6 Types of Documentary (FREE)

6 Types of Documentary
http://alexburtonjournal.blogspot.com/2007/11/documentary-form.html
Documentaries can be split into six different forms. The following has been
inspired by Bill Nichols books Introduction to Documentary (2001) and
Representing Reality (1991). and taken from
(http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2006/12/six-types-of-documentary.html)
1. 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 characterslife-like
peoplewere 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 spacea coherence favored by the fiction films of the daycan also be
seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative.
The real worldNichols calls it the historical worldwas broken up into
fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form.
Examples: Joris Ivens Rain (1928), whose subject is a passing summer

shower over Amsterdam; Laszlo Moholy-Nagys 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 Fischingers
abstract animated films; Francis Thompsons N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city
symphony film; Chris Markers Sans Soleil (1982).
2. 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 A&E Biography; Americas Most Wanted;
many science and nature documentaries; Ken Burns The Civil War (1990);
Robert Hughes The Shock of the New (1980); John Bergers Ways Of Seeing
(1974). Also, Frank Capras wartime Why We Fight series; Pare Lorentzs The
Plow That Broke The Plains (1936).
3. Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously

observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in
this sub-genre 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
lighweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for
synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over
commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The
films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human
character in ordinary life situations.
Examples: Frederick Wisemans films, e.g. High School (1968); Gilles Groulx
and Michel Braults Les Racquetteurs (1958); Albert & David Maysles and
Charlotte Zwerins Gimme Shelter (1970); D.A. Pennebakers Dont Look Back
(1967), about Dylans tour of England; and parts (not all) of Jean Rouch and
Edgar Morins Chronicle Of A Summer (1960), which interviews several
Parisians about their lives. An ironic example of this mode is Leni
Riefenstahls Triumph Of The Will (1934), which ostensibly records the
pageantry and ritual at the Nazi partys 1934 Nuremberg rally, although it is
well-known that these events were often staged for the purpose of the
camera and would not have occurred without it. This would be anathema to
most of the filmmakers associated with this mode, like Wiseman, Pennebaker,
Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, who believed that the filmmaker should be
a fly-on-the-wall who observes but tries to not influence or alter the events
being filmed.
4. 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 her 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 cinma vrit, translating Dziga Vertovs kinopravda into French;
the truth refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute
truth.
Examples: Vertovs The Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Rouch and Morins
Chronicle of a Summer (1960); Ross McElwees Shermans March (1985); Nick
Broomfields films. I suspect Michael Moores films would also belong here,
although they have a strong expository bent as well.
5. Reflexive documentaries dont 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 sub-genre 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.
Examples: (Again) Vertovs The Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Buuels
Land Without Bread; Trinh T. Minh-has Surname Viet Given Name Nam
(1989); Jim McBride & L.M. Kit Carsons David Holzmans Diary (1968); David
& Judith MacDougalls Wedding Camels (1980).
6. 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 Riggss Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny
Livingstons Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre 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.
Examples: Alain Resnais Night And Fog (1955), with a commentary by

Holocaust survivior Jean Cayrol, is not a historical account of the Holocaust
but instead a subjective account of it; its a film about memory. Also, Peter
Forgacs Free Fall (1988) and Danube Exodus (1999); and Robert Gardners
Forest of Bliss (1985), a film about India that Ive long heard about and look
forward to seeing.
I can use these different forms of documentary to analyse my own

documentary technique. What I find particularly interesting is the role truth
plays in documentaries and how the different forms presented here show
facts in very different ways.

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6 Types of Documentary

1. Poetic documentaries, which first appeared in the 1920s, were a sort of

Examples: Joris Ivens Rain (1928), whose subject is a passing summer

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

3. Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously

4. Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of

5. Reflexive documentaries dont see themselves as a transparent window on

6. Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional

Examples: Alain Resnais Night And Fog (1955), with a commentary by

I can use these different forms of documentary to analyse my own

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