Genre Analysis and Themes

�John Grierson was the person who came up

with the term ‘Documentary’ in 1928.

• The purpose of documentaries is to document something that was factual and actually happened. The documentary can be shown using real footage or a reconstruction. It can use a narrators voice over to anchor the intended meaning or rely on the participants of the event with perhaps an occasional interjection by the narrator.

• Documentaries are not just about facts instead facts can be used to create socially critical arguments, inviting the audience to come to their own conclusions.

Central to documentaries are that they focus on and question real people and events mainly in a social context placing the audience in a position to form an opinion about who or what we are viewing.