Documentary Keywords Art Video

From the birth of Cinema, early films (‘actualities’) documented everyday life. Documentaries have since developed into various forms. All filmmakers however have concerned themselves with telling a version of the truth.

Subjectivity – An often unsubstantiated person's perspective or opinion.

Objectivity - An objective fact means a truth that remains true everywhere, independently of human thought or feelings.

Compilation Film - A documentary film that is comprised entirely of authentic archival footage.

Direct Cinema – A documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and the United States. It was characterized initially by filmmakers' desire to directly capture reality and represent it truthfully, and to question the relationship of reality with cinema.

Cinéma vérité – (Truthful Cinema) a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics. In French the term means, roughly, "truthful cinema".

Categorical Form – The organising and presenting of information in simple categories and forms.

Rhetorical Form – The filmmakers’ opinion presented as a persuasive argument.

Talking Heads/Interview – A documentary or section made up of interviews of subjects.

Portrait Documentary – A documentary about a single individual.

Kino Pravda - ("Film Truth") A newsreel series by Dziga Vertov. Working mainly during the 1920s, Vertov’s driving vision was to capture fragments of real life which, when organized together, showed a deeper truth which could not be seen with the naked eye.

City Symphony – The Documentation of a city or city life in a musical structure.

Propaganda – A form of communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position.