Books: Documenting the Documentary's Rise to Popularity

Patricia Aufderheide, an expert on documentary film at American University’s School of Communication, says that the film documentary has come into its own.

Last year, the widely-distributed An Inconvenient Truth won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. This year, Michael Moore’s Sicko, another documentary that enjoyed mainstream success, is among the nominations for the same category. Patricia Aufderheide, an expert on documentary film at American University’s School of Communication, says this is a sign of the times.

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“Documentaries have become more popular as a distrust of mainstream media has grown,” says Aufderheide. “Viewers see documentarians as truth tellers.”

Aufderheide, a professor and director of AU’s Center for Social Media, is the author of the new book Documentary: A Very Short Introduction. The book explores the diverse paths of documentary history and chronicles the debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality in film. Subjects covered include the definition, purpose, forms and founders of documentary film. Subgenres discussed include public affairs films, government propaganda – such as the works produced during World War II – as well as historical and nature films.

The book includes a list of 100 documentaries that Aufderheide and other documentary film experts agree are “must-see” for anyone seriously interested in the genre. The list names some of the first documentaries, including Nanook of the North (1922) and Grass (1925), as well as recent films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me.

“I loved Three Rooms of Meloncholia desperately,” Aufderheide says of one of her favorite films on the list. “It's sad because it's struggling for distribution and I think we'll have to wait for a while to see it more generally. It’s about the war in Chechnya and it’s not reportage of the normal sort at all. It’s a meditative look at situations such as Russian children in militia training and orphaned Chechnyan children. The film has no answers, but it puts you inside these situations with extraordinary empathy and skill.”

Other “list” favorites of Aufderheide’s are Hoop Dreams, a story about two African American children from poor families who want to grow up to be NBA players, and The Gleaners and I, a film about what society does with leftovers – everything from food to people. Aufderheide contends that novice documentary film viewers can easily learn to appreciate films like these by focusing on three principles.

• Compelling characters and storyline
• Integrity of point of view (is the filmmaker clear about where he or she is coming from?)
• Convincing reasons to care about the material explored in the film (has the filmmaker given the audience a way to relate?)

Documentaries have become so popular, in fact, that in late 2006 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued new requirements for feature-length documentary entries. Such films now must be screened for seven days in either Los Angeles or New York City, as well as in 14 theatres in at least 10 states. According to Aufderheide, this underlines the fact that documentaries aren’t different from feature films routinely enjoyed in multiplexes across the nation.

“Documentaries make a different promise to viewers – a promise of a story told honestly with goodwill about something real,” says Aufderheide. “But the techniques used to tell the stories in fiction and nonfiction are the same – editing, photography and sound techniques are just as important for documentaries as they are for fiction.”

Documentary: A Very Short Introduction is available at the Oxford University Press web site.

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