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What Is Documentary?

Direct Cinema that flourished in Canada and America in the 60's tried to capture uncontrolled reality. But the movement was later met with objections from postmodernists who argued that there is no objective reality to capture, and with that came skepticism about the very meaning of 'documentary'. Several scholars, however, strongly criticised such postmodernist view, and attempted commonsensical analysis of the concept of documenatry. Basically two approaches emerged from this effort. One of them views documentary as an indexical record of pro-filmic scene. The other views documentary as an assertion of the filmmaker. In this article the author first discusses limitations of the two approaches. The documentary-as-record view cannot adequately deal with expository documentaries, and even for observational documentaries it has some theoretical difficulties. The documentary-as-assertion view has a significant problem, too. Assertion may be a condition for expository documentaries, but it is not a condition for observational ones. The filmmaker may almost always know her film conveys facts about the pro-filmic scene, but she does not need to assert it does. The (observational) film conveys facts regardless of her assertion (or knowledge, for that matter). Even fiction films can convey facts - about actual Harrison Ford, say. So, how can we distinguish documentary from fiction? The author's first proposition is that a documentary is a film whose subject is something actual. In other words, what the film is about is some actual thing. The author's second proposition is that a documentary is a film regarding whose primary subject the pro-filmic scene is not staged. In other words, if something is staged, it does not greatly concern what the documentary is about. These two propositions are mainly for observational documentaries. For expository ones, the second condition is not required.