The direct cinema style of Hoop Dreams uses the camera to provoke and reveal truth by taking aspects of cinema verité and aspects of traditional documentaries and blending the two techniques together to create a middleground as far as capturing reality. The film consists of many cinema verité type shots…

The choice in filmmaking technique in which Big and Little Edie Beale’s stories were told through in Grey Gardens was influenced by the style of cinema verité in a number of interesting ways, some of which were quite new to me. An initial example I can point to where this…

When comparing the two forms of documentary scholarship, being historical and analytical, I see plenty of overlap between the two in terms of what they contribute to our understanding of documentaries and our social world. Historical scholarship, to me, appears as though it is the understanding of the historical context…

Reflecting on the suggestion that the dichotomy between documentaries and fiction films is a false difference, as presented in the question I am addressing, would have led me to think quite differently in response to this idea in the past. I have to admit, that I didn’t quite know anywhere…

Watching the two documentaries The Nazis Strike, in Why We Fight and Triumph of the Will in consecutive order made me have a newfound realization of the complex definition of the term “propaganda”. In The Nazis Strike, the documentary I watched first, I began the viewing experience focusing on the…

The depictions of enemies and adversaries in espionage films is largely and often based on the ideological perspective of the film’s country of origin, and has frequently served as a way to promote nationalistic views of a respective nation or state, and to mete out the world’s “good” and “evil”…

Following reading chapter two of Patricia Aufderheide’s Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, and facing the question of whether advocacy documentaries are more important or valuable than other documentary styles or genres, or not, I find myself somewhat unsure of the answer to this and can understand both perspectives. Although…

Oscar Wilde’s Salomé as described by Joseph W. Donohue in the article “Salomé and the Wildean Art of Symbolist Theatre”, has often been considered as something of an oddity, and has certainly been associated with controversy since it was first put on stage. Wilde wasn’t embraced by establishments like the…

The allegory of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre unless considered before watching the film itself, might seem to be a stretch, however upon reading Chuck Jackson’s article “Blood for Oil” prior to screening the film, this metaphor is certainly not without definite merit. Although the United States is a vast and…