Looking at Interactive Documentaries through Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theater

Abstract

In the 21st century, which is called the digital age, documentary cinema has undergone many changes in terms of both content and form. Apart from being a display medium, interfaces and screens have become spheres where the narrative is constructed. Thus, the production and viewing dimensions of documentary films have changed and traditional narrative documentaries have started to be replaced by interactive documentaries. In these documentaries, the director becomes the designer and the viewer becomes the participant/user. In this context, Walter Benjamin’s approach to epic theater, which he believes is compatible with new technical forms and is the culmination of technology, is the starting point of this study. Because especially since the early 1960s, Bertolt Brecht’s understanding of epic theater has influenced directors and shaped their understanding of filmmaking. The directors who wanted to make the audience feel that the images they see in a film were made with designed decorations, used Brecht's aesthetic understanding to destroy mimesis and break identification. In this context, Seven Digital Deadly Sins (2014), which is an example of an interactive documentary developed with new communication technologies and opens the door to different possibilities for the director and the audience, is evaluated through Bertolt Brecht's understanding of epic theater.