In today’s age, film making is considered as an art.
The ingenious film making is way to project our opinions and ideas on the
visual medium for a specific audience. Primarily often made to inform, educate
and entertain the people; film making is one of the most sought after courses
in India. Under the film making, comes a part- documentaries; which are of different
types. They have been described below-
- Poetic Documentaries: These appeared in the 1920s and were primarily a sort of reaction against the content of the early fiction film. The films were fragmented, impressionistic and lyrical in nature. The pattern of the documentary lacks well rounded characters and cinematic narrative that one would find in fiction films. Try watching- Francis Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city symphony film.
- Expository Documentaries: In this type, the documentary directly looks and speaks with the viewer, often in an authoritative commentary tone; predominantly as a voice over proposing a point of view or a strong argument. These documentaries exist to give stance and enhance the arguments. Many film schools root for these type to disseminate information and knowledge to their students. For example- watch: Ken Burns’ The Civil War (1990); Frank Capra’s wartime Why We Fight series.
- Observational Documentaries: This type of documentary ideally entails of observations on life based events. This does not consist of any interventions as their nature is to just plain observe and document it; juxtaposed to expository that is didactic. Such films usually aim for deeper details, revelations of individual human characters and ordinary lives. You could watch- Frederick Wiseman’s films, e.g. High School (1968); D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967).
