nichols: "The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of
voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-
the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any
other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of
potential power and control over events.)" The encounter between filmmaker and
subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach
cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov's kinopravda into French; the "truth" refers
to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Reflexive documentaries do not see themselves as a transparent window on the

world; instead, they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that
they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films?
This question is central to this subgenre of films. They prompt us to "question the
authenticity of documentary in general." It is the most self-conscious of all the
modes, and is highly skeptical of "realism". It may use Brechtian alienation strategies
to jar us, in order to "defamiliarize" what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response

to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or
experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make
us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on
the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs's Tongues
Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1991). This subgenre might
also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians,
etc.) to "speak about themselves". Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed
from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal
accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.
Educational Films

Documentaries are shown in schools around the world in order to educate students.
Used to introduce various topics to children, they are often used with a school lesson
or shown many times to reinforce an idea.

Translation
There are several challenges associated with translation of documentaries. The main
two are working conditions and problems with terminology.

Working conditions

Documentary translators very often have to meet tight deadlines. Normally, the
translator has between five and seven days to hand over the translation of a 90-
minute programme. Dubbing studios typically give translators a week to translate a
documentary, but in order to earn a good salary, translators have to deliver their
translations in a much shorter period, usually when the studio decides to deliver the
final programme to the client sooner or when the broadcasting channel sets a tight
deadline, e.g. on documentaries discussing the latest news.[33]

Another problem is the lack of postproduction script or the poor quality of the
transcription. A correct transcription is essential for a translator to do their work
properly, however many times the script is not even given to the translator, which is
a major impediment since documentaries are characterised by "the abundance of
terminological units and very specific proper names".[34] When the script is given to
the translator, it is usually poorly transcribed or outright incorrect making the
translation unnecessarily difficult and demanding because all of the proper names
and specific terminology have to be correct in a documentary programme in order
for it to be a reliable source of information, hence the translator has to check every
term on their own. Such mistakes in proper names are for instance: "Jungle Reinhard
instead of Django Reinhart, Jorn Asten instead of Jane Austen, and Magnus Axle
instead of Aldous Huxley".[34]

Terminology

The process of translation of a documentary programme requires working with very

specific, often scientific terminology. Documentary translators usually are not
specialist in a given field. Therefore, they are compelled to undertake extensive
research whenever asked to make a translation of a specific documentary
programme in order to understand it correctly and deliver the final product free of
mistakes and inaccuracies. Generally, documentaries contain a large amount of
specific terms, with which translators have to familiarise themselves on their own,
for example:

The documentary Beetles, Record Breakers makes use of 15 different

terms to refer to beetles in less than 30 minutes (longhorn beetle, cellar
beetle, stag beetle, burying beetle or gravediggers, sexton beetle, tiger
beetle, bloody nose beetle, tortoise beetle, diving beetle, devil’s coach
 horse, weevil, click beetle, malachite beetle, oil beetle, cockchafer), apart
from mentioning other animals such as horseshoe bats or meadow brown
butterflies.[35]

This poses a real challenge for the translators because they have to render the
meaning, i.e. find an equivalent, of a very specific, scientific term in the target
language and frequently the narrator uses a more general name instead of a specific
term and the translator has to rely on the image presented in the programme to
understand which term is being discussed in order to transpose it in the target
language accordingly.[36] Additionally, translators of minorised languages often have
to face another problem: some terms may not even exist in the target language. In
such case, they have to create new terminology or consult specialists to find proper
solutions. Also, sometimes the official nomenclature differs from the terminology
used by actual specialists, which leaves the translator to decide between using the
official vocabulary that can be found in the dictionary, or rather opting for
spontaneous expressions used by real experts in real life situations.[37]

See also
Actuality film Mockumentary
Animated documentary Mondo film
Citizen media Nature documentary
Concert film Outline of film
Dance film Participatory video
Docudrama Political cinema
Documentary mode Public-access television
Ethnofiction Reality film
Ethnographic film Rockumentary
Filmmaking Sponsored film
List of documentary films Television documentary
List of documentary film festivals Travel documentary
List of documentary television Visual anthropology
channels Web documentary
List of directors and producers of Women's cinema
documentaries

Some documentary film awards

Grierson Awards
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
Joris Ivens Award, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA),
(named after Joris Ivens)
Filmmaker Award, Margaret Mead Film Festival
Grand Prize, Visions du Réel

Notes and references

 1. "Oxford English Dictionary" (http://www.oed.com/;jsessionid=D17BEB75B4625B02
AC28B5B9C051D98D?authRejection=true&url=%2Fview%2FEntry%2F56332).
oed.com. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20180425234317/http://www.oed.
com/;jsessionid=D17BEB75B4625B02AC28B5B9C051D98D?authRejection=true&ur
l=%2Fview%2FEntry%2F56332) from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved
25 April 2018.
2. Nichols, Bill (2013) [1998]. "Foreword to the new and expanded edition". In Grant,
Barry Keith; Sloniowski, Jeannette (eds.). Documenting the Documentary: Close
Readings of Documentary Film and Video (https://books.google.com/books?id=ixLC
AgAAQBAJ). Contemporary approaches to film and media series. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press. p. xiv. ISBN 9780814339725. Retrieved 6 July 2020. "Even
after the word 'documentary' began to designate something that looked like a
filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception, it
remains, to this day, a practice without clear boundaries."
3. Scott MacKenzie, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology,
Univ of California Press 2014, ISBN 9780520957411, p.520
4. James Chapman, "Film and History. Theory and History" part "Film as historical
source" p.73–75, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, ISBN 9781137367327
5. Ann Curthoys, Marilyn Lake Connected worlds: history in transnational perspective,
Volume 2004 (https://books.google.com/books?id=JE6YM8jcRucC&pg=PA151#v=o
nepage&q=john%20grierson%20documentary%201926) p.151. Australian National
University Press
6. "History/Film" (http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/hfilm/MORRIS.html).
wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2018032613334
4/https://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/hfilm/MORRIS.html) from the
original on 26 March 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
7. "Pare Lorentz Film Library – FDR and Film" (https://web.archive.org/web/201107240
02229/http://parelorentzcenter.net/fdr_film.php). 24 July 2011. Archived from the
original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
8. Larry Ward (Fall 2008). "Introduction" (https://web.archive.org/web/200609030009
16/http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lward/375/PDF375/375INTRO.pdf) (PDF).
Lecture Notes for the BA in Radio-TV-Film (RTVF). 375: Documentary Film &
Television. California State University, Fullerton (College of communications): 4,
slide 12. Archived from the original (http://www.commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lward/37
5/PDF375/375INTRO.pdf) (PDF) on 2006-09-03.
9. Charles Ford, Robert Hammond: Polish Film: A Twentieth Century History.
McFarland, 2005. ISBN 9781476608037, p.10.
10. Baptista, Tiago (November 2005). " "Il faut voir le maître": A Recent Restoration of
Surgical Films by E.-L. Doyen, 1859–1916". Journal of Film Preservation (70).
11. Mircea Dumitrescu, O privire critică asupra filmului românesc, Brașov, 2005,
ISBN 978-973-9153-93-5
12. Rîpeanu, Bujor T. Filmul documentar 1897–1948, Bucharest, 2008, ISBN 978-973-
7839-40-4
13. Ţuţui, Marian, A short history of the Romanian films (http://www.cncinema.abt.ro/Fil
es/Documents/fls-258.doc) at the Romanian National Cinematographic Center.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080411014620/http://www.cncinema.abt.r
o/Files/Documents/fls-258.doc) April 11, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
14. The Works of Gheorghe Marinescu (http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=71
342) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20100525185831/http://www.britishpat
he.com/record.php?id=71342) 2010-05-25 at the Wayback Machine, 1967 report.
15. Excerpts of prof. dr. Marinescu's science films (http://www.cncinema.abt.ro/Files/Mo
vies/fls-271.avi). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150226113120/http://ww
w.cncinema.abt.ro/Files/Movies/fls-271.avi) February 26, 2015, at the Wayback
Machine
16. Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, 2005.
17. Rees, A.L. (2011). A History of Experimental Film and Video (2nd ed.). Palgrave
Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-84457-436-0.
18. MacDonald, Scott (2010). "Avant-Doc: Eight Intersections". Film Quarterly. 64 (2):
50–57. doi:10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.50 (https://doi.org/10.1525%2Ffq.2010.64.2.50).
JSTOR 10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.50 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.
50).
19. Grierson, John. 'First Principles of Documentary', in Kevin Macdonald & Mark
Cousins (eds.) Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. London: Faber
and Faber, 1996
20. "Calling Mr. Smith – LUX" (https://lux.org.uk/work/calling-mr-smith1). lux.org.uk.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20180425234317/https://lux.org.uk/work/cal
ling-mr-smith1) from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
21. "Calling Mr Smith – Centre Pompidou" (https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/resourc
e/cAXbMp/rqGRLe9). centrepompidou.fr. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201
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the original on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
22. "Franciszka and Stefan Themerson: Calling Mr. Smith (1943) – artincinema" (http://
artincinema.com/franciszka-and-stefan-themerson-calling-mr-smith-1943/).
artincinema.com. 21 June 2015. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201801310
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943/) from the original on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
23. "Les raquetteurs" (http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/en/our-collection/?idfilm=54008). National
Film Board of Canada. 15 August 2017.
24. "In 'And She Could Be Next,' Women of Color Take on Politics" (https://www.nytime
s.com/2020/06/28/arts/television/and-she-could-be-next-pbs.html). The New York
Times. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
25. Struggles for Representation African American Documentary Film and Video, edited
by Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler,
26. Wood, Daniel B. (2 June 2006). "In 'docu-ganda' films, balance is not the objective"
(http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0602/p01s02-ussc.html). Christian Science
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nitor.com/2006/0602/p01s02-ussc.html) from the original on 12 June 2006.
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27. Johnson, Ted (2015-06-19). "AFI Docs: Filmmakers Get Savvier About Fueling Social
Change" (https://variety.com/2015/biz/news/afi-docs-fueling-social-change-120152
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28. "social impact campaigns" (http://www.azuremedia.org/azuremedia.org/social_imp
act_campaigns.html). www.azuremedia.org. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/
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29. indiewire.com (https://web.archive.org/web/20070519040840/http://www.indiewire.
com/ots/fes_01Sund_010208_Docs.html), "Festivals: Post-Sundance 2001; Docs
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30. Moody, Luke (2013-07-02). "Act normal: hybrid tendencies in documentary film" (h
ttps://11polaroids.com/2013/07/02/act-normal-hybrid-tendencies-in-documentary-fi
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1/where-is-rocky-ii-ed-ruscha-mojave-desert-film-pierre-bismuth). The Guardian.
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32. Mangan, Lucy (2019-07-25). "Inside the Bruderhof review – is this a religious
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33. Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J.
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34. Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J.
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Multilingual Matters, p. 111
35. Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J.
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Multilingual Matters, p. 113
36. Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J.
Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK:
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Sources and bibliography

Aitken, Ian (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York: Routledge,
2005. ISBN 978-1-57958-445-0.
Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd rev. ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-19-507898-5. Still a useful
introduction.
Ron Burnett. "Reflections on the Documentary Cinema" (http://rburnett.ecuad.ca/ar
chive/2008/8/29/reflections-on-the-documentary-cinema.html)
Burton, Julianne (ed.). The Social Documentary in Latin America. Pittsburgh, Penn.:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0-8229-3621-3.
Dawson, Jonathan. "Dziga Vertov" (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-dir
ectors/vertov/).
Ellis, Jack C., and Betsy A. McLane. "A New History of Documentary Film." New
York: Continuum International, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8264-1750-3, ISBN 978-0-8264-
1751-0.
Goldsmith, David A. The Documentary Makers: Interviews with 15 of the Best in the
Business. Hove, East Sussex: RotoVision, 2003. ISBN 978-2-88046-730-2.
Gaycken, Oliver (2015). Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science.
ISBN 978-0-19-986070-8.
 Klotman, Phyllis R. and Culter, Janet K.(eds.). Struggles for Representation: African
American Documentary Film and Video Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-253-21347-1.
Leach, Jim, and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds.). Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian
Documentaries. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-
8020-4732-8, ISBN 978-0-8020-8299-2.
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University
Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-253-33954-6, ISBN 978-0-253-21469-0.
Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-253-34060-3,
ISBN 978-0-253-20681-7.
Nornes, Markus. Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese
Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8166-
4907-5, ISBN 978-0-8166-4908-2.
Nornes, Markus. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8166-4045-4,
ISBN 978-0-8166-4046-1.
Rotha, Paul, Documentary diary; An Informal History of the British Documentary
Film, 1928–1939. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. ISBN 978-0-8090-3933-3.
Saunders, Dave. Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the
Sixties. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-905674-16-9, ISBN 978-1-
905674-15-2.
Saunders, Dave. Documentary: The Routledge Film Guidebook. London: Routledge,
2010.
Tobias, Michael. The Search for Reality: The Art of Documentary Filmmaking. Studio
City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions 1997. ISBN 0-941188-62-0
Walker, Janet, and Diane Waldeman (eds.). Feminism and Documentary.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8166-3006-6,
ISBN 978-0-8166-3007-3.
Wyver, John. The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television &
Radio. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. in association with the British Film Institute,
1989. ISBN 978-0-631-15529-4.
Murdoch.edu (http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/doco/biblio.htm),
Documentary—reading list

Ethnographic film
Emilie de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic Film," in Principles of Visual
Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings. Berlin and New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1995,
pp. 13–43.
Leslie Devereaux, "Cultures, Disciplines, Cinemas," in Fields of Vision. Essays in
Film Studies, Visual Anthropology and Photography, ed. Leslie Devereaux & Roger
Hillman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 329–339.
Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin (eds.), Media Worlds:
Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.
ISBN 978-0-520-23231-0.
Anna Grimshaw, The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-521-77310-2.
Karl G. Heider, Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
 Luc de Heusch, Cinéma et Sciences Sociales, Paris: UNESCO, 1962. Published in
English as The Cinema and Social Science. A Survey of Ethnographic and
Sociological Films. UNESCO, 1962.
Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible. New York & London: Routledge, 1990.
Pierre-L. Jordan, Premier Contact-Premier Regard, Marseille: Musées de Marseille.
Images en Manoeuvres Editions, 1992.
André Leroi-Gourhan, "Cinéma et Sciences Humaines. Le Film Ethnologique Existe-
t-il?," Revue de Géographie Humaine et d'Ethnologie 3 (1948), pp. 42–50.
David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1998. ISBN 978-0-691-01234-6.
David MacDougall, "Whose Story Is It?," in Ethnographic Film Aesthetics and
Narrative Traditions, ed. Peter I. Crawford and Jan K. Simonsen. Aarhus,
Intervention Press, 1992, pp. 25–42.
Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8223-1840-8.
Georges Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma. Vol. 1, L'Invention du Cinéma 1832–
1897. Paris: Denöel, 1977, pp. 73–110.
Pierre Sorlin, Sociologie du Cinéma, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1977, pp. 7–74.
Charles Warren, "Introduction, with a Brief History of Nonfiction Film," in Beyond
Document. Essays on Nonfiction Film, ed. Charles Warren. Hanover and London:
Wesleyan University Press, 1996, pp. 1–22.
Ismail Xavier, "Cinema: Revelação e Engano," in O Olhar, ed. Adauto Novaes. São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993, pp. 367–384.

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