ABSTRACT
Documentary cinema operates in the real by framing it and, therefore, also engages with what remains beyond the frame. This endows documentary films with a particular agency in the real and issues them with a related ethical prerogative. Framing comes with the double bond of capturing and expressing, which locates documentary agency in capturing the world in its becoming and expressing it as a sensation of the real’s continuous unfolding. When a documentary intervenes in the real as process, it highlights that the lives and events depicted in its frames continue beyond the film. The ethical stakes in working with the vibrant and expressive nature of the real – its perpetual becoming – have to do with harnessing process into a sensation that the world could be different.
