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Why Documentary?

This article is a follow-up of one of the author’s recent articles, whichwas titled “What is Documentary” and where the author tried to find criteriafor documentary. Lately that article seemed to the author to be lacking intwo broad respects. One is that it did not discuss the documentary viewers’subjective experiences. The other is that it almost ignored the post-modernistskepticism about documentary. This paper tries to address the deficiencies. On the subjective experience side, the author explains and emphasizesthe documentary realism. The realism is based on the familiar photographicrealism, but it also requires the viewer’s belief that the pro-filmic scene is/wasnot staged. The author argues that this realism is what makes documentariesattractive to us, as much as the information we get from them is. The experienceis akin to viewing the past world via a hypothetical time-machine. On the skeptics side, the author tries to argue against the view that thefact of being photographic records does not confer documentaries some specialstatus. The author thinks documentaries are special because it seems impossibleto make (without fictional narration or dubbing) a fiction film from shotsof unstaged scenes. “Shooting without staging” seems to be just a descriptionof a way of filmmaking, but it seems to dictate that the product be a nonfiction. Nonfictions in other media do not exhibit this property. In nonfiction novel,for example, an observable feature of the process (writing sentences) doesnot dictate the type of product. In documentary films, the processoverwhelmingly favors a nonfiction.