What is a Documentary?
What is a documentary?
A film or television or radio programme that provides a factual report on a particular subject. [1]
Based on or re-creating an actual event, era, lifestory, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements [2]
a film or television or radio programme that gives facts and information about a subject [3]
To me a documentary is a film or television programme which is based on or re-creates real life stories/events and its main goal is to educate and entertain the viewer.
Types of Documentaries
Campaign
Historical
Wildlife/natural world
Mockumentary
Expository (Convincing the audience to think a certain way)
How real are documentaries?
The problem with documentaries in my opinion is that they fall in the 'grey' area between fact and fiction. Although their main purpose is to tell a true story some of the techniques used can make this story more fiction than fact. For example one of the first documentary style films made was 'Nanook of the North' by Robert J. Flaherty who made some creative changes to the story he was telling. The film followed Nanook, an inuit from northern Quebec, Canada and his family. One change that Flaherty made to the documentary was to give Nanook and his family spears and undeveloped weapons to film them hunting, instead of the guns that they would normally use. This is a big problem as the general public at the time would have very little or no knowledge at all about inuits and this gave them a bad reputation.
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker who created the term 'documentary' as a review of one of Flaherty's films.