A documentary film is a non-fictional, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record". Documentary has been described as "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries". Documentary films were originally called "actuality films", and were one minute, or less, in length. Over time, documentaries have evolved to be longer in length, and to include more categories; some examples being: educational, observational, and docufiction. Documentaries are meant to be informative works, and are often used within schools, as a resource to teach various principles.
Peter Bogdanovich is an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic and film historian. He is part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, and his most critically acclaimed and well-known film is The Last Picture Show (1971).
A mockumentary or docucomedy is a type of movie or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary.
Super Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003, during which he ate only McDonald's food. The film documents this lifestyle's drastic effect on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit.
John David Landis is an American film director, comedian, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is best known for the comedy films that he has directed, such as National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), An American Werewolf in London (1981), Trading Places (1983), Three Amigos (1986), Coming to America (1988) and Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), and for directing Michael Jackson's music videos for "Thriller" (1983) and "Black or White" (1991).
Morgan Valentine Spurlock is an American documentary filmmaker, humorist, television producer, screenwriter and playwright.
Robert B. Weide is an American screenwriter, producer, and director, perhaps best known for his work on documentaries and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Philip Davis Guggenheim is an American film and television director and producer. His credits include NYPD Blue, ER, 24, Alias, The Shield, Deadwood, and the documentaries An Inconvenient Truth, The Road We've Traveled, Waiting for "Superman" and He Named Me Malala. Since 2006, Guggenheim is the only filmmaker to release three different documentaries that were ranked within the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time.
American Dream is a 1990 British-American cinéma vérité documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple and co-directed by Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke, and Lawrence Silk.
Gimme Shelter is a 1970 British-American documentary film directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin chronicling the last weeks of The Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour which culminated in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert. The film is named after "Gimme Shelter", the lead track from the group's 1969 album Let It Bleed. Gimme Shelter was screened out of competition as the opening film of the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
Sandip Ray is an Indian film director and music director who mainly works in Bengali cinema. He is the only child of the famous Bengali director Satyajit Ray and Bijoya Ray.
Bugs Bunny: Superstar is a 1975 Looney Tunes documentary film narrated by Orson Welles and produced and directed by Larry Jackson. It was the first documentary to examine the history of the Warner Bros. cartoons, and includes nine Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons which were previously released during the 1940s:
Cinema in Estonia is the film industry of the Republic of Estonia. The motion pictures have won international awards and each year new Estonian films are seen at film festivals around the globe.
Guru is a British 2006 short documentary film about the guru of yoga as exercise K. Pattabhi Jois, directed by the BBC film producer Robert Wilkins. The film shows Jois and his grandson Sharath Rangaswamy teaching in the yogashala at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India. It combined footage of beginner and advanced students practising the various Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga series of asanas, from Primary to Advanced, with interviews with Jois and senior staff at the Institute, and street scenes in Mysore. The film also shows Jois's children Saraswati and Manju talk about their father. Wilkins took up Ashtanga Yoga two years before making the film. Wilkins spent several months in Mysore studying for the film.
Cinema of Latvia dates back to 1910 when the first short films were made. The first cinematic screening in Riga took place on May 28, 1896. By 1914 all major cities in Latvia had cinemas where newsreels, documentaries and mostly foreign-made short films were screened.
Reality film or reality movie describes a genre of films that have resulted from reality television, such as The Real Cancun, MTV's film version of The Real World, which was originally titled Spring Break: The Reality Movie. In an article in Time Magazine, Joel Stein wrote, "Like reality TV, a reality film is supercheap, and as Jackass proved, there's an audience willing to pay $9 for what it gets free on television." Typically, a pre-determined situation is staged or created, often with the use of non-professional actors, and then the "reality" of what happens is filmed. In an article on reality movies, Variety pointed out the low budget of reality films in an era of skyrocketing marketing and production costs for traditional films has made them an attractive option for studios, with the selling point being "Tits and ass. Teenage tits and ass, that is."
The Mystery of Picasso is a 1956 French documentary film about the painter Pablo Picasso, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and showing Picasso in the act of creating paintings for the camera. Most of the paintings were subsequently destroyed so that they would only exist on film, though some may have survived.
Ari Folman is an Israeli film director, screenwriter, animator and film score composer. He is perhaps best known for directing his Oscar-nominated animated documentary film Waltz with Bashir (2008) as well as directing the live-action/animated film The Congress. He currently plans to direct an animated drama film based on the life of Anne Frank during the Holocaust, named Where Is Anne Frank?.
Radio Bikini is a 1988 American documentary film directed by Robert Stone. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988 for Best Documentary Feature. It was later aired on the PBS series The American Experience.
My Scientology Movie is a 2015 British documentary film about Scientology directed by John Dower, and written by and starring Louis Theroux. The film takes an unconventional approach to the subject matter, featuring young actors "auditioning" for parts playing high-profile Scientologists in scenes recreating accounts from ex-members about incidents involving senior church management. The Church of Scientology responded by putting the filmmakers under surveillance and denouncing the film.
