types of documentarys

Types of documentaries

There are six different types of documentaries, poetic documentaries, expository documentaries, observational documentaries, participatory documentaries, reflexive documentaries and performative documentaries.

Poetic documentaries


These first appeared in the 1920’s, they were a reaction against both the content of the early fiction film. They did not follow continuity editing and instead organized images by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. No characters were used however instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other person.



Expository documentaries


This documentary type speaks directly to the viewer, often in the form of a voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. The commentary often sounds objective. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and objective account and interpretation of past events.


Observational documentaries


Attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lighweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of life situations.


Participatory documentaries


These documentarys believe that it is impossible for you to film and not to influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film.


Reflexive documentaries


These documentarys don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’


Performative documentaries


These types of documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own. Performative documentaries often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.