Documentary Film

The term documentary was coined by Scottish filmmaker John Grierson (1898–1972) in an article for the New York Sun in 1926. Grierson defined the documentary as "the creative treatment of actuality," and his definition is still generally accepted. While those who study documentary film do not agree on a single definition, they do accept the fact that documentaries strive to present fact rather than fiction. Film scholars often define the term by placing documentaries into particular categories, such as those developed by British filmmaker Paul Rotha in 1935, that continue to be used: naturalist, newsreel, propagandist, and realist. Documentary scholar Bill Nichols offers six distinct categories: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. However they are defined, documentaries have been embraced by the global market, earning huge profits for the first time in the 1990s. In 2004, documentaries grossed $170 million in the United States and $4.5 billion worldwide. In 2023, documentaries grossed $35 million in the United States.

Background

Groundwork for the documentary film was laid in the late nineteenth century when filmmakers began creating short films of real people engaged in everyday events in films such as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, Arrival of a Train, The Waterer Watered, The Gardner, and Feeding the Baby. World War I broke out in Europe in 1914. Although the United States maintained an ostensibly neutral attitude, newspapers and film studios formed a partnership to present the war to American audiences in a series of documentaries. The entry of the United States into the war in 1917 signaled a new era for documentaries, one that included the work of government funded filmmakers who used the documentary to promote particular views. The 1920s saw the first commercial full-length documentaries and the honing of techniques. Documentary radio was introduced in the 1930s via the British Broadcasting Company (BBC).

In 1922, Robert Flaherty shot Nanook of the North, which is considered the first full-length documentary film, making it appear as if the camera was inside the igloo with the Inuit family featured in the film. Over the course of the twentieth century, the documentary came into its own as the genre evolved. In the 1950s and 1960s, filmmakers began using lightweight handheld cameras and synchronized sound systems. They also developed a range of techniques involving the use of particular lenses and various ways of focusing the camera. As technology advanced, filmmakers began experimenting with color and high resolution, and they attempted to make documentaries that reflected the changing times by using music, reenactments, scripts, and staging to add drama and increase film quality and entertainment value.

The Workers Film and Photo League, which became Frontier Films, was established in the United States in 1930. President Franklin Roosevelt used this team of filmmakers to produce documentaries designed to convince Americans of the benefits of the New Deal and progressive reform. In 1935, CBS began producing The March of Time, featuring short reenactments of major events in American history. These segments were regular features in theaters until 1951. That same year, Edward R. Murrow introduced See It Now, the first documentary series for television. Four years later, the docudrama was introduced on Armstrong Circle Theater.

The 1960s and 1970s were a period of strife in the United States, and documentaries reflected anger over Vietnam and the collapse of the Nixon presidency during the Watergate scandal. Filmmakers began using their works to promote their own views on political subjects. In 1960, Americans experienced the impact of "direct cinema" for the first time as cameras provided an insider’s look at John Kennedy’s presidential campaign in Primary. With the establishment of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, the government began providing funding for documentaries.

Documentary Film Today

In 1992, the first film festival devoted to documentaries was established in Hot Springs, Arkansas. By the early twenty-first century, documentary film had entered the mainstream. Filmmakers focused their cameras on such subjects as biographies, wars, violence, race and ethnicity, and sexuality. Award-winning documentaries such as Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004), Super Size Me (2004), March of the Penguins (2005), and Grizzly Man (2005) demonstrated the ability of documentary film to tap into the interests and emotions of audiences.

The rise of reality television and pseudodocumentary films such as Forrest Gump (1994) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) had a major impact on the acceptance of documentary film. Entire television channels, including the History Channel, Biography, Discovery, and National Geographic, were devoted to airing documentaries. Some documentaries have been able to change public perceptions about the way the general public looks at certain issues, as with An Inconvenient Truth (2006), in which former US vice president Al Gore and filmmaker Davis Guggenheim opened a window into the realities of global warming and climate change.

Filmmakers such as Michael Moore, Ken Burns, and Errol Morris changed the entire concept of the place of the documentary in film history. Michael Moore became an entertaining and conceivably the most controversial of all contemporary documentarians. His Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which excoriates the Bush administration’s handling of the post-9/11 period, became the highest grossing feature-length documentary in the history of the United States at that time. His Bowling for Columbine (2002) examined America’s fascination with guns and the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. In Sicko (2007), Moore took on the health care industry, and he dissected corporate America in Capitalism: A Love Story (2007). In Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018), Moore focused on Donald Trump's presidency and the state of American politics in the 2010s. More than most documentarians, Michael Moore inserted himself into his projects. Because of his unabashedly liberal stance on issues, he was a favorite target of conservatives, who insisted that he was not always accurate in what he reported.

Ken Burns became closely associated with the historical documentary, and his works tended to be lavish examinations of topics of major historical significance, such as The Civil War (September 23–27, 1990), which received the largest audience share in the history of PBS at that time. The miniseries won more than forty awards, including an Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series. Burns has been criticized for his tendency to ignore dissent, but in works such as Baseball (1994), The War (2007), Prohibition (2011), The Dust Bowl (2012), Vietnam (2017), and The American Buffalo (2023), he made history come alive for the general public. He has perfected the technique of allowing the camera to zoom in and out on a subject with significant impact, and the "Ken Burns effect" continues to influence other filmmakers. In 1976, Ken Burns joined Roger Sherman, Buddy Squires, and Larry Hott in establishing Florentine Films Archives in order to preserve for posterity the materials gathered for their documentaries.

Errol Morris became one of the most critically acclaimed of contemporary documentary filmmakers. He won an Academy Award for The Fog of War (2003), which featured former secretary of defense Robert McNamara explaining what he had learned from his involvement in World War II and the Vietnam War. Morris uses steam-of-consciousness interviews and the "interrotron effect," employing different camera angles to catch various expressions, even those that are fleeting, in response to questions asked during Morris’s interviews. He is known for his ability to capture the events of American culture and their impact. Morris’ documentaries have included Gates of Heaven (1978) about a California pet cemetery, The Thin Blue Line (1981) about a corrupt justice system, and The Pigeon Tunnel (2023) about author and former intelligence officer John le Carré.

Other award-winning documentaries from the 2010s and 2020s include O.J.: Made in America (2016) directed by Ezra Edelman; My Octopus Teacher (2020) by Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed, and Craig Foster; and Summer of Soul (2021) directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson.

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