OR1: What is a documentary?

The definition of a documentary film is: a non-fiction film that documents real people, events or issues. This vague definition makes it very difficult to understand the difference between narrative films and documentary films. Take the two examples above. To films both created by filmmakers who usually make fictional films. Two films about the same time period giving two stories that are similar. What is the difference between them? All quiet on the western front represents world war 1, they shall not grow old represents world war 1. All quiet on the western front tells a story based on real stories from world war 1, they shall not grow old tells a story based on real stories from world war 1. These two films have a plethora of similarities and when looked at closely are not that different. When two movies are sending the same message and are based on the same original content how can we tell the difference. They are both directed and produced, they are both edited in a creative fashion.

I bring up these two movies because they are very similar and convey this point well. Once you make a cut any movie becomes fictional, a part of a creative vision of a diretor no matter how real the information conveyed by the film. What is actually real is what the audience feels. How the audience receives the film is the most important part of the film so if it is “real” or not real and conveys the right message. Even the word documentary is a word that works for all films. We are all documenting stories whenever we get behind the camera. All the quiet on the western front documents the story of world war 1 just as good if not better than they shall not grow old. We maybe should stop looking at film as documentary and non documentary and just as film, what conveys the point the best, what is the best story telling method. Film is blending the longer it goes on, the mediums change and blend and it makes it more difficult to define which is which. Even from the beginning documentaries have had creative vision just like nanook of the north. This film, though filled with truth, has many staged elements and is recognized as the first documentary. It is something that we need to consider as masters of film, what is documentary and how can we tell the best stories.