Documentary or advocacy film? (cinema, filming, script, editor)

[harry chickpea]

After watching "Food, Inc." and then thinking back to other films, I am dismayed that the word "Documentary" is continually misused.

Frank Capra's following the lives of soldiers in WWII could be considered documentary. Some of the science oriented films can be considered documentary, precisely because they expose without editorializing.

Films like "Food, Inc." are NOT by any stretch documentaries. The entry scenes with factories in back of fields, and men in suits walking across corn fields to get to them are highly slanted plays to the emotions of the audience.

The utter lack of exposition of both "sides" of the major points of the film make rational discussion of it difficult. Example, it goes on about "subsidies" and yet does not explain or even provide a clear definition of them. It has one motivated farmer who in essence is running his farm as a vertically integrated monopoly, selling grass fed beef and chickens and eggs direct to consumers, exposing his view that such products are less expensive to produce, then do a virtual roll of his eyes when he talks about a woman with a 75 cent soda expressing surprise when his eggs are $3 per dozen instead of the less expensive ones she can buy in the stores.

The broiler barn in the film is NOT representative of current barns, even by the admission of the film-maker, yet it is PORTRAYED as an example of the abuse to the chickens and chicken farmers. No mentioned is made of the concept of "bio-security" when stating that dozens of chicken farmers refused to allow filming.

The film does raise many good points, and overall is interesting, but is no more a documentary on our food system than "Terminator" is a documentary on robots.

Advocacy films should be labeled as such, and the documentary category limited to films that do not editorialize either in script, selective shooting, or unequal representation of opposing points of view.

[soupson1]

I agree with you Harry Chickpea. The injustice here is not so much to the viewer, as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in a field which receives but a fraction of the recognition and financing of the "entertainment industry. Film's like the one you mentioned Food Inc and Bowling for Columbine come to mind for me, are really Fiction, they make their points by decieving and by misleading the viewer.A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be entertaining, but they are not documentaries. Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award says a documentary is a non-fictional movie. If anything, a documentary film purports to be less symbolic and more real: the viewer is shown things, and assumes he is himself seeing reality rather than hearing a speaker's description, possibly unfair or deceptive, of it.Deception is not the way to inspire clear thinking.

[rodomonte]

Oh, I thought this post would be about "Fence" by Rory Kennedy, a propaganda film if there ever was one.

[plwhit]

Lets not forget about "An Inconvenient Truth" -- Talk about propaganda

[cmptrwlt]

Wikipedia: Documentary film is a broad category of moving pictures intended to document some aspect of reality.

I got nothing against subjective documentaries or propaganda movies. I like Triumph des Willens, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Food, Inc.

The Academy Award winner The Cove is also a very subjective documentary.

[BlueWillowPlate]

Originally Posted by cmptrwlt

The Academy Award winner The Cove is also a very subjective documentary.

Yes. And I know what's in it and will never have the guts to watch it.
Having said that, I do believe its cause is worthy.

Originally Posted by soupson1

The injustice here is not so much to the viewer, as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in a field which receives but a fraction of the recognition and financing of the "entertainment industry. Film's like the one you mentioned Food Inc and Bowling for Columbine come to mind for me, are really Fiction, they make their points by decieving and by misleading the viewer.A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be entertaining, but they are not documentaries. Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award says a documentary is a non-fictional movie. If anything, a documentary film purports to be less symbolic and more real: the viewer is shown things, and assumes he is himself seeing reality rather than hearing a speaker's description, possibly unfair or deceptive, of it.Deception is not the way to inspire clear thinking.

Absolutely.
I don't know that I would go so far as to call every minute of Food Inc or Bowling for Columbine outright fiction.
I have seen for myself that much of what is depicted is true.
However, a real documentary would not depend on so much cinematic hyperbole combined with clever editing.

[inevitablewilliam]

I think that word documentary is used for the self promotion these days more than a topic.