ABSTRACT
The early sound documentaries did a good deal of lecturing and nowadays strike us as authoritarian. Old habits of disseminating improving tracts to the unwashed masses die hard, of course, but documentary is now less monological and more dialogical . That is, today’s makers are using the complexities of language, thought, and purpose once the province of older art forms like literature and theatre. Today’s documentaries plumb people’s inmost thoughts and feelings, and are open to the contradictory elements of human identity. They do this by sharing evidence with, rather than lecturing conclusions at, their audience. The benevolently authoritarian narrator-a legacy of comfortably colonial power structures-has given ground to a contrapuntal chorus of experience from the grassroots, where we all truly belong. This multiplicity of viewpoints has made the documentary far more richly textured, nuanced, and human.
