Analyzing non - Fiction Films

It is through difference that similarity is discovered. In genre analysis, films of a cinematic genre are analyzed with relation to how they conform to, or stray from, the conventions of other films within the same genre. By remaining within the context of a genre, yet at the same time moving as far from it as possible, certain filmmakers test the limits of a genre. Nonfiction cinema has long been upheld as providing an objective, truthful presentation of reality. It is precisely this conception of nonfiction cinema that the following filmmakers question: the work of Frederick Wiseman challenges the possibility of being objective, Errol Morris explores the nature of truth, while Bruce McDonald asks "what is reality, anyway?"
Viewers of nonfiction film have long since had the expectation of being provided with a detached, objective, accurate depiction of reality. In "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" , Andre Bazin outlines how "photography and the cinema...are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism" (Andre Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image", from What is Cinema?, 12). Arguing that these technologies fulfilled an ongoing quest to successfully capture reality, Bazin claims that with these technologies "an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man" (Bazin, 13, emphasis added). …