What is documentary?

Since the turn of the new mil­len­ni­um, the doc­u­men­tary has made a spec­tac­u­lar rise as an enter­tain­ment medi­um. As such, the very con­cept of what a doc­u­men­tary is, what it means, what it promis­es to a view­er, remains in con­stant flux. Even though it con­tains moments of overt fic­tion, some crit­ics have described Miguel Gomes’ Ara­bi­an Nights as being a doc­u­men­tary – in that it embod­ies a num­ber of key char­ac­ter­is­tics of the form.

We put the ques­tion out there to a host of film­mak­ers, pro­gram­mers and pro­duc­ers to find out… what actu­al­ly is doc­u­men­tary in 2016?

“Doc­u­men­tary is film where peo­ple play them­selves. Non-fic­tion scenes are best under­stood as occa­sions, cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion between direc­tor and par­tic­i­pants, in which every­body is pushed beyond their com­fort zones (with­in the over­all safe space of mak­ing the film). What dis­tin­guish­es non-fic­tion cin­e­ma is that audi­ences feel that what­ev­er a char­ac­ter is going through on screen is coex­ten­sive with her real life. For this rea­son, non-fic­tion footage is sacred, and demands a unique form of empa­thy from the audi­ence – a deep­er empa­thy that has the pow­er to trans­form every­body involved, from char­ac­ter to film­mak­er to audi­ence to the entire soci­ety reflect­ed in the movie.”

“Non-fic­tion films are nec­es­sar­i­ly ten­ta­tive, explorato­ry, archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tions… We invent new real­i­ties togeth­er with our char­ac­ters, cre­at­ing sit­u­a­tions that shed light on them and their worlds, just as one might apply lamp­light to a crys­tal, search­ing for just the right angle so that, in a moment of clar­i­ty, the crystal’s com­plex archi­tec­ture shines forth, reveal­ing its mul­ti­ple facets. A bet­ter metaphor: we begin with unknown seeds, help­ing them take root and grow into seedlings. We grope in dark­ness to dis­cov­er what con­di­tions this mys­te­ri­ous plant needs in order to devel­op and burst into bloom, reveal­ing the splen­dours that were always there, hid­den with­in the seed. We should explore this mag­nif­i­cence from with­in and with­out. We must be the dew­drop that acts as a mag­ni­fy­ing glass on the petal. We must be the hum­ming­bird fly­ing over­head. The fin­ished film should be the poet­ic con­den­sa­tion of all this mystery.”

The Look of Silence is avail­able on DVD and dig­i­tal down­load via thelookof​si​lence​.co​.uk

“Doc­u­men­tary is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet peo­ple I would nev­er meet, and to tell their sto­ries. I make films about shy peo­ple telling small sto­ries, qui­et­ly. The cam­era acts as a wit­ness and the broad­cast is like whis­per­ing into a loud­hail­er. The sto­ries remain small but the audi­ence can be huge. It’s utter­ly intox­i­cat­ing. As soon as peo­ple start to show off I turn the cam­era away. There are enough show offs in the world who already have a plat­form. My aim is to embrace the emo­tion in the sto­ries that I find and reflect them in my films.

“I receive a lot of emails ask­ing if my films are ​‘real’ or if ​‘I’m an actress’ play­ing a role. I think, they can’t quite believe the sto­ry unfurl­ing on screen can be true. Some­one called The Great Hip Hop Hoax ​‘A hoax with­in a hoax…. Hoax­cep­tion.’ The world is bril­liant, con­tra­dic­to­ry, dev­as­tat­ing and unbe­liev­able. It’s more vivid than any­thing I could ever make up.”

Fin­lay is cur­rent­ly edit­ing her new film.

“Doc­u­men­tary is a word that means less and less to me. It assumes some sort of priv­i­leged rela­tion­ship with the real, as though a doc­u­men­tary is an authen­tic doc­u­ment of a real event, per­son or sit­u­a­tion. For me, and this is the philo­soph­i­cal start­ing point of my films, doc­u­men­tary films are sim­ply nar­ra­tives cre­at­ed by their mak­ers to express their own sub­jec­tive truth. In the best films, the maker’s shad­ow always looms large over the work – and this should be celebrated.

“Yes doc­u­men­taries can include fac­tu­al truths and, of course, you do find real peo­ple in doc­u­men­tary films, but the best of them con­cern them­selves with the appear­ance of truth, which is some­thing very dif­fer­ent from fact(s). When all is said and done, these debates are prob­a­bly best left to the the­o­rists, whilst us film­mak­ers should focus on mak­ing our films using what­ev­er meth­ods we deem nec­es­sary to trans­form real­i­ty into some­thing more artful.

“The eter­nal chal­lenge, for me, is to find ways of inten­si­fy­ing and poet­i­cis­ing the every­day and this usu­al­ly means a reimag­in­ing of the real­i­ty I am faced with rather than being faith­ful to it. This act of reimag­in­ing is hope­ful­ly the begin­ning of the cre­ation of some­thing dis­tinc­tive and some­thing that makes film­mak­ing a worth­while pur­suit. In the UK, we are pris­on­ers of the term doc­u­men­tary because of its his­tor­i­cal links to tele­vi­sion and jour­nal­ism. If your doc­u­men­tary isn’t about sav­ing the world or an impor­tant issue, you have a much hard­er time get­ting fund­ing. We need to move away from these lim­i­ta­tions and embrace films that deal with peo­ple and what it is to be human – just like films do.”

Isaacs is cur­rent­ly mak­ing a film about Arse­nal Foot­ball Club, his team of 43 years.

“For me, the attrac­tion of doc­u­men­tary is that we’re tak­en into someone’s world and we get to know them in a direct, inti­mate way. I live for the moments when a per­son acts beyond our expec­ta­tions and when things hap­pen that we could nev­er have hoped for, or imag­ined. The films I love are about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of change where we watch peo­ple strug­gle to trans­form their lives.”

Longinot­to is cur­rent­ly try­ing to raise mon­ey for a New York-set film.

“Doc­u­men­tary is on the verge of an excit­ing new chap­ter. Vir­tu­al real­i­ty is a breath­tak­ing and trans­for­ma­tion­al new means of expe­ri­enc­ing a place and telling a sto­ry. VR is a per­fect exten­sion of my mis­sion in doc­u­men­tary to intro­duce audi­ences to peo­ple and points of view that they might not oth­er­wise encounter. It’s also par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to my process of doc­u­men­tary mak­ing as the foot­print in pro­duc­tion is shock­ing­ly small – the rig is small and I can oper­ate it by myself or with one oth­er per­son which makes it all that much eas­i­er to hide the crew behind a near­by tree or the like.

“The tech­ni­cal trick­ery seems to abduct your eyes, ears and atten­tion, and spir­it you away like a sci-fi tele­por­ta­tion device, and some­thing hap­pens to your heart and brain along the way: you feel like you have actu­al­ly vis­it­ed the places you are expe­ri­enc­ing, and you expe­ri­ence empath­ic con­nec­tions with the crea­tures you encounter there, as if you were inhab­it­ing the same space in real life. Like so many advance­ments before it, VR’s tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions demand aes­thet­ic inno­va­tions: film­mak­ers such as myself are hard at work play­ing with new tech­niques and mash­ing up new potions of the­atri­cal, dig­i­tal and cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage to begin to unlock the pow­er of this technology.

“I was lucky enough to get my hands on a few vir­tu­al real­i­ty cam­era arrays over the last few months and to have shot a bunch of pieces, start­ing with a short VR doc­u­men­tary on Cuban dance which pre­miered at this year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. While I was there, I took advan­tage of the fab­u­lous­ly curat­ed New Fron­tier sec­tion to expe­ri­ence as many of the oth­er Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty and Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty works as I could. Bright days ahead!”

Walk­er is cur­rent­ly mak­ing her next film, Bue­na Vista Social Club: Adiós

“Doc­u­men­tary is, I believe, in great shape. Film­mak­ers have pushed the form way beyond the idea of docs being ​‘wor­thy’ talk­ing head pro­grams and are pro­duc­ing pow­er­ful visu­al sto­ries. These films are enjoy­ing major audi­ence atten­tion in the cin­e­ma and a whole new gen­er­a­tion are explor­ing cross-media plat­forms in excit­ing new ways. Doc­u­men­tary mak­ers are also exper­i­ment­ing across a broad range of genre. I have just returned from Sun­dance where the buzz was that many docs had stronger sto­ry­telling than some fic­tions films. From Roger Ross Williams’ Life, Ani­mat­ed and Bri­an Oakes’ Jim to Robert Greene’s Kate plays Chris­tine, these films embraced hybrid forms, mix­ing ani­ma­tion, archive, com­e­dy and fic­tion­al ele­ments to great effect. They played to packed audi­ences along­side new docs from Kevin Mac­Don­ald, Wern­er Her­zog and Spike Lee – it was amazing.

“Back in the UK, there is evi­dence that docs are flour­ish­ing, not only the suc­cess of our Bertha Doc­House cin­e­ma – the first screen ded­i­cat­ed to show­ing doc­u­men­taries – but also that docs are increas­ing­ly part of the major cin­e­ma chains’ pro­gram­ming along­side fic­tion films. Doc­u­men­tary has always been the way we dis­cov­er the world, broad­en our hori­zons and deep­en our under­stand­ing as well as inves­ti­gat­ing our own com­plex social issues. They encour­age us to peek inside worlds we nev­er knew exist­ed and along the way intro­duce us to some remark­able peo­ple. I’m not sure you can pin down doc­u­men­tary to a sin­gle genre. These films are sim­ply cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions based in the real world for us all to be enriched by. Long may they continue.”

Eliz­a­beth Wood is Direc­tor of Bertha Doc­House, London’s doc­u­men­tary cin­e­ma, which has just cel­e­brat­ed its first birthday.

“Doc­u­men­tary is an attempt to cap­ture the swirling chaos of the real world and give it a struc­ture so that a mean­ing­ful sig­nal can be found in the noise. Doc­u­men­tary is not a genre, but a way of see­ing; it can be obser­va­tion­al or recon­struct­ed, rig­or­ous­ly shaped or built on the freeform, anti-nar­ra­tive rhythms of being alive. No mat­ter the con­tour, a doc­u­men­tary must have some unbreak­able link to actu­al expe­ri­ence or it’s a fic­tion film. But the line between fic­tion and non-fic­tion is end­less­ly unsta­ble. This is because no mat­ter how authen­tic the con­tent, a doc­u­men­tar­i­an must make film­mak­ing deci­sions, which are inher­ent­ly manip­u­la­tive (they have to be!).

“So in essence, non-fic­tion cin­e­ma is the act of fic­tion­al­is­ing what real­ly hap­pened or hap­pens. Because this process often involves real peo­ple and their actu­al sto­ries, it’s fraught with immense eth­i­cal and moral ambi­gu­i­ty. These ten­sions between the real and the con­struct­ed, between the aes­thet­ic and the eth­i­cal, give life to the form; the best doc­u­men­taries embrace these fric­tions and make use of them to cre­ate mean­ing­ful, lay­ered cin­e­ma. This is why non-fic­tion is my favourite kind of film­mak­ing: it’s both con­strict­ed and lib­er­at­ed in thrilling ways.”

Actress played at the Open City Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val in 2015, while Greene’s new film, Kate Plays Chris­tine, picked up an award for doc­u­men­tary writ­ing at the 2016 Sun­dance Film Festival.

This is an edit­ed ver­sion of a fea­ture that was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 64: the Ara­bi­an Nights issue – on sale now from our online shop.