Response to Intro to Documentary

         I found the reading to be very interesting, especially considering my primary interest is ethnographic film. I especially liked the part that examined performative documentary and “the observational mode.” I feel, however, that in order to make what I consider a truly observational film, you would have to be completely without bias or interference. The ways in which the category is defined confuses me a little bit. Because most observational films seem to be less simply observing and more of asking people to act in a way, to reveal the information that they need to capture. While the observational documentary is more “real” and “raw” in some ways, such as the lack of voice-overs or interviews, it the filmmaker is always trying to get specific footage to fit in with his fiction. One of the best examples of this type of film is Jean Rouch’s Jaguar. I have included a trailer of it below. Jaguar was a film made with great assistance from the subjects themselves. It is what most anthropologists call an “ethno-fiction,” or a fictional story that also has significant anthropological and documentary value. I believe that this film is exemplary of the observational mode.
       Performative documentary is similar in the fact that it does not focus solely on the facts, as one would expect from a documentary, but instead seeks to illicit an emotional response from its audience. It often focuses on the filmmaker’s personal story or connection to the subject matter, becoming almost autobiographical and very subjective. Modern performative documentaries often focus on the subjectivity of a specific group of people regarding the core subject of the film. Instead of presenting the audience with cold facts, these filmmakers give them deep emotional material and, while not always unbiased or scientific, that material is real to a certain extent. I think this is really interesting.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9rTiHC20y0