Documentary as a word comes from Latin docere means to teach. The documentary’s position in history has varied depending on the period and the prevailing technologies as well as the contemporary needs and social contexts. Overall, a documentary is an attempt to put forward an evidence or the testimony of a fact or situation, within the complex historical process. It is a mimetic representation of real events.
The visual documentaries have become possible by image technologies. With the advent of the camera, photograph adds an intensification to the documentary and documentary making change its methods. John Berger noted tree decade ago, the camera altered our relation to the world by their capacity of preserving the instant appearances and their possibility to break any monopoly that is represented. Photography intervenes the daily life with a number of levels, it came with its technical, material and conceptual differentiations that can not be underestimated. A video, whose value is polyvalent by its future of capturing the movements, has become to the stage as qualified documents.
By years and examples, audiovisual documentaries divided to genres by their differentiated modes. Some of them did try to focus on objectivism while the others giving emphasis to the expression of the author. Some thought documentaries are portrayed of what it is, while the others have thought documentaries as a branch of art. As Aristotle observed and puts into sentences art represents not what is, but a kind of thing that might be; environments, objects, situations, characters, and actions are represented within a wide range of deviation from real life. The degree and types of deviations are the results of the form, style and purpose representation. In any way, while documentaries as a genre involve representations of real world phenomena more than any other art forms characteristically, they also remain as a presenter of framed reality traditionally demanded on the author’s point of view.
“the tiny spark of contingency, of Here and Now, with which reality has seared the subject” (Berger, 1979)
Film is an expository medium which has a narrative mode based on the power of showing.
After quite a few examples, and years with the image technologies, discussions around the objectivity of the image have taken their place. Basically, these arguments ground on that even if you photograph the very natural life, as you are included and framed the situation, you are creating an interpretation of it by your juxtaposition of details.
Today, attributions of the documentary and the skills of the documentary makers are changing rapidly in high speed developing digital environments. Spectator turns into a user. Documentaries are taking new forms by software designers who design the new modes for users. Users are taking the proactive role more than ever in the history of documentaries. Besides, programs having the proactive role more than ever.
Keywords organisation and categorization of the systems, there are novel forms of aesthetic and the objectivity.
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