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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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Research Paper Doctorate

Leadership failure and accountability in Inside Job

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.

Research Paper Doctorate

American support for capital punishment: demographics and arguments

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.

Essay Doctorate

A Beautiful Mind: depicting Nash's schizophrenia through film perspective

"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.

Paper Doctorate

Michael Mann's adaptation of the Last of the Mohicans film

¶ … 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…

Essay Doctorate

The Deaf President Now movement and deaf community representation

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

Paper Doctorate

Compulsive hoarding disorder: psychological causes and treatment approaches

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

Paper Doctorate

Michael Moore's exploration of violence in American society through Bowling for Columbine

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.

Howard Zinn on American activism and political change movements

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.

Capoeira's origins and global spread in documentary film

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.

Research Paper Doctorate

Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and post-9/11 fears of bioterrorism

Director Danny Boyle's 2003 movie, 28 Days Later, is an insightful reflection of societal fears of bioterrorism, terrorism and catastrophic warfare. In the movie, Boyle uses a variety of techniques, including plot,…

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