Intro to documentary

I learned a lot about documentary film from the article. It introduced about six types of documentary: poetic, expository, participatory, observational, reflexive, and performative documentary. “Poetic: adept at opening up the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the prosecution of a particular argument or point of view, or the presentation of reasoned propositions about problems in need of solution. Expository: assembles fragments of the historical world into a more rhetorical or argumentative frame than an aesthetic or poetic one. (voice-of-god) it rely heavily on an informing logic carried by the spoken word. The expository mode emphasizes the impression of objectivity and well-supported argument. Observational: simply observe what in front of the camera. Filmmaker is invisible. It involve with the ethical issue of voyeurism and when should the filmmaker to intervene. Participatory: “being there” and experience. Record what he or she have learned. Reflexive: readers attend to the filmmaker;s engagement with them, speaking not only about the historical world but about the problems and issues of representing it as well. Performative: what is knowledge, what counts as understanding or comprehension? Concert or abstract? Personal or organizational? ” Personally, I have a strong feeling about observational documentary. When it is about the naturel world, there is no problem at all. However, as the article has pointed out, it has raise the question about when should the filmmaker comes out and stop the whole process? A film called Das Experiment (2011) by Oliver Hirschbiegel is a great example of how the ethical issue interacts in observational documentary. It was base on true story. 19 volunteer men are divided into to group, in the experiment, half of them role-play the convicts and the other role-plays the guards. They are lock in a place for two weeks. The situation goes out of control, people start to fight and hurt each other, but the observers in the other end of the camera did not stop the madness. . Few people dead and the ending of the film is fairly inspiring and sad. I do not know how to solve the problem, which is more important? The truth and the sufficient scientific result of a research or experiment or observation, or the objects in the observational process?