Documentaries

Our blogging assignment this week was to read from the film Making Documentary Films and Videos and write a reflective post about our reading.

The chapters we were to read mostly dealt with defining what a documentary is and isn't. There was a lot of discussion about programs or movies that are like documentaries, but are not in fact real documentaries. For example, tv news and reality tv programs are most definitely not documentaries.

One thing I had a little problem with was that the author talked about programs he called docugandas. These are programs that purport to be documentaries but are in fact forms of propaganda. He used one of my favorite film-makers, Michael Moore, as an example of someone who was presenting docuganda instead of true documentaries. I could see the author's point - Michael Moore is very one-sided and not neccesarily very fair in covering all sides of an issue. Another example was a favorite movie of mine, Outfoxed. This is a documentary on how Fox News is consistantly biased and - according to the filmmakers - something of a tool of the Republican party. I tend to agree with that assesment. Also, the movie is very informative and provacative... as well as being very entertaining. But yeah, it's definitely not very "fair and balanced" as it were. The author talks about how CNN has a similar bias to the Democratic party, which I completely disagree with. I've never seen an example of liberal bias on CNN. On MSNBC, yes, but not CNN.