Al-Amn Magazine

DOCUMENTARY T he verb ‘to document’ refers to the act of recording, describing, or capturing information, events, processes, or details in a systematic and organized manner. Documentation can take various forms, such as written text, photographs, audio recordings, or videos, and serves the purpose of preserving information for reference, communication, analysis, or legal purposes. Documenting involves creating a record that can be used to convey, explain, or provide evidence of something. It is commonly employed in various fields, including business, research, education, and technical documentation.” Some documentary films at the very beginnings of cinematography captured a brief moment in time; nowadays, we would call these “newsreels”. In 1922, the film Nanook of the North by the pioneer of the documentary genre, Robert Flaherty, received a similar label. Flaherty not only presented us with several scenes from the life of Eskimos beyond the Arctic Circle but also gave the film a coherent narrative structure and insight into the life of an Inuit family. However, the audiences eventually learned that Flaherty had selected only the members of the tribe who most closely corresponded to the established stereotypes and that he had changed some of their names to make them easier to remember by the Western audiences. Despite the fact that Nanook is not a faithful “record” or “evidence”, we continue to call it a “documentary.” Defining a documentary So, what would be a proper definition of a “documentary”? Is it a film giving evidence of real events? In such a case, Titanic (1997) would classify as well, and yet we don’t include it. Or is it a film telling a story of real people? However, The Crown (2016–2023) does that as well.  “The creative treatment of actuality”—that’s how Scottish director John Grierson defined documentaries. This is likely the closest Rea l ev i dence of rea l event s Do document ari es document?