Documentary Film Research Articles (Page 1)

This article examines the narratives describing the 1943 events in Volhynia as portrayed in Polish and Ukrainian documentary films. While documentaries are often regarded as objective sources of information, they also play a powerful role in shaping public consciousness and everyday historical understanding. The Volhynia events hold profound significance for both Polish and Ukrainian audiences. However, the interpretations presented in these films reflect two divergent historical perspectives. Analyzing these narratives – particularly the recurring themes and propaganda techniques – provides a deeper insight into how historical memory is constructed and exprssed. This process is vital for understanding current Polish-Ukrainian relations. Additionally, viewer responses to the films are analyzed separately, as they reveal how historical issues are politicized and emotionally charged, often being transferred uncritically into the present-day discourse.

Documentary films have emerged as potent tools for shaping public discourse and influencing societal and political agendas. Despite the growing acknowledgement garnered by Portuguese cinema at international festivals, its impact on public debate still needs to be explored. This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of how the financial crisis and austerity measures have been portrayed in Portuguese documentary production from 2010 to 2020. The analysis corpus includes 169 feature-length documentary synopses. We conducted a content analysis of films whose synopses explicitly mentioned crisis or austerity and addressed issues such as poverty, unemployment, the elderly, loneliness, territorial asymmetries and migrations. The narrative, visual choices, sound, time and space portrayed and the approach to the crisis were aspects considered in the analysis of the films. The findings reveal a limited emphasis on the portrayal of the crisis, which is seen from different perspectives, times and spaces as if permeating the national daily life. Defective distribution mechanisms also limit the ability of films to impact public debate.

This paper explores the potential offered by a cinematographic approach to the study of museums, particularly science centres. By setting up an intermedial lens that maps between the museum medium and film - particularly the visitor experiences in museums onto a specific genre of museum film - correspondences between these media and their respective 'grammars' are analysed. After a brief overview of the relationship between museums and film in the twentieth century, a language of documentary film suitable for museum film is introduced based on the film theory of Jon Boorstin, who also directed a film on the Exploratorium in San Fancisco, which adapted post-war insights in communication design as developed by the Eames Office. Reviewing five documentaries about the Exploratorium shows that only Boorstin's museum film could adequately convey the museum experience to others, thus going beyond intermediality to enable a transmedial transfer. How this film emerged through the cooperation of the Exploratorium with the Eames Office and national funding agencies is presented in some detail in order to show that the intermedial lens can work both ways, allowing for the transmedial application of film analysis to the museums themselves.

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the various ways in which the narrative and editorial structure of a film achieves a commensal relationship with memory and history. The paper considers the two ways of doing this as described by Deleuze in his works – the movement-image and the time-image. These have been used to discuss the 2010 documentary film Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light) by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. The paper aims to understand how the film serves as a record of memory and history, as well as a stimulant for both the participants in the film and the viewers to retrieve their own memories and, by extension, their histories and identities through the film. The paper presents the concept of ‘labyrinthine memory’ as a mechanism through which films such as Nostalgia for the Light become a documentative and representative voice for victims of conflict and systematic and authoritarian oppression and trauma.

ABSTRACT Independent Chinese documentaries began to garner critical attention at international film festivals in the 1990s. While existing studies have illuminated the importance of domestic and Asian film festivals in supporting this film culture, the influence of prominent European festivals, especially those with a business-oriented focus, has been less directly considered. This article addresses this gap by exploring interactions between such festivals and this culture, focusing on the history of Chinese documentaries’ participation in the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), between 1996 and 2017. It demonstrates that this engagement reflects a deep process of transculturation, involving multidimensional interactions – cultural, industrial, and economic. Such a perspective offers a more nuanced understanding of the complex mechanisms involved in Chinese documentaries’ global exposure through key overseas business festivals.

The story of many first- and second-generation Italian Americans was characterized by profound tensions: on the one hand, they strived to hold on to their cultural roots as a powerful act of resistance to assimilation; on the other hand, they felt compelled to erase difference in order to blend into the very society that often stigmatized them. Writers and artists Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Susan Caperna Lloyd have captured this struggle in their multi-faceted work, forcefully portraying their alienation, the self-erasure that often came with trying to succeed in America, as well as their proud assertion of their ethnic identity. This essay sets out to investigate the ways they both used documentary films—The Baggage (2001) and All That Lies between Us (2007)—as a means to restore visibility, reclaim complexity, and give voice to the Italian American experience.

Introduction Drawing upon self-determination theory, this research investigates methods to enhance motivation in educational settings through the use of serious games by addressing the fundamental psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Methods Three strategies were proposed to meet these needs: diversifying learning resource presentations, creating appropriate challenges, and integrating relationships into the narrative framework. A serious game incorporating traditional Chinese culture was developed and compared to a short documentary film for learning efficacy. The study involved 60 college students from two natural classes who participated in either a 15-minute gameplay session or a 15-minute video-watching session, followed by a 10-minute discussion. Post-test scores and learning motivation were assessed to evaluate the effectiveness of both methods. Results No significant difference in post-test scores was observed between the two groups, indicating that the serious game was as effective as the traditional documentary in enhancing academic performance. However, the serious game significantly outperformed the documentary in enhancing learning motivation, despite being perceived as less authentic. The immersive and interactive elements of the game were found to boost engagement and interest among students. Discussion The results underscore the potential of serious games to create engaging and motivating educational environments that cater to diverse student populations while maintaining academic rigor. The findings suggest that serious games can be a valuable tool in education, particularly for enhancing motivation and engagement, even when traditional methods are equally effective in terms of academic performance.

Sierra Leone has one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates. In response to this crisis, Sierra Leone has developed innovative policies and community-based practices to improve maternal health, including the implementation of the Sierra Leone Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal, Child, and Adolescent Health Strategy. The Mothers of Sierra Leone project creates short documentary films that amplify the expertise of Sierra Leonean healthcare professionals and the voices of current and expectant mothers. The current study used focus groups to qualitatively explore the perceptions of mothers and healthcare workers in Sierra Leone about the efficacy of short, direct, documentary storytelling as a tool for improving maternal health-seeking behaviors. The salient themes that emerged in the mothers' data included health education and awareness and confidence and trust in healthcare systems. The salient themes that emerged in the healthcare workers' data included trust in healthcare systems, improving education, and impact on health choices. Our findings suggest that documentary film could serve as a powerful tool within low-income countries for encouraging positive health choices, spreading education on maternal and child health topics, building trust in the healthcare system, and reinforcing motivation for healthcare workers to comprehensively care for their patients.

This article examines three European documentary films that contribute to discourses on democracy. By revisiting political processes of the past, O Palácio de Cidadãos ( The Palace of Citizens , Pires, 2024), Petra Kelly – Act Now! (Metz, 2024) and The Day Iceland Stood Still (Hogan, 2024) contextualize current concerns and comment on the state of democracy. The films try to make a case for civic engagement by providing historic examples of successful democratic practices beyond party politics. In response to populist histories of national pasts, these films offer affective counternarratives in which defining moments in the nation’s history and symbols of collective identities are tied to the functioning of democratic institutions and successful civic engagement. In paying attention to the films’ formal qualities, this article examines the films’ representation of democratic processes of the past, their affective narrative strategies and the connections that are established between the past and the current political landscape and contemporary audiences.

With the current status quo, pollution and climate change have become major problems, especially in the Special Capital Region of Jakarta. Although many citizens have found ways to cope with this situation, blue-collar workers tend to overlook it. This study aims to investigate the relationships within the Value-Belief-Norm framework between Biospheric Value, Altruistic Value, and Egoistic Value toward the New Ecological Worldview, Awareness of Consequences, and Ascription of Responsibility, leading to the formation of Personal Norms that influence Consumer Willingness and Environmental Citizenship. This study employs a convenience sampling method involving 69 blue-collar workers. The data analysis utilizes SmartPLS 4.0 with Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that the New Ecological Worldview positively influences Awareness of Consequences; Awareness of Consequences positively influences Ascription of Responsibility; Ascription of Responsibility positively influences Personal Norms; Personal Norms positively influence Consumer Willingness; and, furthermore, Consumer Willingness positively influences Environmental Citizenship. Implicitly, these findings suggest that interventions to improve environmental behavior among blue-collar workers should focus on the development of personal norms through enhanced awareness of consequences and responsibility for the environment, which will ultimately foster environmental citizenship.

Around the world, mothers and grandmothers have seeded movements to remember atrocities and demand redress, justice, and accountability. One such movement, Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR), initiated by First Nations women in Australia, is a paradigm of decolonial memory activism. In their campaigns protesting ongoing removals of Indigenous children from their communities, GMAR strategically mobilizes the memory of the 2008 National Apology to the Stolen Generations, holding it up as a failed moral promise rather than a celebrated national memory. Amplifying the significance of memory in the GMAR movement, a documentary film, After the Apology, links GMAR’s activism in the post-apology era to the memory of the struggle for justice for Stolen Generations in the 1990s. Both the GMAR movement and After the Apology merit the attention of memory scholars for their decolonial approaches to memory and activism, and their advocacy for Indigenous self-determination. Self-determination rarely features as a subject of inquiry in the field of memory studies, or in studies of memory activism, but is fundamental to Indigenous aspirations for a better future. Drawing on insights from memory studies, critical Indigenous studies, and feminist scholarship, I explore GMAR’s mobilization of “sorry” and “Stolen Generations” as traumatic memes, and the film’s remembrance of and advocacy for self-determination. To draw out the significance of this movement on a local and national scale, I initially view it through an up-close lens, which in turn provides the basis for assessing the movement’s transnational connectivity.

In 2024, the conservative media outlet Daily Wire produced a documentary film entitled Am I Racist? Created by political commentator and author Matt Walsh and director Justin Folk, the film became one of the highest-grossing documentaries of the last decade. Unlike traditional documentaries, Walsh employs a rhetoric of irony against anti-racist adherents to obstruct their influence and inoculate mostly conservative viewers. His method, however, is unusual and even questionable in conservative Christian circles. The film is analyzed using a Bakhtinian analysis of dialogic opposition wherein Walsh embodies three ironic characters—Rogue, Fool, and Clown—in order to expose the monologue of anti-racism. The analysis demonstrates the dialogization of the anti-racist monologue through rhetorical enactments of anacrisis and syncrisis. Through juxtapositions of anti-racist ideologists and their everyday racist opponents, Walsh obstructs the future effectiveness of the ideology. Even more, by becoming a DEI expert himself, he performatively distorts the monologue to victimize opponents and entertain viewers through the public spectacle. Ultimately, Am I Racist? demonstrates a unique modern turn and strategy in conservative and, more importantly, Christian rhetorical strategies that needs more attention in the future.

Pavel Constantinescu Ben-Iosef (1922-1997), a film director of Jewish origin, lived a life as captivating as his films. In his youth, he was an activist in the Zionist organization “Dror Poalei Țion”. Later on, embracing communist beliefs and dreaming of justice, happiness, equality and human dignity, he volunteered for the Soviet army, eventually becoming an officer. Upon returning to Romania, he held the position of commander at the Bumbești-Livezeni National Construction Site and he continued his studies in film directing at V.G.I.K. in Moscow, Soviet Union. He had the privilege to direct films even in distant countries, including America in the 1970s, and served as a war correspondent in the Vietnam War. He also held numerous significant positions in the Romanian administration. With such origins, beliefs and social position, the following question arises: why did Pavel Constantinescu become one of the few directors from the Sahia Studio who explored ecclesiastical themes, particularly at a time when films on religious subjects were generally viewed with skepticism by the authorities? (even though his films focused solely on the artistic value of churches, rather than their spirituality or religious purpose). In our article, we aim to investigate three essential questions related to the proposed theme. Firstly, how was he able to produce so many films centered around church art during the period of 1964-1968? Secondly, what was the director's personal motivation behind creating these films? Lastly, we will delve into the factors contributing to the high aesthetic quality of his works and their significance within the production of the “Alexandru Sahia” Studio. Rezumat: Pavel Constantinescu Ben-Iosef (1922-1997), regizor de origine evreiască, a trăit o viață la fel de captivantă ca filmele sale. În tinerețe a fost activist al organizației sioniste „Dror Poalei Țion”; ulterior, adoptând convingeri comuniste și visând la dreptate, fericire, egalitate și demnitate umană, s-a înrolat voluntar în armata sovietică, ajungând ofițer. După întoarcerea în România, a deținut funcția de comandant al Șantierului Național Bumbești-Livezeni și a continuat cu studii de regie de film în cadrul V.G.I.K. din Moscova, Uniunea Sovietică. A avut privilegiul de a regiza filme chiar și în țări îndepărtate, inclusiv în America anilor ’70, a fost corespondent de război în conflictul din Vietnam, a ocupat numeroase și importante poziții în administrația românească. Având astfel de origini, convingeri și poziție socială, devine pertinentă întrebarea următoare: de ce tocmai el, într-o perioadă în care filmele cu tematică bisericească erau în general privite cu reticență de către autorități, s-a numărat printre puținii regizori de la Studioul Sahia care au explorat aceste teme? (chiar dacă filmele sale se concentrau doar asupra valorii artistice a bisericilor, nu și asupra spiritualității sau destinației religioase a acestora). În cadrul articolului de față ne propunem să investigăm trei întrebări esențiale pentru tema propusă: în primul rând, cum a reușit să producă atât de multe filme axate pe arta bisericească în perioada 1964-1968; în al doilea rând, care a fost motivația personală a regizorului pentru realizarea acestor filme; și, în final, care au fost factorii care au contribuit la înalta calitate estetică a operelor sale și care a fost importanța lor în producția Studioului „Alexandru Sahia”. Cuvinte cheie: Pavel Constantinescu, Sahia, filme documentare, V.G.I.K. Moscova.

Contemporary Romanian cinema has seen a proliferation of historical fiction and documentary films that creatively reuse archival materials to diversify the memory of the Second World War and communism. While previous scholarship has examined works such as Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceaușescu (The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu, 2010) and Țara moartă (The Dead Nation, 2018), this article explores the archival labour behind Romanian documentary filmmaking by focusing on Dana Bunescu, one of Romanian cinema’s most prominent editors, and her filmmaking practice—particularly in Distanța dintre mine și mine (The Distance Between Me and Me, 2018). Drawing on interviews and archival research, this article argues that Bunescu’s practice of selection, curation, cataloguing, digitisation, and dissemination contributes to the emergence and revalorisation of forgotten audiovisual archival and, thus to diversifying the audiovisual memory of communism. Ultimately, this article argues that Bunescu’s filmmaking practice challenges the centrality of the written document, in particular, the Securitate file, in evaluating the Romanian intellectuals’ relationship with the communist regime—and shows how audiovisual archival collections, such as the Revista literară TV programme, when critically curated and contextualised, can offer alternative views about the communist past and open up complex discussions of individual and institutional responsibility.

In this era of information abundance and digital connectivity, educational videos are a transformative and widely used resource in STEM higher education. Much of what is known about the effective use of educational videos comes from analyzing videos used for content delivery and the impacts on knowledge gains or behavioral engagement with videos. Less is known about how videos may impact students' affective learning experiences, feelings, and attitudes or how to effectively use videos in science education beyond just as a content-delivery tool. This study explored the impact of three distinct video styles: a whiteboard animation, a recorded discovery lecture by one of the discoverers, and a documentary short film featuring both discoverers in conversation on student outcomes in a large-enrollment undergraduate biology class. Students were randomized to watch one of these three formats, all covering the same scientific content (i.e., the Meselson and Stahl experiment), followed by a post-video survey. The documentary film, "The Most Beautiful Experiment," which integrated interpersonal storytelling and informal dialog, had the most significant impact on outcomes related to affective learning, including science identity, attitudes about biology, speaker relatability, and emotional engagement. No significant differences in knowledge gains were observed across video styles. This study highlights the potential of personalized and embodied video formats to enrich STEM education and warrants further research into their broader applications.

Architectural documentary film has become one of the primary tools for archiving, recording, and representing the performance and changes in architectural spaces. In the city of Novi Sad, the specially established production house Neoplanta Film adopted? the modernisation of urban space in the second half of the 20th century in the short documentary footage. Through this project, an avant-garde film group of young directors, cinematographers, and screenwriters emerged. The fragmentary digitised archival material from this project records the process of radical urban transformations of the city. This work deals with creating and re-creating new urban narratives that promote the modern history of Novi Sad and redefine its monolithic identity image (Konstantinović & Zeković, 2023-2). By observing the city as a system of different architectural layers and associated urban narratives, architectural documentary film's importance in revitalising forgotten urban narratives, which has been suppressed due to unsatisfactory ideological connotations, is explored. In these processes, whether based on re-editing and re-assembling film archives or creating new film material, the role of architecture and architectural space is crucial for understanding the history, atmosphere, sentiment, and context of new urban stories. The work raises key questions about the conceptualisation of such projects: Is it possible to recreate urban narratives through documentary film? What is the role of architecture and architectural space in this? How are spatial narratives created? Can space preserve memory? Following the two projects of the research group BAZA—a spatial praxis platform—approaches will be presented on how architecture and architectural space become vital embodiments of time and how they can be employed in the storytelling of urban history.

This article considers how learning-disabled theatre, and disability more generally, can provoke a creative re-examination of what is meant by performing space. It does so by comparing the creative struggles and affordances of a disabled woman in a constrained space revealed in a documentary film made in Christchurch, New Zealand (2024) with the theatricalization of such creativity and constraint by renowned Australian learning-disabled theatre company Back to Back in Super Discount (2013). The article then goes on to trace the development of Back to Back Theatre’s theatrical aesthetic of indeterminacy with particular reference to the spatial relationship between performance and audience, disabled and nondisabled. This includes the use of a site-specific reversal of audience and spectators in small metal objects (2005), the blurring of theatrical space in the Ganzfeld of Food Court (2009), the spatial coup de théâtre of Lady Eats Apple (2011), the confounding of theatron and agora in The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (2019) and the promise but ultimate foreclosure of a space called home for disabled performers in Multiple Bad Things (2024). This analysis of and response to spatiality in Back to Back’s oeuvre is then put in the context of the author’s twenty years of practical and theoretical research with learning-disabled collaborators of Different Light Theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand. A practical account is then given of some examples of working with the spatio-temporal distinctiveness of learningdisabled theatre artists, in terms of the kairos or good timing of theatrical performance and the physical “ownership” of the space by the performers. The meaning of performing space is then expanded to include the spaces of collaboration in which the company has more recently participated. The article concludes by affirming the social and creative benefits of including learning-disabled artists whilst emphasising the need to appreciate both the intransigence and potential for the beauty of disability in performing space.

Learning history requires new learning methods so that students can properly receive the historical information or knowledge that has been given by the teacher to students. Learning history requires new learning methods because if history subjects are only explained using lectures from teachers, students will get bored. The use of documentary films is a new learning method provided by the Miftakhul Hikmah Islamic Elementary School teacher as a form of learning innovation so that students do not get bored and students can properly receive the information provided by the teacher. Researchers want to examine the usefulness of documentary films as a learning medium. This research uses qualitative research methods to obtain data, with data collection techniques in the form of interviews, observation and documentation. The results of this research are the existence of new learning methods and also how teachers obtain or can assess student abilities by providing evaluations to students.

The subject of the study is a Soviet newsreel that reflected the change in the urban environment and the citizens of Ulan-Ude. The object of the study is a newsreel shot mainly by the East Siberian Newsreel Studio. The genre of Soviet newsreels determines the visually constructed nature of the depicted reality. Documentaries and newsreels have a significant information potential to reconstruct the image of Ulan-Ude, its environment and the life of prominent citizens. They reflect the events that took place in Ulan-Ude and perform multiple functions: they illustrate specific phenomena and facts, express the transmission of ideas of their time, and also serve as a visual representation of urban history. Quantitative analysis of film documents allows us to determine periods of high frequency of filming and a broader picture of the capital of the region. A qualitative analysis of film documents makes it possible to critically reflect on the filmed plots, their one-sidedness or ideological outline. Detailed attention is paid to the comparison of urban photography and personalities shot during the Soviet period. The annotated description, statistical processing and analysis of the content of film documents was carried out by the author on the basis of archival work in the film repository of the Irkutsk Regional Film Fund. Research methods: visual analysis of film sources of the Irkutsk Regional Film Fund, content analysis. The novelty of the research lies in the discovery and allocation of film sources based on the content of Ulan-Ude in Russian film repositories. Along with the existing wide database of written sources on the history of Ulan-Ude, there is a significant layer of visual data, in particular, film documents, which allows reconstructing the image of the city and those cardinal changes that occurred to it during the twentieth century. Documentaries shot in regional film studios of the USSR were produced by order of ministries or party organizations, and broadcast in an extensive film distribution system throughout the country, including rural settlements. Therefore, their wide social circulation ensured regular communication or cinematic discourse between the authors of film productions and the audience. A feature of documentary filming in Soviet cinema was the production of visual knowledge within the institutional framework of the functioning film industry.

Title translation in documentary films: a reception study