The act documentary
In the present, we can ponder what is it that draws viewers to current high-profile documentaries which, rather than delivering certitude about their truthfulness, withhold from the viewer an ability to know whether or not what they see onscreen is an accurate representation of actual historical events or not. Indeed, there is a vast catalogue of documentaries that show no sign that they are intended to encourage the sober act of epistephilia on the part of the viewer, whether these be exploitation documentaries, emotion-laden propaganda films, or any of the other types of documentary that have found receptive audiences but are largely overlooked and treated as ‘unwelcome’ in both popular and scholarly thinking about the documentary. To think of the documentary only in terms of films that fit these criteria, or to focus on the connection between documentary viewing and epistephilia, is to ignore that audiences routinely derive other pleasures from documentaries. But in the popular imagination, as in the taxonomy of documentaries that are most commonly studied by film scholars, serious-minded documentaries that serve a journalistic, educational, democracy-fostering, justice-advancing, or nation-building function are often presented as the clearest illustration of what documentaries can and should be. In truth, in both concept and practice, documentary filmmaking is heterogeneous and “mobilizes no finite inventory of techniques, addresses no set number of issues, and adopts no completely known taxonomy of forms, styles, or modes”.
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In light of these common ways of considering the documentary, this type of filmmaking is often placed in binary opposition to fiction filmmaking, an approach that “is predicated on the existence of a fact/fiction dichotomy, with documentary on one side, and drama on the other”. Indeed, the beginnings of documentary filmmaking in the 1920s coincide with the assertive promotion of objectivity in journalism as a means to bring social science-like rigor to news reporting through the elevation of objective facts over subjective opinion. Often seen as a vehicle for the investigation of pressing contemporary issues, the documentary is also commonly thought to operate as a form of journalistic reportage.
The act documentary trial#
Along similar lines, Brian Winston argues that the documentary is popularly valued as a means by which the viewer can judicially examine and develop conclusions regarding the nature of real occurrences, since films of this type are thought to belong within a lineage that encompasses oral interrogation as a feature of a trial or cross-examination, while its mechanically generated images ally it with “pictorial representation as a mode of scientific evidence”. Bill Nichols describes this as the attraction of “epistephilia,” a promise that “Knowledge can be ours, its acquisition will afford us pleasure”. An oft-identified pleasure to be drawn from the documentary is that films of this type offer the viewer an opportunity to learn about an aspect of the historical world.