I haven’t always enjoyed documentaries, as a child I despised them I just wanted to watch The Lion King and have the serious people stop talking. But I also hated black and white films as a kid, which I now love. Nowadays I’m fascinated by documentaries, as they can the viewer things that the audience may never experience in their own lives. It allows for wider exposure of issues, especially niche ones.

I think the word I associate most with documentary is ‘truth’, because that’s exactly what they present. They still use narrative techniques, manipulating the viewer by re-staging scenarios or using found footage, voice over, interviews and other techniques to convey the narrative. But as opposed to film narratives the central message behind a documentary is that they present non-fiction. But I think it’s also important for viewers to not get misled and believe every documentary that purports to tell the truth about a certain situation, even, historical figure etc. The creators may still be biased or have an agenda that they wish to spread and in that case, like in every part of life, it’s important to view everything critically.

The creator should present evidence, primary and secondary sources, conduct interviews (formal or informal lines of questioning should be examined) and most importantly stay relatively neutral on a topic. If the topic is clearly ridiculous and the moral/ethically standing is clear the presenter should at least remain fairly neutral when interviewing people whose views differ from his/her own. A good example of this is Louis Theroux who despite interviewing people who in the KKK and verbally attacking him for appearing to be a Jew, he remained calm and never addressed personal details keeping the documentary focused on the topic at hand.