Re: dem primary

["Melanie Shannon" <lilblueriver@hotmail.com>]

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Peter T. Chattaway" <petert@interchange.ubc.ca>


> > Well, as always, dictionaries created for a popular readership are not the
best place to find scholarly definitions of things, necessarily.  I
wouldn't turn to Merriam-Webster for theological definitions of things --
instead, I would turn to actual theologians.  Likewise, filmmakers.

> > If you want to know what *filmmakers* mean by "documentary", and by terms
like "cinema verite" and so on (since there is more than one kind of
"documentary"), you'll have to go somewhere other than Merriam-Webster.

WOOOOAH.  wait a minute.  fine.  take it from someone who lives and works in 
the industry.  like me.  and the majority of my friends and business 
acquaintances.  they happen to agree that a documentary should be factual 
and objective, cinema verite being a different beast altogether.


> > Yes, but that only applies to the second part of the second definition and
the "objective" criterion clearly has nothing to do with the personal,
subjective films made by documentarians like Ross McElwee or Steve James
or Nick Broomfield or Agnes Varda, etc.  (And let's leave aside the fact
that objectivity is a myth -- no journalist I know would claim to be
"objective", only "fair".)  Heck, even the "factual" criterion is called
into question by film scholars who analyze films like Sergei Eisenstein's
_Strike!_ and Oliver Stone's _JFK_ for their "documentary" qualities.


now don't get ahead of yourself here.  of course there can be a 'personal' 
documentary, documenting one's own struggle or story.  and you can say a lot 
of films have 'documentary' qualities, such as JFK, but no one would 
honestly call it a documentary.

basically, captain semantics, i'm not sure what you're trying to get at, 
here.  a documentary is generally accepted (and yes, actually defined) as 
being an objective study, as objective as objective can be; and if you want 
to bring hollywood into it, i can tell you that 'working hollywood' 
generally agrees that while moore's piece was not actually a documentary, it 
was granted an award as a documentary for it's popular 'above-the-line 
hollywood' politics.

> > Like I say, Merriam-Webster is not our best guide here.

sorry, peter.  but neither are you.

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