ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates what hybrid documentaries are. It re-contextualises the way hybrid documentary is represented in theoretical contexts by challenging the simple non-fiction/fiction definition applied by many scholars. Almost all the existing research asserts, unproblematically, that the form is basically a hybrid between documentary and fiction. There is little analysis of what this means. By fiction do they imply made up? Untrue? Lies? And if these films are simply a free-for-all mishmash between the two, don’t the latter elements call into question the veracity of former? Is this really what they are? I will argue that a definition based on the non-fiction/fiction dichotomy is reductive and part of the larger schism in contemporary documentary theory that emerged in the late 1980s/early 1990s between postmodern sceptics and their critics.
