Paul Ward - Documentary: The Margins of Reality

SHORT CUTS

INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES

OTHER TITLES IN THE SHORT CUTS SERIES

THE HORROR GENRE: FROM BEELZEBUB TO BLAIR WITCH Paul Wells

THE STAR SYSTEM: HOLLYWOODS PRODUCTION OF POPULAR IDENTITIES Paul McDonald

SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA: FROM OUTERSPACE TO CYBERSPACE Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska

EARLY SOVIET CINEMA: INNOVATION, IDEOLOGY AND PROPAGANDA David Gillespie

READING HOLLYWOOD: SPACES AND MEANINGS IN AMERICAN FILM Deborah Thomas

DISASTER MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF CATASTROPHE Stephen Keane

THE WESTERN GENRE: FROM LORDSBURG TO BIG WHISKEY John Saunders

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: THE PLAY OF SHADOWS Vicky Lebeau

COSTUME AND CINEMA: DRESS CODES IN POPULAR FILM Sarah Street

MISE-EN-SCNE: FILM STYLE AND INTERPRETATION John Gibbs

NEW CHINESE CINEMA: CHALLENGING REPRESENTATIONS Sheila Cornelius with Ian Haydn Smith

SCENARIO: THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING Tudor Gates

ANIMATION: GENRE AND AUTHORSHIP Paul Wells

WOMENS CINEMA: THE CONTESTED SCREEN Alison Butler

BRITISH SOCIAL REALISM: FROM DOCUMENTARY TO BRIT GRIT Samantha Lay

FILM EDITING: THE ART OF THE EXPRESSIVE Valerie Orpen

AVANT-GARDE FILM: FORMS, THEMES AND PASSIONS Michael OPray

PRODUCTION DESIGN: ARCHITECTS OF THE SCREEN Jane Barnwell

NEW GERMAN CINEMA: IMAGES OF A GENERATION Julia Knight

EARLY CINEMA: FROM FACTORY GATE TO DREAM FACTORY Simon Popple and Joe Kember

MUSIC IN FILM: SOUNDTRACKS AND SYNERGY Pauline Reay

FEMINIST FILM STUDIES: WRITING THE WOMAN INTO CINEMA Janet McCabe

MELODRAMA: GENRE STYLE SENSIBILITY John Mercer and Martin Shingler

FILM PERFORMANCE: FROM ACHIEVEMENT TO APPRECITATION Andrew Klevan

NEW DIGITAL CINEMA: REINVENTING THE MOVING IMAGE Holly Willis

THE MUSICAL: RACE, GENDER AND PERFORMANCE Susan Smith

FILM NOIR: FROM BERLIN TO SIN CITY Mark Bould

TEEN MOVIES: AMERICAN YOUTH ON SCREEN Timothy Shary

THE NEW HOLLYWOOD: FROM BONNIE AND CLYDE TO STAR WARS Peter Kramer

ITALIAN NEOREALISM: REBUILDING THE CINEMATIC CITY Mark Shiel

WAR CINEMA: HOLLYWOOD ON THE FRONT LINE Guy Westwell

DOCUMENTARY

THE MARGINS OF REALITY

PAUL WARD

WALLFLOWER

LONDON and NEW YORK

CONTENTS

I would like to thank Mike Wayne and Brian Winston for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of the manuscript. I also wish to thank the following for their help with images: Andy Glynne of the Documentary Filmmakers Group (http://www.dfglondon.com) for the image from Obsessively Compulsive; Marc Isaacs for the image from Lift; Artangel for the image from The Battle of Orgreave; Bob Sabiston for the image from Snack and Drink. All other images courtesy of the British Film Institute.

This book aims to give a brief introduction to and overview of some of the key features, moments and theoretical debates of its subject matter documentary. There has been an enormous expansion in scholarship relating to documentary in recent years; this book cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of all the issues relating to this area. The aim of this introduction is to re-evaluate some of what can be seen as the key problems with actually defining documentary in the first place. This will mean thinking through the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, and where documentary might lie in relation to other forms of factual film and media. It will therefore mean looking at a broader range of material than is commonly supposed to come under the heading documentary. Some of what is discussed here would usually be categorised as drama documentary, other material borrows heavily from the conventions of investigative journalism. The main point to understand from the outset is that there is a large range of modes of factual film and television and documentary is often used as an umbrella term to describe them all. As we shall see, documentary originally meant a very specific kind of factual film, and it has now become problematic to use it as a catch-all term. This problem has partly been addressed by the various attempts to devise descriptive modes of documentary (see ) sub-categories that make clear that different documentaries will do different things. It is equally clear, however, that factual films and programmes have now reached such a level of hybridity, that it is very difficult to sustain a notion of there being stable categories.

With all this in mind, offers an overview of some of the dilemmas facing anyone who attempts to discuss documentary as a form. The main point is that those engaged in documentary-related activity range across a wide spectrum of communities of practice and it is the discussion and debate between them that means that the form is constantly in flux. We shall also explore the vital role that the spectator plays in understanding, and placing documentary, and how people negotiate the often very complex shifting sands that constitute documentary production and reception.

moves on to examine the notion of drama-documentary and the relationship between fiction and nonfiction through a study of some recent television films that use real people (or real peoples testimony) as the basis for a re-enacted, improvised drama. In most of these cases, what we are watching is not straightforwardly documentary, but it is certainly not simply fiction either. The second part of the chapter looks at the different ways in which the story of Aileen Wuornos, the woman who murdered seven men and was executed in 2002, has been told. A comparative analysis of the different versions of the same story will draw out some of the ways that documentary modality, as well as versions of the truth, can be shaped in the name of dramatic license.

continues to delineate specific arguments about (re)construction and (re)enactment that have been touched upon so far. The focus in this chapter is the historical dimension of certain documentary modes. The films examined offer a glimpse of a hidden or obscured history and how particular types of dramatised documentary material can help us to revive neglected (or suppressed) historical events. If the role of documentary is to assert things about the world we inhabit (and this includes the world of the historical past), then such films have a vitally important part to play, in the ways that they draw out and amplify some of the underlying tensions and sensibilities of the times they depict.

move on to examine two relatively under-explored areas within documentary studies: comedy and animation. Chapter fours overview of documentary and comedy is not only interested in those texts that satirise or parody documentary forms, though it does look at certain tendencies such as mock-documentaries, spoofs and so on. The chapter is also interested in examining what happens when the (apparently opposed) modalities of documentary and comedy meet. The former is associated with seriousness, sobriety and making truth claims or assertions about the real world. Comedy is commonly (and mistakenly) seen as a mode that is somehow incompatible with these apparently lofty aims.