Assignment task: We read about the four distinct modes of documentary film:
The observatoinal mode turns the filmmaker into a "fly-on-the-wall" observer who watches the characters and events unfold without directly intervening or participating in them.
The participatory mode puts the filmmaker "on the scene" as a direct participant in the events being documented, either as an interviewer or as someone who takes part in the events themselves.
The reflexive mode turns the camera onto the documentary film itself, and foreground the issues of representation or the problems that the filmmaker encountered when they were making the film. These films make the viewer aware fo the film as a constructed event that is organized by or for the filmmaker.
The performative mode emphasizes the ways in which knowledge and truth are subjective or seen from the embodied perspective of different participants in the film. This mode shows us how different participants in the film may have different experiences or undersnstandings of the events being depicted, or how these participants actively build and tell their own, subjective, story for the camera.
After reading about these modes of documentary, consider all of the required films we have seen so far and decide whether each is best understood as an observational, participatory, reflexive, or performative documentary. In a sentence or two, explain or justify your decision.
The films we have seen so far are:
- Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922)
- Night and Fog (Resnais, 1956)
- Tongues Untied (Riggs, 1989)