Many of the works I have taken inspiration from have also been playful with the notion of documentary being purely a factual representation of the “truth”. The Collins dictionary definition of a documentary is “a factual film or television programme about an event, person, etc, presenting the facts with little or no fiction”. When dealing with the notions of factual and truth in cinema it is a huge can of worms and at the very centre of debate in documentary. It has been present from the inception of documentary and Robert Flahertys Nanook of the North’s (1922) staging scenes in through to the same being levelled at Sir David Attenborough Frozen World (2007) zoo staged baby polar bear footage.
Representation of the truth in film is just that re-presentation of what is there. Even observational “cinema veritie” documentary modes are not 100% truthful. Do or can people act naturally whilst aware of the scrutiny of a film crew and the potential audience for the text. The moment a shot is framed, and edit is made then a decision has been made and the subject is being re-presented to the audience by the cameraman, editor or ultimately the filmmaker. Semiotics and the meanings to individual audience members of the representation will differ. The intended representation may create with the audience preferred dominant reading, professional, negotiated or oppositional readings in what Stuart Hall termed reception theory. The notion of the truth and distortion of it can be a good or a bad thing obviously. The pro Nazi propaganda of the work of Leni Riefenstahl such as Olympia (1938) and Triumph of the Will (1935) are the most obvious examples. However propaganda is not always a negative and such works as Night Mail (1932) promoting society and co-operation and more recently the campaigning work against the global domination and the effect on societies health of McDonalds in Morgan Spurlocks’ Super Size Me (2004).
I am really interested in this notion of "the truth" in documentary and I want to see how the fact and fiction, subjectivity and objectivity can be treated individually or as interesting bedfellows. Is bias necessarily a bad thing? Can the notion of "truth" be subverted to create new meanings? Acclaimed documentarian John Grierson considered to be the father of British documentary film, (who many believed coined the term “documentary” in 1926) faced criticism for his definition of documentary film, that ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ was somehow oxymoronic but I love this idea of taking actuality and being creative with it to create meaning. So just how far can a factual film-maker go when creating representations of actual characters, places and events before the piece and still call the film a documentary?
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