What is Documentary?

The Short Answer

The simple definition of documentary is “nonfiction film.” In fact, many filmmakers and film festivals prefer to use that phrase to better describe the wide range of films commonly grouped under the documentary umbrella.

In box-office figures, "documentary" is generally considered a subgenre of nonfiction alongside concert films, large format (IMAX) films, compilations, and "reality" films (like Jackass). As I see it, drawing the lines between these films is arbitrary and somewhat meaningless. Certainly some films are more "serious" than others, but the lines are not so simple to draw.

The main distinction separating documentaries from other films is that they attempt to show us reality rather than made-up stories.

The Long Answer

There are no official rules for documentaries, however there are certain ideals you may associate with documentary films:

• People, places, and events presented are real.
• Events are filmed as they happen and are not staged for the camera.
• Events take place in the order in which they happened in real life.
• The record presented by the film is consistent with available historical evidence.
• Filmmakers’ opinions and personal feelings are not expressed.

You can probably think of documentary films that break these “rules." Some of these expectations about documentary were long ago cast aside in the name of creative freedom and an understanding that film is an inherently imperfect substitute for reality. Some common techniques that are sometimes criticized for violating the “rules” of documentary include:

• Re-enactments: Some re-enactments use actual people and places, others use actors. There continue to be debates over whether and how re-enactments should be labeled for the audience, as evidenced by discussions of Mighty Times: The Children’s March, winner of the 2005 Oscar for Best Documentary.
• Animation and special effects: Often employed as a means of communicating the parts of a story that cannot be captured by camera, including a subject’s dreams, memories, and imaginings. In The Realms of the Unreal,and American Splendor both use such techniques.
• Altered Timelines: Very few documentaries adhere to an exact chronology of scenes. Because the final film only shows a very small percentage of all the footage shot, many actions and quotes will necessarily be taken out of context. Shuffling the order of scenes and dialogue is often done for the sake of clarity.
• Editing and Omissions: Sometimes portions of a story are omitted because a subject is too complicated to present comprehensively and clearly in two hours or less. Filmmakers also might be willing to sacrifice some credibility with scholars in order to produce a film that is understood and well received by a wider audience. Some quickly produced TV documentaries are criticized on these grounds. The relative importance of each part of a story is always a subjective decision made by the filmmaker.
• Personal Opinion: Other films are clearly very personal and contain a significant dose of opinion and interpretation. Agnes Varda’s excellent film-essay on found things, The Gleaners and I, falls into this camp. Similarly, Michael Moore and other issue-advocacy filmmakers use a mix of fact and opinion in their films. Nonfiction films have a long history of being used as persuasive tools – both overtly (as in Fahrenheit 9/11) and as propaganda (Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series and Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will).

While there are certainly many excellent films that obey the traditional “rules” of documentary, nonfiction films do much more than simply document the facts of our world. They give us glimpses of other people’s minds and imaginations; they educate, illuminate, persuade, and even (gasp!) entertain.