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What is Documentary?

Documentary film sits at the intersection of journalism, history, and cinematic art, making it a frequent subject of study in film studies, media studies, communications, and humanities courses. Unlike fictional narrative film, documentary claims a direct relationship with reality, which raises compelling academic questions about objectivity, representation, and the ethics of storytelling. This tension between truth and construction gives the genre its intellectual weight and invites students to examine how filmmakers shape a viewer's understanding of real events, real people, and real social issues.

The papers collected here reflect a wide range of approaches to documentary study. Some take a reaction or response format, engaging directly with specific films such as Eyes on the Prize Part 2, Man on Wire, Outfoxed, and Paris Is Burning to analyze how each documentary frames its subject. Others pursue broader thematic or evaluative analysis, looking at how films like Beyond Beats and Rhymes address social issues around identity and culture. A number of papers also blur the line between documentary and dramatization, examining works like the World Trade Center film or Valkyrie to question historical accuracy and cinematic interpretation.

A strong essay on documentary begins with a clear, arguable claim about how a film constructs meaning rather than simply summarizing its content. Evidence drawn from specific scenes, editorial choices, framing, and narration carries the most weight. One common pitfall to avoid is treating a documentary as a neutral record of facts; the most rigorous essays treat every filmmaking decision as deliberate and worth interrogating.

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Grant Proposal for a Small Project

The grant proposal is a difficult topic to manage, because it involves creative writing. This is a five page grant proposal that uses an abundance of creative writing. The grant is for a documentary film consultation service that prevents problems from arising due to the fact that many documentarians and photojournalists will do anything to get a shot.

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Inside Job: documentary analysis and financial crisis examination

The financial crisis of 2008 was driven by a lack of ethics on the aprt of CEOs of fianncial services firms, many of which emerged form the crisis with larger personal fortunes than before. This was directly attributable to the many ways these businesses and their founders bent the rules of ethics, and completely lacked accountability over their overall performance.

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Capital punishment: ethical, legal, and social perspectives

Like abortion, the institution of capital punishment is a very divisive topic. The line dividing the supporters and opponents of capital punishment is variably drawn across political philosophies, race, sex and religion.

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Beautiful Mind a Film

"A Beautiful Mind" – a Film John Forbes Nash, Jr., an American Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, is such a notable individual that he is the subject of a book, a PBS documentary and a film. The film A Beautiful Mind (Crowe, et al. 2006) eliminates certain aspects of Nash's life and rewrites other aspects revealed in the book and documentary, possibly to make Nash a more sympathetic character for the audience. However, the film remains true to a consistent theme: in an individual's quest for satisfaction through self-fulfillment, the abnormal can also be the extraordinary. A Beautiful Mind (Crowe, et al. 2006) portrays an historical individual who: is abnormal in that he is a paranoid schizophrenic; is ambitiously ingenious, in that he obsessively pursued a unique mathematical theory with an exceptionally high intellect in order to be distinguished for his achievement; achieved an extraordinary accomplishment that is acknowledged by a Nobel Prize. As the film illustrates, Nash accomplished his game theory of Economics despite the interaction of his abnormality, determination and brilliance but also due to their interaction. Though the film "sanitizes" Nash by eliminating some unsavory aspects of his life, it gives us a uniquely disturbing taste of mental illness "from the inside out" and takes the audience on a painful, struggling journey to show that in an individual's quest for satisfaction through self-fulfillment, the abnormal can also be the extraordinary.

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Movie Adaptations, it Is Often

¶ … movie adaptations, it is often difficult to make a selection of which do you prefer over what. The case becomes a challenge in itself when say you have read the book in your early teenage years and years later when…

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Deaf culture and community perspectives

"Deaf President Now!" summarized the student protests of March 1998, of the appointment the 7th hearing President of Gallaudet University.

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Compulsive Hoarding Famous Hoarders

(Hoarding as a Disorder, Famous Hoarders Case Studies, and Solutions)

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Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore

in April of 1999 two students entered Columbine High School and began a massacre that result in the deaths of twelve students, one teacher, and scores of wounded. Michael Moore explores the nature of violence in America in his film "Bowling for Columbine." He asks a number of intriguing questions which get to the heart of why America is such a violent society. Ultimately he concludes that it is fear that drives the American obsession with guns and this makes America a violent country.

Neo-Confucianism Is a Philosophy Which Was Born TEST1

Ronald Reagan's statement that, "I believe that government exists to protect us from each other not to protect us from ourselves." is still echoed in the Republican Party today. It is the same mentality that Mitt Romney employs—that people must be responsible for themselves and that the government is not there to pick up the slack for people who don't take care of themselves and prepare for their future. The most fundamental flaw in this thinking is that it assumes that everyone starts from an even playing field—or else, one is forced to conclude, that the GOP really doesn't care that fundamental inequalities exist which will prevent large swaths of American people from ever being able to "take care of themselves" and look out for their future.

Manginga em Manhattan

Very few people have heard about the Brazilian martial art form known as capoeira. In the film Mandinga EM Manhattan, documentary filmmaker Lazaro Faria explores how capoeira started and spread throughout the world.

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