ANGAŽOVANOSŤ AUTORA V SOCIÁLNOM DOKUMENTÁRNOM FILME

• Authors: Martin Palúch

Title variants

EN

Authorial engagement in social documentary film

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The author of this study seeks an answer to the question what “authorial documentary film” is. He selects examples from the area of social-critical documentary film, especially lower forms of documentation – a weekly and a newsreel. In a historical perspective he follows how directors realized authorial engagement in dealing with documentary themes for a socio-critical purpose. The authorial work is then put into contrast with genre conventions which do not allow the presence of authors’ subjective view in documentary films. In the cases when authors purposefully transcend the conventions of documentary genres, viewers are confronted mainly with a subjective interpretation of facts. This line of reasoning about authorial and genre documentary film has been present in Slovak theory since the 1980s and corresponds with current Western approaches to understanding documentary film, which compare current documentary films to feature films in terms of how they construct narratives. In its conclusion the author of this study proposes dividing any film production to genre and authorial production. The reason is that authorial documentary production goes beyond the objective documentary functions of documentary film and is independent of genre conventions. In addition, its subjective interpretation of themes makes it similar to feature film production.

Keywords

EN

DOCUMENTARY FILM; GENRE FILM; AUTHORIAL FILM; DOCUMENTATION; FILM THEORY

• Publisher: Institute of Theatre and Arts, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenské divadlo (Slovak Theatre)
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 63
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 221 - 230

Contributors

author

Martin Palúch

• Ústav divadelnej a filmovej vedy SAV, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovak Republic