Mediane of films, dramas and documentaries, cognitive pacts and performing politics
Summary
"How to distinguish between films, dramas and documentaries" is usually understood as a horizontal comparison between the three art types, but the question is implicit in a hierarchy: films and dramas are primarily part of the media and the arts system, first of all, in terms of how they are produced, preserved and presented, and, first of all, in terms of how they point to historical realities, how they organize evidence, and what factual responsibilities the creators are responsible for, and thus are mainly in the realm of cognitive, linguistic and ethical terms. Documentary films can take the form of films, theatre, sound, photography, interactive media, etc.; films can be both fictional and documentary; theatre can be both a fictional character and a real testimony and historical record. This paper proposes the three axes "Media Times - an alleged contract - performance construction" and the "ethical accountability" threshold model, based on film onotheism, performance research and documentary theory. From an analysis of the Summer Chronicle, The 24th City Chronicle and the documentary theatre practice of Rimini Protokoll, it is argued that liveness and record-keeping are not absolutely opposed and performance and record-keeping are not mutually exclusive; whether a work is documentary in nature, whether it appears natural or unmistakable, but whether the work presents a verifiable view of the real world to the audience, and whether it is responsible for the sources of evidence, the ways in which it is repeated, the circumstances of the participants and the possible consequences. As a result, films, dramas and documentaries should not be understood as three mutually exclusive containers, but should be placed in a multi-dimensional, cross-cutting system of media coordinates.
Keywords
Films; dramas; documentaries; media-based; live; factual claims; performances; record ethics
I. QUESTION-MAKING: A QUALITY WRONGED BY A DIGITAL LANGUAGE
The three are not parallel categories but answer questions at different levels.
In everyday languages, "films" are often tacitly equated with feature films, "drama" is tacitly equated with fictional performances on stage, and "documentary" is understood as a direct record of reality. So the three seem to form a whole set of rivals
Films tell stories, plays on stage, documentaries record real.
This is convenient but theoretically creates three misunderstandings simultaneously.
First, it reduced "films" to "fiction films" and ignored news films, nationalistic films, film essays, experimental films, animated documentaries and a large number of images between fiction and non-fiction. An academic film is a broader system of live video, not a synonym for feature films.
Second, it links "theatrical" to "unreal", as if the stage performance necessarily meant fiction. However, the testimony theatres, the courtroom theatres, the verbatim theatres, the repertoire of history, the theatres of political action and the documentary theatres can clearly present factual claims about real people and historical events.
Thirdly, it defines the documentary as a "real itself" without creation, choice and performance. This perception not only ignores the role of camera locations, clippings, sound, subtitles, interviews and distributions in the construction of meaning, but also fails to explain why high-profile documentaries may still be valuable and why hand-held, simultaneous sound and interview-style "false documentaries" remain fictional.
More precisely, the three concepts are not at exactly the same logical level
Concept
First question answered
Main scope
Film
What kind of live video devices are used to produce, fix, edit and project the work?
Media - Scope of Device
Theatre/Theater
How can performers and viewers together constitute an event in a given time and space?
Performance - Event Scope
Documentary/documentary
How does the work point to historical realities, present factual claims and assume evidentiary responsibility?
Understanding - Ethical Context
Therefore, the central theme of this paper is
Films and theatres primarily regulate the manner in which works exist; documentaries primarily regulate the relationship of responsibility between work and reality.
The "major" here is important. Films and theatres also have an intellectual, ethical and political dimension; documentaries have also developed stable production institutions, style traditions and distribution systems. From a conceptual point of view, however, film and theatre are first and foremost "how to present" and, first and foremost, the question of how to present reality.
II. Theoretical spectrometry: recorded images, events and accountable statements
Films are audio-visual objects that can be repeated: projectors, viewers and media devices.
(i) Films: from photographic traces to repeatable audio-visual objects
The classic film bodyology tends to start with the causal link between photographic images and reality. Bazin believes that photography is unique in that the optical traces of objects can form images with less reliance on manual depiction, while Carver understands the film as an automatic projection of the world in front of the audience. Unlike paintings, a photographic film appears to have preserved traces of something that existed in front of the camera (Bazin 1967; Cavell 1979).
However, this does not lead to the conclusion that "film is a reality record". First, photography ensures only that an optical event has occurred, and that subtitles, narrations, character identities and causal interpretations are true. Secondly, animated films, digital synthetic films and purely computer-generated images remain film culture. Rodovic's discussion of digital films has shown that films should not be defined solely by the material nature of the film or by the indicative nature of photography (Rodowick 2007).
A more stable feature of the film than "photographic footprints" is that it processes one or more filming, recording, design and performance events into a relatively fixed, repeatable audio-visual object. The performances of film actors are not equivalent to any full action at the scene. It is often broken down into different scenarios, slots and number of shots, and is eventually reformed by mirrors, clips, sound designs and colour processing. Therefore, the performance in the film is produced by the body, the camera and later production.
"complex performance"
。
The basic time structure of the film is also shaped by the fact that the audience usually sees objects that have been completed, selected and fixed. The audio-visual sequences seen by different audiences at different times can be broadly the same.
Film screenings can, of course, also be a social event, and audience reactions can change the viewing experience, but they usually do not reverse the sequence of the lenses that have been completed.
(ii) Theatre: from text to co-generated events
In Chinese, the "dramatic" contains at least two objects that are relevant but cannot be confused: theatres that can be read, published and adapted, and theatre performances that take place in specific venues. If the distinction is not made, Shakespeare's script, a specific performance and the tradition of the show as a whole are mistaken for the same object.
Aristotle understood the tragedy to be an imitation through the actions of the actors rather than mere narratives. The modern theatre theory, however, further states that theatre performances are not pre-existing script content that is transparently moved to the stage. Actors ' physical state, audience reactions, site acoustics, occasional accidents, social circumstances and performance rhythms together constitute an event that cannot be entirely replicated.
Peggy Fellan emphasized the demise of the performance
Fisher-Lisht shows how actors and viewers interact with each other.
The silence, laughter, agitation and even absence of the audience may change the rhythm of the actor, whose actions will continue to re-integrate audience attention and emotion (Phelan 1993; Fischer-Lichte 2008).
The same play can be repeated, but it repeats structures, rules or spectrographs, not the same event.
However, treating on-site as the purely non-technical nature of theatres would also create problems. Osland noted that modern "on-site" experience has been redefined in media settings such as radio, audio, film and television (Auslander 2008). Video projection, remote actors, real-time data, live viewers and virtual spaces can all enter contemporary theatres. Therefore, on-site and mediaization are better suited to be understood as an organizational approach to varying degrees, rather than as an alternative to schooling.
The prototype character of the drama is not "no medium at all" but the main aesthetic object of the work is still included.
An ongoing performance with potential for feedback and occasional on-site events.
(iii) Documentary film: not reality per se, but the idea of reality
The centrepiece of the documentary is not "not processed", but how evidence enters public judgement.
A fundamental shift in documentary theory is to abandon the interpretation of documentaries as "unprocessed reality". Grierson's famous "creative treatment of reality" has recognized that the documentary is both materialized in the real world and necessarily formalized by drawings, clippings, narratives and voices.
Bill Nichols further understood the documentary as a social practice, a historical tradition and a way of viewing, not just a text of a certain fixed style. His distinction between poetry, interpretation, observation, participatory, reverse and performance models coincided with the absence of a single "objective look"; his theoretical framework placed voice, persuasion, evidence and ethics at the centre of documentary research. [India University Press [1]]
Carl Prantinga's "Accusative Position" and Noel Carol's "Presumed Accusations" theory provide a more restrictive intellectual interpretation
The documentary invites viewers to interpret the core statement in the work as an idea of the real world, not as an assumption in a fictional game.
The so-called "real world" is not an unintermediated nature, but a world in which individuals, institutions and events may be tested by historical evidence, witnesses, archives and public discourse (Plantinga 1997; Carroll 1996).
Therefore, the identity of the documentary cannot be determined solely by the appearance of the image. Fiction works can use interviews, video surveillance, video shakes and news subtitles; documentaries can use animation, actor re-emergence, models, dances and dreams. What really matters is what's built between the work and the audience.
Alleged contract
。
This contract does not guarantee the correctness of the work. The documentary can be wrong, lie or deliberately misleading. It is precisely because of its factual claims that we have reason to accuse it of being false. The role in a fictional work is not deceptive and does not amount to deception; it is the false interviewer ' s identity, which leads the audience to believe that the other person is a real witness, that constitutes a breach of the record contract.
This distinguishes three often confused concepts
Realistic
It is a question of whether the people and events that the work talks about are in the historical world.
Reality
The credibility of specific statements, images and explanations
Recording
It means whether the work places itself in a relationship between evidence testing and public accountability.
The documentary does not monopolize "truth". Fiction films and theatre can also reveal profound emotional truth, social structure and historical experience. But the documentary has a more specific obligation
When it says, "This person exists," "This thing happened," "This image comes from somewhere at some point in time."
The audience has the right to question its evidence.
The "three-axis-one threshold" model
Three-axis and ethical threshold model: media state, alleged contract, performance construction, ethical accountability.
In order to avoid reloading films, theatres and documentaries in three closed containers, an inspirational analytical model is presented. Any work can be provisionally described as
W = <M, R, P; E>
Of these, the three descriptive dimensions are the media ' s state of affairs, alleged contracts and performance construction, respectively; and ethical accountability constitutes a normative threshold. The symbol here does not require mechanical quantification of works of art, but shows that several attributes can change independently from one another.
1. Media Time axis
The main objects of this study are
One end is a fixed, replicable and replayable recording object
The other end is a live event that relies on both performers and viewers.
It includes live films, remote theatres, interactive images, real-time performances and stage videos.
Traditional films are usually close to the end of "record objects" and traditional theatres close to the end of "spot events". But this is a prototype difference, not an insurmountable border.
Alleged Axis (R)
This axle study requires an audience to understand its statement
Fiction invited the audience to participate in the imagination "if these figures and events exist"
The reality demands that the audience interpret the core statement as an assertion of the historical world
Among them are autobiography, historical dramas, literature novels, film essays and fictional works.
This dimension has nothing to do with whether the work is "deep". Fiction can have strong historical insight and documentaries can be superficial. The difference lies in whether the audience has reason to regard specific statements as facts that can be verified externally.
3. Performance construction axis (P)
This axis examines the extent to which creators organize scenes, languages and behaviour
The lower end consists of long-term observations, occasional incidents and untempered interactions
The higher end consists of scripts, rehearsals, role-playing, repetitions, scenery and highly styled movement.
The point is that the degree of construction is not inversely proportional to record-keeping. Low intervention does not automatically produce the truth, nor does high performance automatically eliminate record value. Interview questions themselves shape answers, and observational photography removes large amounts of information through viewing and editing; rather, repetition can sometimes reveal memories, trauma, illusions and power structures that cannot be recorded by original cameras.
4. Ethical accountability thresholds (E)
Ethical accountability is not another style, but a condition for the legitimacy of a work of fact. At least
Retroactivity of archives, data and sources of testimony
(a) Appropriate disclosure of the degree of recurrence, synthesis, double and fiction
Continuous assessment of knowledge, risk and power disparities among participants
Responsibility for language editing, translation, anonymity and identity
Capacity to respond to errors of fact, injury consequences and public challenges.
Thus, even at the "factual" end, a work does not mean that it is ethically qualified. Documentaryism is a commitment, and ethical accountability determines whether a work is better fulfilling that commitment.
5. Coordinate distribution in typical forms
Form of work
Moderate
Alleged contract
Performance Construction
Main responsibilities
Fiction movies
Fixed Record Master
Fiction
Usually higher.
I'm not pretending to be evidence.
Observation documentary
Fixed Record Master
Facts
Less visible construction
Context, editing and participant responsibility
Documentary again
Fixed Record Master
Facts
Higher
Clarifying the nature of the recurrence and its evidentiary limits
Traditional drama
The scene is the main event.
Fiction
Higher
Performance and production ethics
The documentary theater.
The scene is the main event.
Facts
But it's high and low.
Sources of testimony, representation and recurrence of injuries
False documentary
Fixed Record Master
Fiction
Use the record form.
You can't hide a contract in a deceptive manner.
Stage Video
Fixed records and field derivatives
As it is.
Keep stage construction
Distinguishing original performance from video object
Animated documentary
Fixed Record Master
Facts
It's very visual.
Description of the relationship between images and evidence
This table shows that the documentary is not the third medium next to the film. A narrow "documentary" can be defined as
Documentary practices in film media or active video media.
The documentary theater is
Documentary practice in live performance media.
IV. System differences between the three
(i) Basic unit of work: camera object, performance event and factual relationship
The basic aesthetic units of films are usually audio-visual objects that have been fixed and organized.
Even though the filming process was sporadic, the final audience was in a trade-off version.
The basic part of the theatre is a performance event. The scripts, directorships and stage designs can be relatively stable, but the time that actors experience with the audience cannot be fully replicated.
The same lines can be repeated every night without copying exactly the same rhythms, errors, emotions and views.
The central unit of the documentary is not a camera, not a stage operation itself, but a set of images, voices, testimonies and historical realities.
Evidence relations
I don't know. One shot may be real, but is redefined by false subtitles
A repeat of an actor may not be taken directly into the past, but may serve as evidence of how someone remembers, denies or imagines the past.
(ii) Time structure: has occurred, is occurring and is claimed to have occurred
The time for traditional films is complete. Filming and editing are usually preceded by watching and viewers face a stable sequence.
Traditional theatres are of a temporal nature. The performance was not a mechanical reproduction of an original event, but a re-enactment in front of the audience. Even if the outcome is written, the physical process of completing it remains at risk.
The documentary has
Double time.
The time of the film is now the historical time it is about. The immediate expression of the interviewer could be indirect evidence of past events; archival images both record the past and are given a new position in the new clip.
The documentary does not return the past to its present, but is now reorganizing how we can recognize it.
(iii) Performing mechanisms: role, role and performance
The fictional actor usually openly admits that he is playing a role that does not exist in reality. The performances of film actors are dismantled by cameras and clips; stage actors must maintain their role during relatively continuous periods.
Documentaries are often mistaken for "no performance". In fact, when faced with a camera, interviewer or audience, people are almost certain to organize their own image. Interviewees may choose to dress, suppress emotions, exaggerate experiences, or use the language expected by society. Performing oneself does not amount to lying; social identity itself is repeated in different contexts.
Therefore, the documentary is not about whether the person is performing, but about
Who's he acting for? In what power relationship? What's the show trying to prove? How can creators explain this performance through editing?
The characters in the documentary are also sources of evidence in social actors, images and narratives of creators. It is because of the overlapping of the three identities that the ethics of documentaries are far more complex than "getting one shot consent".
(iv) Narrative and evidence: probability logic and evidence logic
Fiction relies mainly on possibilities, consistency and artistic forms to build persuasiveness. The audience will not deny Hamlet because Hamlet does not have a birth certificate, because the work never requires the audience to believe that the prince exists in Danish history.
Documentary films require not only narrative coherence but also documentation. The lenses, testimonies and data cannot be simply "story-appropriate" but must also be reasonably linked to the idea of the work. Documentary films can create suspense, shape characters and use symbols, but aesthetic effects are no substitute for evidence.
It also means that "real material" does not automatically tell the truth. Archival images must be date, location, photographer and original use; testimony needs to take into account memory deviations, interests and trauma conditions; and statistical data need to be calibrated. Documentary films are not in the form of decoratives that go beyond reality, but rather in the form of evidence organized into public knowledge.
(v) Audience position: view the chosen world, co-exist in events and review of factual claims
Film cameras pre-selected viewers. The lens determines the distance, the editing determines the order, the frame determines the visibility and the invisibility. Audiences can make critical readings, but cannot really move their eyes out of the picture in a given version.
Theatrical viewers, although subject to lighting, movement and seating restrictions, usually have greater freedom of immediate attention: they can watch actors without lines, watch stage mechanics, or observe other audiences. More importantly, the presence of the audience itself could be a condition for performance.
The documentary audience was given another role: not only to watch, but also to judge. The documentary viewing implied a public censorship structure - who said that, on what basis, what was missing and who bore the consequences? Therefore, the ideal audience for the documentary is not a passive audience for "real", but a critical audience that can distinguish between evidence, interpretation and rhetoric.
V. THE BORDER CASE: HOW THE PLAY IS BONDING
(i) Summer Chronicle: Cameras are not transparent windows, but participants in truth experiments
Summer Chronicle: Cameras, Street Questions and Anti-Sex Experiments.
Jean Rush and Edgar Moran's Summer Chronicle (1961) are often seen as important works of film truth exploration. The video is based on street questions, group conversations and daily follow-up of the work, emotions, memories of war and political situations of ordinary people close to Paris. While light camera equipment and simultaneous recording have increased the ability of cameras to enter their day-to-day environment, the most important contribution of the film is not to claim that technology has finally eliminated intermediaries, but to turn them into problems themselves.
The latter part of the film allowed participants to view the material and discuss which scenes were "real" and which characters were "excessive". The screening, which was intended to validate authenticity, revealed a conflict between authenticity standards: Some were of the opinion that emotions were too dramatic, while others were of the opinion that restraint was not true. The study notes that the film ultimately does not prove that the camera is able to reach an unperformed life, but instead transforms "how the truth is created between the camera, the participants and the audience" into a subject of work. [The Crisis Collection]
According to the present model, the medium of the Summer Chronicle is a documentary film, alleging that the contract is clearly factual, but that its performance is not of a low level: the question is raised by the director, the group is convened by the director, and the feedback from the screening changes the participants ' understanding of their image. Its record value derives precisely from disclosure of these conditions, not from non-existent "zero intervention".
The video reveals a key principle
Counteractivity is not the way a documentary recognizes failure, but the way it incorporates its own production conditions into the chain of evidence.
(ii) " The show of killing ": repeat is not a copy of the past, but evidence of current ideology
" The show of killing ": a one-size-fits-all repetition of the type that turned the immediate ideology of the perpetrator into evidence.
Joshua Oppenheimer ' s Killing Show (2012) invites the perpetrators of the mass killings in Indonesia to repeat their actions in the form of their favorite gangsters, song and dance films and horror films. When measured by the "more swing, less record-keeping", the work should almost be excluded from the documentary. But this judgement ignores what reoccurrence is proving.
Repetition in the film should not be seen as a precise judicial rehabilitation of the killing process. It begins with a record of how the perpetrators understand, show off, aestheticize and recast the past. The official history narrative, masculinity, film culture and self-deception are exposed by type imagination, makeup, costumes and exaggerated performances. As noted in the relevant comments, the film draws on the structure of the "mixed film" not as a fact of behaviour that the perpetrators do not want to admit - often openly - but as a way for them to avoid, convert or experience guilt through performance. [The New Yorker]
In this case, the performance axis was high and the factual allegation was equally high. The object of evidence for reoccurrence is not "how every move of the past actually happened", but "how the perpetrator today imagines the past as a heroic narrative that can be seen". The performance did not cancel the record, but changed the target of the record.
However, this approach also raises acute ethical questions: will the victim again be repressed by allowing the perpetrator to occupy the narrative centre? Are images replicating violence while exposing it? These issues cannot end by declaring the film "real" but must be discussed continuously at the level of risk, context, victim security and political consequences. This suggests that ethical accountability for documentaries is not an addition that is automatically completed when the work is labelled as a "documentary", but is part of the effectiveness of its perception.
(iii) The 24th City Book: collective memory, actor testimony and disclosure responsibility
The 24th City Book: A mix of real interviews, actor testimony and collective memory.
Jassanko ' s 24th City Book (2008) revolves around the relocation, closure and replacement of a large factory in Chengdu by a real estate project. Interviews with real workers and the testimony of synthetic characters performed by actors were generally viewed as a mixture of records and fictions; then reports also made it clear that the film consisted of real interviews and actor performances, which were used to describe the history of factories and their labour groups. [The New Yorker]
Actors' testimony is not simply "forgery". Synthetic figures are able to bring together intergenerational experiences that cannot be fully carried out by a particular interviewee and to develop an emotional history of the demise of the socialist industrial community through performance rhythms, face cultures and star memories. The problem is that when the audience is unable to clearly distinguish between actual testimony and composite creation from the inside of the work, different materials are given similar weight in evidence.
If the film is treated as a purely fictional film, the performance of an actor is not a problem; if it enters public history in the name of a documentary, the performance identity, the source of material and the combination of characters should be given greater responsibility for disclosure. The theoretical value of The Twenty-four City is precisely from this precarious position: it forces audiences to distinguish between "evidence of historical facts" and "the poetic synthesis of historical experience".
Therefore, it is not appropriate to simply qualify this work as a "real documentary" or a "false documentary". More precisely, it is called a hybrid, documentary or documentary fiction. It preserves both the testimony of real workers and the symbolic form of collective memory through actors; its evaluation criteria must also include both aesthetic interpretative power and the degree of factual disclosure.
(iv) Rimini Protokoll: Recording does not depend on the screen
Rimini Protokoll, 100% City: Daily Life Specialists and Urban Demographic Structures are on stage.
The "personal performance" in the documentary theatre does not automatically amount to the truth; it still requires representativeness and responsibility for testimony.
The German theatre group, Rimini Protokoll, regularly invites "experts of daily life" with specific life experience, professional knowledge or social status to perform and translates realistic mechanisms such as shareholder conferences, urban demographics, transnational call centres and war experiences into theatre structures. Its official presentation clearly emphasized their collaboration with holders of expertise outside the theatre and the creation of new perspectives on reality through interactive technology and space conversion. [rimini-protokoll.de] [5]
The performances showed that record-keeping could exist in the theatre. Listers may appear in their name, profession and experience, and performance material may come from data, documents and real systems. But the presence of a body does not mean that the testimony is natural. The true person is also mistaken, concealing, exaggerating or subjecting himself to the director's structure; "personal performance" can only prove that a person is present at the moment and cannot prove in isolation all his statements about the past.
The significance of the documentary theatre is that it transforms the evidence from the footprint of the screen into a face-to-face witness relationship. The audience not only listens to statements, but also directly feels the pause, physical vulnerability and social position of those who speak. At the same time, the director ' s control over the selection of personnel, representation and speaking order remains.
So, the documentary theater is not "no show theatre," but
(c) Organization of factual material in the form of performances and requirement for stage presentations of theatres subject to realistic tests.
Pressure testing on selected border issues
The boundary judgement does not look at skin labels, but rather at what kind of contract the work creates.
Is "adapted from real events" a documentary film?
Nope. Historic dramas can be based on real events, but usually allow for the amalgamation of characters, the rewrite of dialogue and the reorganization of causes and consequences, and remain largely fictional contracts as long as the work does not require the audience to use each scene as evidence of fact.
"According to real events" only shows that reality is a source of material and that the work carries with it the burden of proof for the documentary.
2. Why is a pseudo-documentary not a documentary?
Because the documentary style is not the same as the documentary contract. Handheld lenses, interviews, time codes and surveillance videos are only symbolic resources that can be used in any work. Hypocrisy documentaries usually invite viewers to interpret characters and events as fiction in their titles, distributions, type tips or final revelations.
On the other hand, if the creator deliberately creates a false picture of a real news event and refuses to provide a false hint for a long time, the problem is no longer merely an artistic type of experiment, but can become a dissemination fraud.
3. Why can an animated documentaries remain without photographic traces?
Because photographic causality is not a necessary condition for documentation. Animation can be based on journals, audio recordings, judicial records, memory and scientific data to present to the audience the idea of reality. The images are designed, but the incidents, experiences and explanations expressed are still subject to evidentiary tests.
Instead, animated documentaries make the construction process more visible: viewers do not misperceive images as unintermediated reality slices, but realize that visual form is an interpretation of evidence.
After filming the stage, is it still theatre?
Stage performances and stage videos should be considered related but not identical objects. The original performance was an event on the ground; the video translated the event into a repertoire of audio and video that could be viewed over and over again through the slots, scenes, clips and sound.
For the audience at the scene, actors, viewers and space together constitute theatre events; for the viewer of the video, the viewer has been reorganized by a camera. Videos can record theatre, but they do not fully preserve space relationships, audience feedback and accident that were not filmed in the original event.
Live theatres are in between: remote viewers and actors may share time without sharing the same physical space, and the feedback capacity of remote viewers depends on technical design.
Will reoccurrence automatically make the documentary fiction?
Nope. Two statements must be distinguished
"This is the original image of the events of the year."
"This is a repetition of the events of the year based on certain evidence".
The latter need not pretend to be prima facie evidence, provided that they identify themselves again and indicate what material is organized. The question is not whether to repeat itself, but whether to confuse it with the evidentiary status of the archives.
6. Must the documentary remain objective and neutral?
The documentary cannot be completely unpositioned. Camera selection, problem design, editing sequence and distribution channels are valuable. Objectivity should not be understood as "no author" but as a set of publicly available methodological disciplines: distinguishing between facts and interpretations, presenting evidentiary limits, verifying contrary material, avoiding deliberate manipulation and allowing claims to be criticized.
Documentary films can be strongly involved in politics, but the stronger they are, the less demanding they are. On the contrary, the clearer the public claim, the higher the burden of proof will normally be.
VII. Discussion: the shift from onophysical purity to definition of relationships
There is an ongoing "purity impulse" in film history and theatrical history: film theory tries to find the unique material nature of the film, theatre theory tries to defend non-replicable liveness, documentary theory attempts to find a realistic image that is not contaminated by art.
However, the practice of the media continues to give rise to reverse examples. Digital films are no longer film-dependent; the theatre uses screens and remote connections extensively; documentaries can be animated, performed and interactive; fictional works can also absorb archives and real people. By insisting on finding a single necessary feature for each art, the theory can only continue to proclaim new forms "not pure".
This model adopts a relationship definition. The identity of the work is not determined by a single material, but by a combination of
= media organization x alleged contract x performance x institutional context and ethical accountability
Such a definition did not mean that all borders could be lifted arbitrarily. On the contrary, it makes border judgements more rigorous: a work cannot be judged solely on the basis of "documentary films" or "persons on the stage", but must specify what dimension it has.
The concept of "real" could thus be revisited. Art works involve at least four different kinds of reality
There's real.
(i) Whether the person, place or event actually existed
It's true.
the accuracy of their statements
Experience is real.
(a) Whether the work conveys what a subject has actually experienced
Structure is real.
Does the work reveal the social relationship behind individual experience?
Documentary films, in particular, bear the first two real responsibilities, which may also be pursued; fictional films and theatre do not necessarily assume the factual obligations of specific propositions, but may well be more perceptive of empirical and structural reality than certain documentaries.
Thus, "fiction" does not amount to false, nor does "documentary film" amount to truth. The difference between the two is a different commitment to the audience.
Conclusions
There is no simple, symmetrical three-line line between films, theatres and documentaries.
Films are, first, a media system that organizes live images as repeatable audio-visual objects; theatre is, first, a performance system that consists of physical, spatial, temporal and audience feedback of events on the ground; and documentaries are, first and foremost, a practical way of presenting factual claims, organizing evidence and ethical accountability around historical realities.
This leads to four conclusions.
One
The documentary is not the opposite of the film, but a possible factual model within the film and in other media.
Second
Theatricals are not synonymous with fiction.
Theatricals can play a fictional role and can organize archives, data, testimonies and true identities.
Thirdly
The performance is not the opposite of the documentary.
Documentaries are bound to present themselves in one way or another, and re-enactment and role play can also produce knowledge. The real crisis of perception stems from the undisclosed confusion of archives, speculation, substitution and fiction.
Fourth
Recording is not how much "real content" is in a work, but how the work is held to account.
Four questions should therefore be asked about any work at any boundary
Does it exist primarily as a target for recording or as an event on the ground?
Does it invite the audience to adopt a fictional attitude or a factual judgement?
How does it organize performances, set, repeat and edit?
Does it take sufficient responsibility for the evidence, participants and dissemination of the consequences?
In the form of a prototype, the difference between the three can be condensed into a single sentence
The film fixes and organizes visible objects, the events in which the theatre is co-organised, and the documentary bears the controversial responsibility for reality.
But the most important theoretical conclusion is not to build a higher wall for them, but to recognize that movies and dramas describe how works appear, and documentaries describe what promises they make to talk about the world. The three are not three closed categories, but can be superimposed and transposed, while media coordinates must be accepted for different evaluation criteria.
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Carroll, Noël. 1996. *Theorizing the Moving Image*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cavell, Stanley. 1979. *The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film*. Enlarged ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008. *The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics*. Translated by Saskya Iris Jain. London: Routledge.
Grierson, John. 1946. "First Principles of Documentary." In *Grierson on Documentary*, edited by Forsyth Hardy. London: Collins.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. *Postdramatic Theatre*. Translated by Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge.
Martin, Carol. 2013. *Theatre of the Real*. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nichols, Bill. 2017. *Introduction to Documentary*. 3rd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. *Unmarked: The Politics of Performance*. London: Routledge.
Plantinga, Carl R. 1997. *Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Renov, Michael, ed. 1993. *Theorizing Documentary*. London: Routledge.
Rodowick, D. N. 2007. *The Virtual Life of Film*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Trinh T. Minh-ha. 1991. *When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics*. London: Routledge.
Winston, Brian. 1995. *Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited*. London: British Film Institute.
Videos and performances
Jia Zhangke, sir.
Oppenheimer, Joshua, Christine Cynn, and Anonymus, dirs.
Rouch, Jean, and Edgar Morin, sirs.
Rimini Protokoll. 2000-present. Documentary theatres, city projects and interactive performance series.