Documentary Genre Research Articles

Fishing for Future Ratings: Can a New Documentary Initiative Save CNN?

After the ratings success of the documentary film, Blackfish, CNN launched a new documentary initiative branded as CNN Films. Looking back at the history of the documentary genre on broadcast and cable/satellite television, one can see that the medium has had a troubled past in terms of ratings generation, although there have been notable exceptions. Unfortunately for documentary enthusiasts, a number of channels that once embraced documentary programming have since abandoned the genre and replaced it with nonfiction reality shows. Incorporating expectancy-value theory, one can assess that in order for a documentary initiative to be a successful ratings generator, the content must build a high amount of expectation among viewers and deliver a high amount of value. But it has been quite difficult for programming executives to successfully predict which documentaries will generate the solid ratings they seek. Given these factors, this article argues that the CNN Films push is a risky move by CNN President Jeff Zucker, and it is doubtful that the strategy can deliver the ratings surge the embattled network needs to beat its competition.

John Appel, En documental, nunca permito que la estética se apodere del contenido

En el marco de una retrospectiva de su obra en la Cineteca Nacional, en agosto de 2014, John Appel nos concedió esta entrevista en exclusiva, en la cual expone su visión sobre el documental, incluyendo su proceso de trabajo, así como su perspectiva ética y estética.

Transmedia Serial Narration: Crossroads of Media, Story, and Time

Transmedia Serial Narration: Crossroads of Media, Story, and Time

Oscars So White: Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Diversity and Social Issues in U.S. Documentary Films (2008–2017)

Recent public backlash about diversity in the scripted U.S. entertainment industry has been reflected under the viral #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. Despite the heightened importance of contemporary independent documentary films as reflections of social justice challenges, the #OscarsSoWhite scrutiny has ignored nonfiction storytelling. Using content analysis, this study examined the first decade of Oscar-shortlisted documentary feature films (N = 150) distributed in the streaming digital era (2008–2017) to assess racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among credited directors (N = 190) and producers (N = 1,027); the extent to which Oscar-shortlisted nonfiction feature films reflect social issues; and contemporary audience distribution availability. Over 10 years, contemporary Academy Award–shortlisted documentaries were overwhelmingly created by White, male directors and producers, and they were more likely to spotlight social justice topics than to portray purely entertaining narratives. This study draws from feminist and critical race theories to analyze the societal value of inclusion in the nonfiction storytelling business, given increased audience access to digital-era documentaries, as well as the dominance of the social issue documentary genre as a means of counter-storytelling. Implications and future research directions for documentary industry professionals and scholars are discussed.

Proposed methodology for studying and analysing the new documentary forms

This article presents an original methodological proposal for studying and analysing interactive and transmedia documentary. I propose guidelines for teaching three independent modules that present the study object in relation to three structured phases: (1) the precedents and antecedents, appearance of the expression form; (2) emergence and experimentation; and (3) consolidation and possible institutionalisation. Keywords: documentary genre, interactive digital medium, interactive documentary, teaching methodology.

Seeing through Scandinavian exceptionalism: Tina Enghoff’s photography

In the three works Seven Years (2010), Migrant Documents (2013) and Isolation (2017a), Danish photographer Tina Enghoff addresses the visual and social marginalization of immigrant women caught in abusive relationships, homeless migrants who live outside the welfare system and prisoners in solitary confinement. The article discusses how her projects probe established ideas about Denmark as an ideal Scandinavian welfare state, ostensibly with a high level of social equality and transparency, as well as low levels of injustice, crime and punishment. It is also argued that a photographic practice like Enghoff’s offers original and productive negotiations of questions of representation and visibility embedded in the social documentary genre.

A hybrid documentary genre: Animated documentary and the analysis of Waltz with Bashir (2008) Movie

The word documentary has been described as an advice” in “Oxford English Dictionary” in the late 1800s. Document is a main source of information for lawyers. And in cinema, basic film forms are defined with their own properties. The common sense is to separate documentary from fiction, experimental from main current and animation from the live action films. While these definitions were being made, it has been considered that which expression methods were used. The film genre which is called documentary has been defined in many different ways. In this study, animated documentary genre which is a form of hybrid documentary has been concerned with Baudrillard’s theory. In this context, Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bassir (2008) has been analyzed with genre criticism method.

(In)Visibility And Representation: Social Justice In Recent Chadian Documentary Films

ABSTRACTThis essay examines how Chadian filmmakers Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and Moubarack Idriss Nour revisit and, at times, re-enact history to provide voice and perspective to key moments in Chadian history. Moubarack Idriss Nour's feature documentary, Le Tchad entre histoire et espoir (2014) and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Hissein Habré: Une tragédie tchadienne (2016) are both set against the backdrop of Chad's tumultuous history and its legacies for future generations. Nour provides a historical framework and uses colonial footage and archives, anthropological and historical sources, television interviews, and newscasts to celebrate the achievements of Chadian's current President Idriss Déby Itno. Haroun, on the other hand, revisits critically the cult figure of yesteryear, Hissène Habré, and the legacies of his regime: human rights abuses, including sexual slavery, torture, and mass political killings. Both documentary films include archival research, testimonial accounts of repression, torture, arbitrary arrests, and incarceration. However, the ways in which they conceive and structure their narratives and represent Chadian history, its political leaders, and its spokespersons differ diametrically in their respective documentaries. This essay will compare and contrast the ways in which both filmmakers use the documentary genre and its potential, either to create national heroes and/or critique the culture of violence that has permeated the social fabric of the country. As they represent Chad on screen, Haroun and Nour both focus on the country's violent past but differ in their representation of their homeland, its leaders and their respective visions, and the exploration of the “affective forces” of violence (Abel, 2008) as a necessary step in their cinematic expression to achieve their vision of rebuilding the country and ensuring its sustainable future.

Fiction and Documentary African Films: Narrative and Stylistic Affinities

Nationalist African cinema significantly detached itself from the ideological underpinnings of reductive colonial images. It was, in the eyes of the members of the Fepaci (Federation panafricaine des cineastes), a matter of political and cultural survival. This article argues that the films of this and subsequent generations were able to do so only by fusing generic features of the documentary genre in the crafting of fictional narratives.

Wandering Ghosts of the Cold War: Military Sex Workers in the Film Tour of Duty (Kŏmi ŭi ttang)

Abstract This paper explores the memories of military prostitutes in US camptowns in South Korea through the film titled Tour of Duty (Kŏmi ŭi ttang, 2012). The film experiments with a genre of documentary, showcasing stories of three ex-prostitutes who struggle with their past experiences with US GIs. One of them carries on numerous dialogues with evil spirits, which give her physical and psychological pains that haunt her endlessly. Another woman keeps wandering in search of traces of her mother and friend, both of whom were prostitutes for US soldiers. She traces her memory of them around the ruins of what was called the monkey house, where US military prostitutes with venereal diseases were relocated. The film shows three women haunted by ghosts of the Cold War while remaining invisible and often forced to be silent within Korean society. The paper deals with gendered memory of the Cold War through the stories of wandering ghosts in the dilapidated streets of US camptown sites in South Korea. Pak Kyŏngt’ae and Kim Tongnyŏng, the directors of the film, challenge the boundaries of documentary film, experimenting with various filmic strategies such as interviews, monologues, fantasies, and personal memories.

Pictures in Dispute: Documentary photography in Sandinista Nicaragua

The need for political participation felt in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution, and the widespread mobilization of photography to political ends during this period intersected with postmodern theory in a global arena. While US-based critiques of the documentary genre have been duly analyzed in the relevant literature, related conversations taking place in Latin America have only been marginally explored. This article posits that so-called postmodern discourses in fact created the basis for a horizontal, transnational and multi-centered, rather than vertical (North‒South) dynamic between these photographic communities. Through their commitment to politics, and to avant-garde aesthetics, documentary photographers performed gestures of cultural and visual appropriation, fitting their itinerant context. This article analyzes the work of Claudia Gordillo, taking as a case study Nicaragua during the 1980s.

Wyprawa do krainy prawdopodobieństwa – o dokumentach animowanych Marcina Podolca

The article analyses two student short films by Marcin Podolec, Dokument and Olbrzym, which represent the animated documentary genre. In her analysis and interpretation of films, the author uses Annabelle Honess Roe’s methodology to research this phenomenon. She expands the definition of the animated documentary base on Roe’s work.

Fishing the waters of life: Zane Grey’s White Death, exploitation film and the Great Barrier Reef

ABSTRACTEdwin G. Bowen’s White Death (1936) is an Australian–American film about shark fishing that stars the American novelist and fisherman Zane Grey as himself. Set mainly at the Great Barrier Reef, it has a semi-fictional plot about Grey’s quest to kill a shark in the face of opposition from an anti-fishing activist, Newton Smith (Alfred Frith). Although White Death was financially unsuccessful and has received little attention in histories of Australian film or Grey’s life, it is significant in several ways. The film is unusual among early Australian productions for combining elements of the genres of travelogue documentary, fictional adventure film and exotic exploitation film. It reflects an American perspective of Australia as an exotic location. White Death is also linked to the interwar development of tourism at the Great Barrier Reef and foreshadows the growth of the environmental conservation movement.

Wandering Ghosts of the Cold War: Military Sex Workers in the Film Tour of Duty (Kŏmi ŭi ttang) Jeehey Kim

This paper explores the memories of military prostitutes in US camptowns in South Korea through the film titled Tour of Duty (Kŏmi ŭi ttang, 2012 ). The film experiments with a genre of documentary, showcasing stories of three ex-prostitutes who struggle with their past experiences with US GIs. One of them carries on numerous dialogues with evil spirits, which give her physical and psychological pains that haunt her endlessly. Another woman keeps wandering in search of traces of her mother and friend, both of whom were prostitutes for US soldiers. She traces her memory of them around the ruins of what was called the monkey house , where US military prostitutes with venereal diseases were relocated. The film shows three women haunted by ghosts of the Cold War while remaining invisible and often forced to be silent within Korean society. The paper deals with gendered memory of the Cold War through the stories of wandering ghosts in the dilapidated streets of US camptown sites in South Korea. Pak Kyŏ ngt 'ae and Kim Tongny ŏng, the directors of the film, challenge the boundaries of documentary film, experimenting with various filmic strategies such as interviews, monologues, fantasies, and personal memories.

The Documentary Real: Thinking Documentary Aesthetics

In this article we consider the growing interest in recent years in the use of documentary strategies in the wold of contemporary art, film and performing arts and explore some of the central epistemological assumptions underpinning the persistent idea that the documentary should be equated with ‘non-fiction’. Following Stella Bruzzi we argue that if documentary theory maintains objectivity as the primary measure of value, it will inevitably and continuously arrive at the conclusion that the documentary genre is fundamentally flawed. Instead, we propose to move beyond the ‘realist epistemology’ of documentary theory and focus on the ‘documentary real’, i.e. the specific performativity of the reality constructed in and by the documentary genre. In the last paragraphs, we introduce the various articles that address the “documentary real” in this special issue.

Global animal capital and animal garbage: Documentary redemption and hope

ABSTRACTThis article argues that, in dealing with contemporary prevalent, slow violence against nonhuman animals, film medium is more effective when perceived as an agent of redemption. The documentary genre in particular is capable of helping nonhuman animals break away from being trapped in the viscous loop of the capitalist production chain through its visual, investigative, and other cinematic apparatus. In developing the idea of documentary redemption and hope, I first trace, by way of Nicole Shukin's work, the entanglements of animals in early film industry where animals are exploited materially by the film industry and conceptually exploited for the advancement of a capitalist manufacturing process. Here, I see filmic redemption as self-redemptive: to redress/make amends the malicious human-animal relationship, especially with the advent of digital film. The second idea of redemption is examined through animal activist documentaries: What narrative and aesthetic strategies do filmmakers use to prompt post-cinematic change or action? What affects are appropriate for an animal advocacy film? In recognizing the potential negatives of documentaries to traumatize, terrorize, and numb the audience by cataloging the cruel reality of animal violence and suffering, I contend that the documentary genre materializes its activist potential when it is conceived as a positive and affective technological apparatus of hope and aspiration. The following films (mostly documentaries) from multiple localities will be discussed: The Plastic Cow (India), Three Flower/Tri-Color (China), four Asian Black Bear rescue documentaries from Australia, China, and Vietnam, and finally, The Lost Sea (Taiwan).

Docuweb: pautas y metodología para la creación de un nuevo género periodístico

Análisis de la adaptación del reportaje y el documental a la multimedialidad e interactividad que ofrece internet. Se desarrolla una metodología básica para su categorización y creación. El caso de estudio es el documental web “Honduras: en el reino del plomo”. Mediante encuestas y grupos de discusión, se indaga sobre su efectividad narrativa y satisfacción para el espectador. Tanto desde el punto de vista clasificatorio, como desde el punto de vista de la producción, lo esencial es discernir las funciones narrativas, comprobando que la satisfacción, en el caso estudiado, de los espectadores/receptores es limitada.

Legitimizing Empire: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique

“Immigrant goes to America, / Many hellos in America;/Nobody knows in America / Puerto Rico's in America!” This chorus from the original 1957 stage version of West Side Story, sung—and brilliantly danced to—by Anita (Chita Rivera) and the Shark Girls on a New York city rooftop, offers a cogent critique of U.S. empire, particularly its exceptionalism and concomitant amnesia. This critique is not limited to Puerto Rico. Locations from Guam to the Panama Canal Zone to the Philippines and elsewhere have also, at various points and in various ways, been “in America,” with few in America knowing about it, despite intraimperial migrations of persons from those places. This shared sensibility is the focus of Faye Caronan's Legitimizing Empire, an ambitious and focused study of resonances between Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican cultural critique. To address this resonance, Caronan provides a series of perceptive interpretations of contemporary cultural productions, from novels to documentaries to spoken-word performances, emerging from Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican artists. In her discussion of documentaries, Caronan uses the generative phrase “creative reenactment” to describe the strategies for making visible that which has been not only nearly lost to history but also even systematically forgotten. These reenactments, and the memories of the colonized that they give expression to, go beyond just the documentary genre. Caronan's concept of “creative reenactment [as a] method of recuperating their subaltern perspectives” usefully describes anything that makes critique possible and meaningful for those who share a history of U.S. empire, such as those with connections to the Philippines and Puerto Rico (p. 78).

Espaço de acervo documental, e interdisciplinaridade nas áreas de história e biblioteconomia da FCM/UNICAMP

A Biblioteca FCM, criada 1963, e, o Centro de Memória e Arquivo da FCM (CMA/FCM), em 26/05/2008, são espaços dedicados a organização, preservação e difusão do conhecimento em ciências da saúde, ambos apresentam em sua estrutura de recursos humanos, estagiários remunerados. Metodologia: O processo de contratação inicia pelo processo seletivo, realizado através da DGRH/Unicamp. Atendendo a perspectiva da área de atuação dos dois serviços, a partir de 2012 passou-se a realizar a seleção integrada para se obter o necessário e rico trabalho interdisciplinar entre História e Biblioteconomia. Resultados: No período 2012-2016 foram 3 estagiários de História contratados para Biblioteca FCM e 4 de Biblioteconomia. No Centro de Memória foram: 4 estagiários de história e 1 de Biblioteconomia. Para ilustrar selecionamos um estagiário que passou pelos dois serviços, em sequência, e captamos seu o relato. J.K.R.A - "Nunca imaginei que biblioteconomia fosse uma área tão ampla, sempre ouvia meus professores dizerem, grandes autores escreverem sobre ‘Biblioteconomia e Interdisciplinariedade’ mas só vivenciei isso na prática, quando fui estagiar no Centro de Memória da FCM/Unicamp. Lá, pude ter contato com um universo de informação que iria além dos livros, estudávamos objetos, fotografia, documentos e percebíamos que em todos esses gêneros documentais existem informações extremamente importantes que devem ser avaliadas cuidadosamente pelo profissional que trabalha em arquivo. Seja este profissional bibliotecário, historiador, arquivista...”. Conclusão: Podemos considerar que esta melhoria no processo de contratação de estagiário de modo integrado transparece os benefícios da interdisciplinaridade pela diversificada ótica no tratamento aos documentos.

From Nihilism to Nostalgia: Blackfish (2013) and the Contradictions of the Nature Documentary

:Blackfish is a key entry into the “nature” documentary genre, highlighting the tension between sentimentalizing and fearing wildlife. While such tensions are usually contained within the “violent thrills” of most documentaries, Blackfish's conflicted attitude toward the captive orcas raises this tension in ways that the movie's emotional ending fails to alleviate.