EN
This text is a first chapter of Bill Nichols famous book Introduction to Documentary which has become the most widely used introductory textbook in the field. It explores some of the ways in which commonsense definitions of documentary can be refined, with the reference to the corpus of classical or important works, to give a sense of how different films find at least slightly different solutions to common problems. The exploration of this problems helps us understand how a documentary tradition arose and evolved and what it has to offer us today. This chapter also sets the stage for the issues posed in the remaining chapters by considering the distinct assumptions and expectations.