ABSTRACT
Bill Nichols, in his attachment to documentary’s genealogical development, implies that observational documentary as it is commonly understood ‘dies’ and is rendered obsolete by the advent of more interactive and reflexive modes of non-fiction filmmaking. Instead what hasoccurred is anevolution fromwithin the parameters ofobservational documentary, so that the form, in all its permutations, remains recognisably ‘observational’, whilst incorporating many of the tactics and devices of its so-called interactive, reflexive and performative successors. Firstly, it is wrong to imply that observational documentary ceased to be popular oncedeAntonio and colleagues introducedmore interventionist formsof filmmaking;within the observational mode’s continuing popularity, especially in America and the UK (where it is popularly known as ‘fly-on-the-wall’), there has emerged a desire both to address the mode’s shortcomings and to incorporate into the traditional observational framework other elements of documentary filmmaking. Since direct cinema, the Anglo-American observational traditionhasgone through several stages: the later one-off films of Pennebaker, theMaysles brothers,Wisemanbrotherset al. (GreyGardens, TheWarRoom,Hospital) have stayed faithful to the cause, modifications were introduced by such television series An American Family (Craig Gilbert, 1972), The Family (Paul Watson, BBC, 1974) and Police (Roger Graef, BBC, 1982) and the genre has since been more radically altered by the interventions of specific filmmakers such as Nick Broomfield, Molly Dineen and Michael Moore and popular series such as the stream of docusoaps to have appeared on British television in the late 1990s.
