{"id":70,"date":"2007-03-19T07:21:52","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T14:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/2007\/03\/19\/non-fiction-feature-film\/"},"modified":"2007-03-19T07:21:52","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T14:21:52","slug":"non-fiction-feature-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/2007\/03\/19\/non-fiction-feature-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-fiction feature film…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wonder what the distinction is between a “documentary” and a “non-fiction feature film”. I think Leighton was on to something in her post<\/a> (that is Leighton’s blog, isn’t it?), but rather than trying to classify a film by what occurs in it and its style, perhaps we should examine purpose. How does Gates of Heaven<\/em> differ from, for example, a documentary about whales? I could make the argument that the primary purpose of the documentary about whales is to educate its audience, but isn’t that also what Gates of Heaven<\/em> is doing, in a way? But what about other traditional films? Some of them also educate viewers in the same way that Gates of Heaven does, but they’re not non-fictional.<\/p>\n

Then I suppose you could get into the question of whether any ‘non-fiction’ film is truly non-fictional. Truth, in this case, is only what is presented to the audience and what is there is only what the directer wanted included. This doesn’t change between genres.<\/p>\n

But back to the “non-fiction feature film” in question. I think I’m going to say that what makes it different from a documentary is both intent and subject matter. You could never make a traditional documentary about all of the themes that Gates of Heaven<\/em> explores. (It would be a disorganized, incomprehensible mess.) But you can make a non-fictional film and accomplish this. If it doesn’t claim to be a documentary, audiences don’t compare it with their preconceived ideas of what a film of this type should be about, and therefore are more open to secondary messages within the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wonder what the distinction is between a “documentary” and a “non-fiction feature film”. I think Leighton was on to something in her post (that is Leighton’s blog, isn’t it?), but rather than trying to classify a film by what … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogroll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/serena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}