The historical documentary film : sculpting reality into a work of art

Abstract

This dissertation explores and shines a light on the issue of truth in historical documentary film. Documentary film is often associated with describing reality, but done differently in broadcast. Considered as an art form, documentary film can shape reality. Indeed, one of its key functions is be involved in the social construction of reality. This makes documentary film a form of truth claim. However, results have shown that the general consensus among historical documentary directors is that documentary film presents at best a subjective version of truth and that although a documentary is expected to be truthful, many factors combine to make the documentary a form of fiction-truth. Since the term “documentary” has become a “catch-all term” (Ward, 2005, p.1), concerted efforts need to be made to produce a universally acknowledged definition and investigate and explore its relation to other factual film and other forms of media. To this end, this study has investigated what the audience understands by ‘documentary’ in general by conducting questionnaires. The historical documentary film, Waltz with Bashir (Folman, 2008), was shown to different focus groups and targeted questions were asked to examine the participants’ feedback on their reactions to this film. These responses were compared with the analysis of interviews conducted in order to determine the views and professional practice of historical documentary film directors. The dissertation has explored the fruitful interaction between fiction and nonfiction while trying to determine what kind of ‘reality’ a historical documentary filmmaker could portray. The results suggests a more truthful perspective of documentary filmmaking as a complex art form and rich source of knowledge.