ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the documentary studies literature, focusing particularly on the elements pertaining to ethics: the relationship between the filmmaker, the subject of her film and the audience. It looks at the debates regarding the definition of the genre and a growing desire on the part of scholars to interrogate the ‘hidden’ mechanics of documentary filmmaking. The chapter looks briefly at the ideological implications of the choice of a discourse, that is, the tension between the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ which has been an issue in the academy as it has in documentary film. It interrogates some ideas stemming from the Brechtian call to reveal the mechanics of a spectacle in order to empower the spectator, precisely through the pulling down of a discourse’s uniform facade.
