Panel discussion with Kate Townsend (Executive Producer, Storyville), and Aidan Laverty, (Series Editor, Horizon)
Documentary film has become for many a primary source of knowledge about the world around us. Whether it be an investigative report, an observational doc, a narrated factual programme, or a piece of live action uploaded to Youtube.
As such documentaries can be powerfully persuasive, able to shape attitudes and world views. Or at least many would claim as such, claim that they can entertain as well as be progressive means of conveying information.
Made for TV documentaries operate within a particular set of objectives and circumstances. These affect style, content and the commissioning process. How do independent filmmakers understand these needs, and what scope is there for alternative forms of presentation.
The styles, strategies and structures of a documentary film also operate in ways which shape the means and possibilities of understanding. The subject is spoken for in subtle ways that reflect not only cinematic qualities, but the institutional structures that sustain production, prevailing political or intellectual trends.
Therefore, we may well ask what rhetorical operations inform these films, and what interpretative perspectives are encompassed? How do they not only entertain but educate, and how have concerns to engage, and appeal to mass audiences, reduced rather than increased diversity of subject matter?
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