Film Criticism of Documentary Movies as a Media Literacy Tool

Abstract

The documentary production is seen as an open space for different genres and styles, contributing to creating an intense spirit of experimentation. Despite this, a large part of the public mistakenly considers that documentaries are limited to the journalistic and dissertative format, based on a supposed objectivity that would be capable of leading to the definitive “truth”. This naivety in the reception and evaluation of documentaries, resulting from gaps in the mastery of audiovisual language, has social repercussions, for example, in the circulation of fake news and in processes of disinformation. A great way to introduce young people and adults to documentaries as an artistic form of representation of reality is to propose exercises in film criticism. By contrasting documentaries that opt ​​for distinct aesthetic strategies to explore similar themes, it becomes possible to shed light on the importance of form in documentary production for the production of meaning.

Keywords

Documentary, Film Criticism, Cinema, Misinformation, Audiovisual

“Are you talking about a film or a documentary?” I have heard this question countless times in my four decades as a film critic, professor, and documentary filmmaker. At first glance, it is a superficial but revealing mistake, equivalent to the questions “is this a fruit or an apple?”, “is this a mammal or a dog?”, “is this a media outlet or a daily newspaper?” or “is this literature or a novel?”.

“Film” (or “movie”): a word popularly associated with movie theater sessions, the enjoyment of audiovisual content as leisure, and entertainment produced by studios for global mass consumption. In this context, it has also become synonymous with “fiction cinema”, especially that affiliated with the narrative model whose development began over 100 years ago. Intertwined with the functioning of the “studio system” and the “star system,” this model contributed to the USA audiovisual industry becoming hegemonic across almost the entire planet, one of the first and most notable sectors to benefit from the circulation of goods in a globalized economy.

“Documentary”: a word generally associated with another type of social experience, sometimes of a school nature, often with an educational purpose. According to this understanding, the documentary offers a teacher-like approach to themes belonging to the most diverse spectrums (in school screenings, an approach associated with curricular themes and programmed precisely by teachers). Therefore, it also involves concepts such as effort (it requires dedication from the viewer to follow the sequence of subjects) and obligation (we do not watch documentaries for pleasure, but because we need to inform ourselves and learn, and sometimes because “it will be on the test”).

Let us try to organize our ideas and the use of terms, beyond misunderstandings and prejudices: “documentary” is “film”, because documentary is cinema, and cinema is film. It is worth remembering that documentary practice is present in technological development, throughout the last decades of the 19th century and based on advances in photography, which led to the construction of devices capable of recording and displaying moving images. We can radicalize the reasoning and invert the terms in the sentence: cinema is documentary, whether the film is fiction or not. The French-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) used this reasoning in a famous provocation, when he said that every fiction film is actually a documentary made by a film crew around actors who pretend to be characters.

We should therefore celebrate the history, language, breadth and diversity of the documentary. Its roots lie in the first experiments with moving images in the last decade of the 19th century, but the use of the term to refer to a certain type of film became more common after “Nanook of the North” (1922), directed by the American filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1884-1951). And what type of film are we talking about? Numerous attempts at definition have been presented, exploring the characteristics of a “cinema of the real”, one that seeks to establish a representation of the world based on ethical and linguistic principles, as if signing a contract with the viewer in which the “suspension of disbelief” (the state in which we place ourselves, as spectators, in front of a fictional film, in order to believe what we see as if it were true, even knowing that it is a fictional construction) is taken to its most extreme point.

Thus, every documentary (that is, every film that presents itself as a documentary, or every cinema that claims to be documentary) addresses its viewer based on the following premises: “believe me, nothing that I will present as fact was invented, the characters I will refer to exist or existed, the images are of them (and not of people who play them), but do not forget that I was made by human beings, and that, therefore, I do not hold the absolute truth about anything, I only explore possibilities of increasing our understanding, using for this purpose language resources that can bring me closer to what you know as fiction (although the correct order would perhaps be to say that fiction films, in search of verisimilitude, are the ones that use language resources born and developed with the documentary)”.

“The documentary, another cinema”: the title of the French film critic Guy Gauthier’s book is exemplary in configuring a very broad and diverse territory, which can be organized according to its own genres (which helps to dispel another common misconception, that documentary is just a genre of cinema, like fantasy and westerns) or, as the American scholar Bill Nichols’ classic book (“Introduction to documentary”) prefers, “modes”. One of these modes or genres, the dissertative, made famous by the use of the “voice of God” (that of narration) in the organization and presentation of information, from a point of view that seems superhuman and incontestable, is similar to journalism and also contributes to the spread of another misconception, that of understanding the part for the whole, that is, assuming that every documentary is a dissertative (as, in fact, many of those circulating in school environments are).

In its various forms or genres, documentaries can be used for leisure, artistic enjoyment, experimentation, knowledge production, and all of these at the same time. The audiovisual coordinates of the world we live in have documentary language in their DNA, from the industrial products available in movie theaters and streaming platforms to the short videos that circulate on social networks such as Instagram and TikTok; from YouTube video lessons and tutorials to the video messages we send on WhatsApp; and, it is important to remember, from videos with fake news and conspiracy theories to the “mockumentaries” (false documentaries) that feed the monster of misinformation.

Despite this presence in the contemporary world and its importance in the way we receive and process information, documentaries do not usually receive the attention they deserve, including in the context of media literacy. This is one of the reasons why we still hear the question “is it a film or a documentary?”, which reveals the difficulty of dealing with this way of representing the world in the form of images and sound. A way that surrounds us almost all the time, in almost every place, produced by almost everyone who has a smartphone.

My defense of the intense use of documentary in media literacy activities, programs and strategies has to do, in summary, with the following points: (1) talking about documentary is talking about the birth, development and application of audiovisual language, and mastering this language is a fundamental skill for citizenship in the 21st century; (2) literacy in documentary language is a valuable tool for expression through images and sounds; (3) knowing the ethical and aesthetic principles of documentary helps us to critically evaluate the documentary production that surrounds us; (4) recognizing the way in which documentaries are constructed helps us in the development of the “vaccine” against misinformation, as it allows us to recognize the mechanisms used to construct representations of the world that seem “true”.

I propose to combine the study (and, why not, the practice) of documentaries with a tool that I believe is very effective in audiovisual literacy and in understanding expression through images and sounds: film criticism. Over the last few decades, I have taught criticism workshops aimed at a wide range of audiences, in different spaces and circumstances. The results have always been very positive, both in terms of developing an understanding of the elements of audiovisual language and also in terms of developing the ability to express oneself, including through images and sounds (when the “text” of the criticism is produced in audiovisual form).

It is important to emphasize that the first (and perhaps most important) function fulfilled by the exercise of criticism has to do with a better understanding of our own intellectual and emotional responses to a given work. Whether we appreciated it more or less, whether it bothered us or left us indifferent, whether it moved us to the point of shedding tears or whether it deeply irritated us: the possible explanations are within us; criticism helps us to illuminate which aspects of our own trajectory (values, beliefs, social experiences, artistic repertoire) were connected to narrative and dramatic elements of the work and produced certain sensations. In this regard, the exercise of listening to criticisms produced by the various participants of a workshop when watching the same film is enriching. The diversity of reactions, even when the participants are part of the same social group, reminds us that there is no single meaning in a work; the meaning is produced from our dialogue with it.

Writing a review is therefore equivalent to a journey of self-knowledge; listening attentively to a review written by another person is equivalent to an exercise in otherness, which invites us to understand the reasons behind that other person, without necessarily having to agree with them. Yes, because this journey of self-knowledge is not limited to merely subjective questions; it needs to be associated with elements of language that justify our reading of the work. Criticism functions as an exercise to activate our repertoire, reexamine the most important things we have retained from the works we know, evaluate the scope of the connections available to us and, consequently, recognize the artistic and cultural gaps that often reduce our ability to dialogue with the works. Criticism tends to be understood as an examination of something outside of us, the work, but it is, deep down, a great opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror, to understand ourselves better and to understand others in a more generous way.

Criticism workshops focused on documentary production can work with a wide variety of works: short, medium and feature-length films, produced by professional teams and released in movie theaters and streaming services; documentary series and miniseries shown on TV and other distribution channels; videos produced by non-professionals. The curation of works to be discussed should be adjusted to the characteristics and interests of the target audience, as well as the objectives of the activity. Possible strategies involve the concept of approximation (two or more works on similar themes or aesthetics) or contrast (two or more works that point to different thematic and aesthetic interests). Documentary production corresponds to the opening of countless windows onto the world; the educator willing to use it from the perspective of media literacy will know where to navigate when choosing the works, and will be able to count on the participation of the workshop participants in the choices.

The structure of the workshop can be simple, divided into essential steps that can be summarized or deepened according to the circumstances:

Stage 1: Presentation of criticism as a creative activity, which involves subjective elements related to the author’s point of view, but which also involves more objective coordinates related to the history and language of the audiovisual. This stage may involve reading critical texts, but care must be taken to avoid these texts serving as models for the workshop participants. There are countless ways to produce criticism, and the most important critics in history have created their own way of approaching films.

Stage 2: exhibition of documentary works to be worked on by participants in the production of reviews, with a summary presentation of objective information (such as the names of the filmmakers, country/region of origin, year of production/release).

Stage 3: encouragement of free production of criticism, which can be done in different formats (written text, podcast, videocast, visual arts) according to the language skills that are intended to be explored.

Stage 4: collective reading, listening and viewing of the participants’ critical production, followed by a discussion circle about the impressions they had of the work produced by their colleagues.

Stage 5: opportunities to delve deeper into historical, aesthetic and repertoire themes highlighted by the educators coordinating the workshop.

Stage 6: re-editing the work based on the group’s reflections.

Stage 7: new session of reading, listening and viewing the works, possibly followed by a new session of the documentary works that gave rise to the works.

Stage 8: based on the group’s critical production, did the works become “other”, that is, did they gain meanings and significance that were not latent in the first session?

My experience in conducting workshops with this type of structure shows that, at the end, participants demonstrate progress in their understanding of audiovisual language and the construction of narratives, in their understanding of how the production of meaning operates in the fields of arts and communication, in their ability to analyze and express their own ideas, and in the recognition that otherness and empathy are fundamental to the human experience and to the construction of a better world. Including documentaries as an object of study and reflection in this type of practice brings an additional benefit: that of strengthening the “vaccine” that media literacy actions have to offer in the fight against the virus of misinformation.