What's wrong with the liberal documentary

Abstract

Abstract I'm a documentary filmmaker and teacher who has been making films independently since 1967 and teaching filmmaking at a university since 1989. I've been thinking for a long time that the progressive or liberal documentary is an inadequate form—a relatively useless cultural product, especially for political change. Its basic strategy is description, and it makes arguments by organizing visual evidence, expressive local testimony and expert technical testimony into a deceptively satisfying emotional form. These standard filmic conventions do little to inform the audience of its own role in socially oppressive relationships and conditions, or to rouse the audience from its implicit complacency with the status quo. This essay will consider new forms of documentary which challenge current non‐fiction film practice and which link the documentary form more closely with political action.