Rethinking the convergence of documentary and entertainment

Abstract

In what is often considered the first serious book-length study of the documentary, at least in English, Paul Rotha describes “the documentary method as the first real attempt to use cinema for purposes more important than entertainment”. For Rotha, who was a practicing filmmaker as well as a theoretician and promoter of the documentary, this emerging film form should have higher aspirations than the “repetition of senseless stories” offered by fiction films. It should thus aspire to “surpris...