That other reality: An investigation into animated war documentaries and their claims to documentary veracity

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That other reality

An investigation into animated war documentaries and their claims to

documentary veracity

Anniek Plomp | 1076631

MA Film Studies Professional Track | Universiteit van Amsterdam Coordinators: J. Tromp and E. Laeven

MA Thesis | Final version | June 28, 2019 Supervisor: C. Forceville | Second reader: E. Laeven

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Abstract

The animated documentary is often thought to be a self-contradictory term. How can a film be completely constructed and represent reality objectively? Paradoxical as this may seem, I follow the view put forward most notably by Annabelle Honess Roe, that the animated documentary is a viable and highly valuable addition to the documentary genre. By looking into the ontology of both documentary and animated documentary, I argue that documentary is neither impartial, nor simply a direct view on the world. Rhetoric plays a significant part in the genre, emphasising that besides actuality, creativity is important to set the genre apart from other nonfiction forms. It is here that the animated documentary fits rather well into a definition of documentary, although animation inherently lacks a visual indexical bind to reality Expanding the vocabulary of the genre, the ‘animentary’ is able to show what hitherto has been deemed unrepresentable, most notably the subjective experience of events. The subject of war, then, seems particularly well suited to the form. Building on Honess Roe’s definition and characteristics of the animated documentary, this thesis seeks to analyse how exactly animated war documentaries function. By close reading four animentaries that deal with the experience of war, I argue that the animated documentary may push the genre to its boundaries by having weak, sometimes almost non-existent, indexical bonds and high degrees of imagined material. Nevertheless, through the use of documentary codes and conventions, the films convincingly make the case that they refer directly to the historical world. Even though these animated documentaries represent the world in a fundamentally different way than live action does and may not have as strong indexical links or adhere to the source material as is expected of documentary – and perhaps even of animentaries – I argue for the validity of these kinds of animated documentaries as indeed part of documentary and not fiction.

Keywords: animated documentary, documentary, animentary, indexicality, audio-visual rhetoric, documentary codes and conventions

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Introduction

“In documentary we deal with the actual world, and in one sense with the real. But the really real, if I may use that phrase, is something deeper than that. The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation which is profound” – John Grierson (Grierson 1966: 145)

Documentary has long been considered as a way to show reality itself simply as it is. Often seen as a window on the world or a bearer of truth, documentary holds an astonishing power to make claims about the world we live in. The discovery of the film image’s incredibly accurate rendering of reality in 1895 triggered a series of developments that would many years later result in a film form called documentary. Ever since, the form has been closely associated with the film camera’s ability to capture reality truthfully, automatically and without human intervention.

In recent years, a particular type of documentary has risen to prominence among filmmakers, audiences and scholars that offers a challenge to these widely held beliefs: the ‘animated documentary’. An animated documentary, or ‘animentary’ as it is sometimes called, can straightforwardly be defined as a documentary that for a considerable part consists of animated images: it mixes realistic themes with fantastic forms (Forceville 2015: 66; Landesman and Bendor 2011: 354). Although the precise amount of animation may and does vary, a precondition is that the exclusion of the animated images would seriously alter the meaning of the film as a whole. This means that a film that completely consists of animation, and a film that only fills half of its running time with animation could potentially both be called animated documentaries. It is this strong reliance on animation has caused serious discussion about the term animated documentary: animation would simply not be documentary enough (Honess Roe 2016: 20-22). It cannot be denied that animation is an entirely constructed film form which ultimately conflicts with the idea of documentary’s privileged access to the real. As Paul Ward states: “Animation represents one of the clearest challenges to simplistic models of what documentary is and can be, quite simply because you cannot have an animated film that is anything less than completely ‘created’” (2005: 85). Since animated images have to be created – whether they are drawn or digitally designed – and cannot be shot with a camera that records automatically, a great deal of imagination on the part of the filmmakers is involved. Though

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this division between animation and documentary is more complex, the tension that arises between objectivity and subjectivity does pose some difficulties for the animated documentary and its inclusion in the longstanding genre of documentary. Can we call an animated film a documentary and if so, in what way? Or are all animated films – whether they claim to be about the real world or not – to be considered fictional in nature? The quote by John Grierson mentioned above already hints at the direction I wish to take the discussion surrounding the animated documentary. In this thesis, I will explore the animated documentary and the discussion that exists around it. In particular I intend to investigate how the animated documentary can or cannot be called a ‘legitimate’ documentary according to notions of what a documentary should be. Over the last few decades, the animated documentary has shown to be growing in popularity, especially during the last 10 years since Ari Folman's ground-breaking Waltz with Bashir (2008) as the first animated documentary feature film. Not only has it been given more theoretical attention in documentary studies; more documentary filmmakers use animation as an innovative representational strategy in (part of) their films (Bernstein 2013; Ward 2011: 294; Formenti 2014b: 103). Simultaneously, both animation and documentary as genres in their own right have gained in popularity as well. Animation is increasingly able to reach an adult audience and raise its status. Although art animation has always been considered as such, as were early mainstream Disney and Fleischer animation, nowadays the mainstream varieties of the genre have tended to be specifically connected to children’s entertainment. But this is starting to change. Besides the well-known comical, quirky and feel-good animation films for kids, animation has been used to address serious topics (Wells 1998: 2-3; Ehrlich 2010; Ehrlich and Murray 2019: 1). At the same time, documentary film is taken more seriously as a legitimate theatre film and it appears that the contemporary film audience is more and more taking a liking to both documentary and adult animation (Brown 2012). Tea With the Dames (2018), Minding the Gap (2018), Free Solo (2018), Het Pärt Gevoel (2018) are all documentaries that have recently been shown in Dutch cinemas. The last decade or so has also produced many well-received animation films in the fiction genre that address serious topics, such as Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and The Breadwinner (2017) (Wells 2015: 98). An interesting example is the film Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018), that uses animated images to portray the making of Buñuels infamous documentary Las Hurdes (1933) while inserting actual footage from that documentary as well.

As animation becomes more readily associated with seriousness, it may partly explain why it is increasingly being used as a representational strategy in

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documentary films (and also why animation film uses documentary footage). The range of topics that documentaries can cover seems endless, though access to or representation of these topics is not always an easy or even possible matter. This is where animation comes in: “Crucially, animation is enabling the telling of stories that would otherwise have no vehicle for expression” (Wells 2015: 99). Animation, then, seems to expand the concept of a documentary. Or, put differently, it seems to put into question what was previously thought to be the provenance of documentary. Since the animated documentary is such a relatively new subgenre, it is in need of more theorisation and research into the workings of individual films. It is only in the last decade or so that the subgenre is being researched in both animation and documentary studies and that an actual scholarly landscape is beginning to take shape (Honess Roe 2013: 2; Forceville 2015: 66; Hight 2008: 9-10). As Gunnar Strøm points out, until recently animation scholars did not even accept the animated documentary as a form of documentary (2015: 93). It is also quite telling that renowned documentary theorist Bill Nichols hardly mentions the animated documentary in his book Introduction to Documentary (2017) and has not added much information on the form since the book’s previous edition in 2010: only four pages make mention of the film form. Although Nichols writes that animated documentaries have made a considerable contribution to the ability of documentary to tap into the imagination, he does not pay close attention to the animated documentary as a legitimate subgenre of documentary form. As the genre has been evolving and innovating its techniques, it is important to review how the animated documentary exactly functions (Adams 2009). In particular, I am interested in animentaries that push the genre to its boundaries by having weak indexical links to reality and free interpretations of the content on which they are based. How do these films legitimise their representations as truthfully being about the real world? This brings me to the central research question of this thesis: ‘Can the subgenre of the animated documentary be expanded to include films that incorporate a high degree of fictionality and contain only a weak indexical bond both visually and aurally, and if so, in what way?’ With this question I wish to offer more depth to the discussion surrounding the animated documentary. In order to do so, I will analyse four films: Waltz with Bashir (2008), 25 April (2015), Another Day of Life (2018), and Chris The Swiss (2018).

Waltz with Bashir was made in 2008 by the Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman who was a soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War. Many years after the war, a friend and fellow veteran opens up to Folman about his terrible nightmares. The next day, Folman himself experiences a flashback to the war and realises that the flashback is

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the only memory he has about the events that took place so long ago. Desperately wanting to find out how he was involved in the war, Folman decides to visit and interview former fellow soldiers.

25 April is a 2015 New Zealand film directed by the Canadian born, but New Zealand based filmmaker Leanne Pooley. The film tells the story of the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey during the First World War. As British troops were sent to fight the German-supported Ottoman army, both Australian and New Zealand soldiers were shipped off to Turkey. The Gallipoli Campaign would turn out to be one of the most gruelling battles of WWI with a high number of casualties among Allied forces. In 25 April the events are recounted from the perspectives of five New Zealand soldiers and one Australian nurse.

Another Day of Life is a film made in 2018 by the Spanish documentary filmmaker Raúl de la Fuente and the Polish animator Damian Nenow. In this film, the famous war journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuściński is based in Angola’s capital Luanda to report news to the Polish Press Agency about the civil war that has broken out on the eve of the country’s independence. Characterising the state of events with the Portuguese word ‘confusão’ – meaning total disorientation - Kapuściński decides to leave Luanda to embark on a seemingly suicidal road trip to the battlefront. It would prove to be the toughest journey he ever made.

Chris the Swiss is a 2018 film by the Swiss filmmaker Anja Kofmel. During the Croatian War of Independence in 1992, her cousin Chris – a war reporter – was found dead in a Balkan field with a uniform of an international mercenary group. Anja was still a child when her parents told her about Chris’ death and no one knew exactly what had happened. Ever since, the mysterious circumstances he died in caused Anja to experience the same nightmare night after night. Determined to find out the truth about Chris’ participation in the war, she decides to visit Croatia and detect his story.

In order to enable a comparison between these films as much as possible, I have chosen the animentaries based on two characteristics. First of all, since the animated documentary is such a novel subgenre, there is a relatively low number of animated documentaries to begin with, especially feature-length ones. One decision to narrow down the available films, then, was to focus on feature-length animentaries only. A second decision was to select films that deal with the subject of war. Because the experience of war is often considered impossible to represent conventionally, the topic lends itself particularly well to animation and its ability to present abstract images that have a certain distance to the events portrayed that live-action footage does not. Additionally, both 25 April, Another Day of Life and Chris the Swiss are relatively recent films about which not much has been written. Waltz

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with Bashir, on the contrary, has appeared in many academic writings and forms an interesting comparison.

Using close analysis, I will focus on several things when investigating how these films ascribe themselves with documentary status. First of all, I will pay close attention to the use of sound and voice-over. Do these films use the soundtrack and voice-over to provide an indexical link to reality that is not present in the images? Furthermore, I will focus on the use of colour and the use of documentary conventions. What part does style play? Are documentary conventions such as interviews and talking heads used to insert to the films into the documentary tradition? Lastly, with regard to why animation has been chosen as a means of representation, to what ends do the films use animation that make it a better alternative than live-action footage? Reviewing what has been written about both the animated documentary and documentary (particularly with regard to ontology) equally forms a part of this thesis. The two most important concepts under review, evidently, are ‘animated documentary’ and ‘documentary’. How can these terms be defined and what sets them apart from other film forms? The pioneering theorist for the first one is Annabelle Honess Roe. She has written extensively about the subject and especially her book Animated Documentary (2013), the first book-length academic study of the subject, forms an important basis for this thesis. For the concept of documentary I turn to the highly influential and much-referenced documentary scholar Bill Nichols, who offers an exhaustive understanding of what qualifies as a documentary in his Introduction to Documentary (2017).

In the following chapters I will first review the literature to discuss whether, and if so, how, the animated documentary can be called a documentary and in what way. Next, I will analyse my case studies to explore how feature-length animated war documentaries construct their claim to the real to be called ‘animated documentaries’. In the first chapter I will look into

documentary and its ontology and review the different modes that Nichols has proposed. In the second chapter I will examine the concept of the animated documentary. Importantly, I will argue that the animated documentary needs to be seen as a distinctive subgenre of documentary film that needs to be acknowledged as a valuable contribution to it. Furthermore, the specific functions and workings of the animentary will be addressed. Finally, in the third chapter an analysis of the above mentioned films will follow. I will show how the animated documentaries claim a documentary status and offer a view on the world that is best shown through animation and not through the conventional live-action alternative.

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Chapter 1: The Documentary Film

1.1. Introduction

At first glance, documentary may seem like an easy term to define. It is a term, after all, that almost everyone is familiar with, and one that does not require any specific knowledge of the medium of film to say something about it. The division between fiction and nonfiction seems enough to be able to characterise documentary. One could perhaps say something like ‘a film about reality’ or ‘a nonfiction film’. Or as the Cambridge Dictionary states: “a film or television or radio programme that gives facts and information about a subject” (Cambridge Dictionary). The Oxford Dictionary mentions something similar: “Using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject” (Oxford Dictionaries). Although these common-sense definitions and descriptions are far from wrong, they do not seem to capture the true meaning of what a documentary film is and what sets it apart from other film forms. There are, ultimately, more nonfiction film types that provide factual information than just the documentary form. Instruction or surveillance films, for instance, are equally grounded in reality and also qualify as nonfiction film.

In this chapter, I will investigate documentary’s ontology. How can we properly define documentary? What features make it so distinct from other nonfiction films? Why are documentaries so compelling? Asking these questions automatically involves exploring more terms, most notably the fiction-nonfiction divide. How is documentary different from fiction, but not the same as nonfiction? Before beginning to answer these questions, I will briefly review how the term ‘documentary’ came into being, and what the term has meant in the past.

1.2. Four key elements

Although it is difficult – if not impossible – to point out the exact beginning of documentary film, the documentary tradition grew to be a rich one, with great films and filmmakers. Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, John Grierson, Joris Ivens and Errol Morris are all names that come to mind when thinking about documentary film. With iconic documentaries such as Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922), The Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) and Rain

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(Ivens, 1929), they have contributed to a highly diverse documentary landscape that is as fascinating as it is complex. How did these different films all become part of the same film form?

John Grierson is believed to have coined the term documentary. In his review of Flaherty’s film Moana (1926), he described the film as having “documentary value” to illustrate life as it was lived (cited in Renov 1993: 29; Nichols 2017: 10). In order for documentary to truly come into being as we know it today, four key elements had to converge: indexical documentation, poetic experimentation, narrative storytelling and rhetorical address. Nichols states that this first happened in the 1920s and early 1930s (2017: 94). With these four key elements in place, different documentary forms and styles developed. The 1960s produced the greatest temporal divide with previous work, thanks to the introduction of portable synchronous sound recording. (2017: 113-114). The new representational strategies placed great emphasis on intimacy with subjects and strove for cinematic realism. Since the 1980s, when television became an important outlet, the documentary film form has flourished and found new popularity. As it finds new opportunities with the internet, documentary’s golden age can be said to continue unabated (Nichols 2017: 1; Weber 2013: 103-105; Ehrlich 2010). The internet’s unique opportunities for distribution and the ever-present longing for alternative visions in a media-saturated and information-saturated society, Nichols believes, give the documentary form a bright and vibrant future (2017: 1).

1.3. Towards a definition

The genre’s complex history has resulted in a contemporary documentary field that contains many diverse forms and hybrids, and the term documentary is often used as an umbrella term to describe all of them. This contributes to a stubborn vagueness about what really can be called a documentary (Ward 2005: 1-4; Nichols 2017: xi; Moon 2018: 43; Plantinga 2005: 105; Rozenkrantz: 2011). A start to more clearly characterising documentary film is to define both nonfiction film and fiction film. Nonfiction film can be said to be any film that relates directly to the historical world: “one in which the people and events depicted are known to have (or are asserted to have) a real-world existence” (Ward 2005: 7). Fiction film may also refer to the historical world, but does so allegorically through imaginative situations and people. Thus, “in its most expansive sense, a nonfiction film is any film not fictional” (Plantinga 2005: 105), although there are many hybrid films at the fuzzy boundaries of fiction and nonfiction that can never be completely or neatly attributed to either category (Plantinga 2005: 114; Ehrlich and Murray 2019: 3; Renov 2012: 2).

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The next question would then be: What distinguishes documentary from other nonfiction films? The four key elements mentioned above – indexical documentation, poetic experimentation, narrative storytelling and rhetorical address – are already a start to say something about the unique nature of documentary. They can also be found in Grierson’s much-quoted definition of documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ that is still applicable to documentary film today (Ward 2005: 6; Nichols 2017: 5; Honess Roe 2013: 3; Strøm 2015: 93; Plantinga 2005: 105). Two elements seem particularly important: being based on actual events and organising these events in a creative manner. It is here that documentary arises as a subset of nonfiction film: it is “characterised by more aesthetic, social, rhetorical, and/or political ambition than, say, a corporate or instructional film” (Plantinga 2005: 105). In other words, a documentary is not a document, but always an engaging interpretation of it.

1.3.1. Actuality and creativity

What is meant when something has its base in actuality? Nichols’s common-sense assumptions about what a documentary is provide clarification. According to these assumptions, “documentaries are about reality; they are about something that actually happened,” “documentaries are about real people,” and “documentaries tell stories about what happens in the real world” (2017: 5-9). Nichols slightly modifies these assumptions by stating that documentaries refer directly to the historical world, and not allegorically like fiction film. Furthermore, real people play themselves and not a role like actors do. And when it comes to telling a story, that story is a plausible representation that corresponds to known facts and actual events. What already becomes clear from these assumptions, particularly the third one, is that documentaries do not simply reproduce events, but rather offer expressive representations of them (2017: 5-9; see also Currie 2000 & 2001, Carroll 2000, Choi 2001 and Ward 2011). And this means that one event may result in different and diverging representations: “The idea that what we see and hear offers a plausible perspective on reality also allows us to acknowledge that for any given events, more than one story exists to represent and interpret it” (Nichols 2017: 10).

Here we can connect actuality with creativity. Though a documentary is indeed about the real world, it is never simply a direct view on that world but always staged to a certain degree (Weber 2013: 110). Documentary filmmakers show us the world from a certain perspective, deciding what to film and how to film it, and it is here that creativity plays a role. After all, if a documentary consisted of

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actuality only, like surveillance footage, it would most likely be uninteresting to watch. A viewer will expect a documentary filmmaker to present some point of view and to convince the viewer of some kind of argument that makes it worthwhile to invest time in watching a documentary in the first place (Nichols 2017: 26). For some however, the focus on creativity may be irreconcilable with documentary since aesthetics and style are thought to alter the events portrayed (Renov 1993: 24). It may bring documentary more into the realm of fiction film, which is certainly strongly associated with creativity and imagination. Thus, although the distinction between fiction film and documentary would seem clear cut, the relationship between the two is actually more nuanced (Ward 2005: 7). Nichols likewise claims:

The division of documentary from fiction […] rests on the degree to which the story fundamentally corresponds to actual situations, events, and people versus the degree to which it is primarily a product of the filmmaker’s invention. This is a matter of degree, not a black-and-white division (Nichols 2017: 8-9).

These fuzzy boundaries have to do with the fact that both fiction and nonfiction may use similar techniques, which are perhaps more commonly associated with fictional storytelling but which are not fictional in nature (Ward 2005: 7; Renov 2012: 2-3). Both nonfiction and fiction capture and shape events through a selection process. Though perhaps commonly thought otherwise, “there is nothing inherently less creative about nonfictional representations” (Renov 2012: 7).

What should be said, however, is that documentaries address issues of seeing and knowing differently, are made with different assumptions and prompt different sorts of expectations from audiences (Renov 1993: 24; Nichols 2017: xi). “The key distinction is never one of form or style, but rather of purpose and context” (Ward 2005: 7). It is about the intentions of the filmmaker and the expectations of an audience: while mockumentaries and fiction films can evoke a certain ‘documentariness’, they would not qualify as a documentary (2005: 7). Furthermore, according to Erik Barnouw, “true documentarists have a passion for what they find in images and sounds – which always seems to them more meaningful than anything they can invent” (1993: 348, emphasis in original). Thus, unlike fiction filmmakers, documentary practitioners will express themselves not primarily through inventing, but through selecting and arranging their findings. The inevitable choices they have to make in this process are their way of commenting on the subject at hand; they always present their own version of the world and they cannot escape their subjectivity (1993: 348).

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Here, the apparent irreconcilability of documentary and subjectivity turns up. As Barnouw states, “[documentaries] are enjoined to be ‘objective.’ This is, of course, a nonsensical injunction” (1993: 344). Documentaries can never be fully objective since endless choices are involved in the production process (Adams 2009; Rozenkrantz: 2011). And every choice reflects a point of view or opinion, whether the choice is consciously made or not. Though both creativity and actuality can be considered as essential documentary elements, a tension arises between them. It is a tension between capturing some aspects of the real world and the inevitable use of aesthetic and representational devices: “How to deal with and understand something that quite clearly is attempting to represent reality (or some part of reality), but as it does so, used specific aesthetic devices?” (Ward 2005: 6). It is precisely this combination that contributes to much of the debate surrounding documentary. Nevertheless, I believe that a logical conclusion to make is that the combination between creativity and actuality is only seemingly contradictory and actually an inevitable one. Having adjusted the common-sense assumptions discussed earlier, Nichols proposes the following definition:

Documentary film speaks about situations and events involving real people (social actors) who present themselves within a framework. This frame conveys a plausible perspective on the lives, situations, and events portrayed. The distinct point of view of the filmmaker shapes the film into a way of understanding the historical world directly rather than through a fictional allegory (2017: 10).

1.3.2. Some comments on defining documentary

A few comments need to be made about this definition in particular, but also about defining documentary in film in general. Nichols himself acknowledges that his definition does not account for the different types of documentaries that each adopt different techniques to address the historical world differently (2017: 10-11). Since “documentaries adopt no fixed inventory of techniques, address no one set of issues, display no single set of forms or styles,” a single overarching definition does not give a complete picture of the documentary form (2017: 11). Therefore, the differing natures of the subgenres and their prototypes need to be reviewed as well (Plantinga 2005: 105). I will discuss Nichols’s frequently quoted modes, or subgenres, at the end of this chapter. Furthermore, what a documentary is and is not, is historically and ideologically contingent, constantly in flux and very much open to debate (Nichols 2017: xi; Ward 2005: 2; Renov 1993: 19; Hight 2008: 11). How documentary can be defined, and the understanding we have of it, is closely connected to the institutional

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framework around it, the community of filmmakers, the audience and the films themselves (Nichols 2017: 12-14, 23). And in the end, a precise, overarching definition should not be a goal in itself: “More important is how every film we consider a documentary contributes to an ongoing dialogue that draws on common characteristics that take on new and distinct form, like an ever-changing chameleon” (Nichols 2017: 5). Instead of trying to define documentary, then, one could also consider the different functions a documentary may or may not fulfil. Michael Renov has proposed four fundamental functions of documentary practice: (1) to record, reveal or preserve; (2) to persuade or promote; (3) to analyze or interrogate; (4) to express. These different tendencies may be used simultaneously in one documentary (1993: 21). Importantly, a fifth function was later added by John Corner. According to Corner, ‘to entertain’ has undeniably become a part of documentary. With it come new levels of representational play and reflexivity, changing the discourse of seriousness commonly connected to documentary (2002: 260-264). Interestingly, Renov and Corner combined once again highlight the significance of both actuality and creativity.

1.4. Indexicality and rhetoric

I will now explore in depth the inevitable combination of actuality and creativity that sets documentary apart as a unique film form. More specifically, these two elements can be connected to two distinct qualities of the documentary film: indexicality and rhetoric. These are the building blocks of a documentary, making it truly ‘a creative treatment of actuality’. How are these two qualities used to make compelling claims?

According to Nichols’s definition, documentary images truthfully present the world as it has appeared in front of the camera. Or, as Ward writes, “the long-standing assumption about documentaries is that they reveal to us what something ‘is like’ by showing, or by observing” (2005: 93). This connects to the indexical quality of the photographic image and the technological ability of photographic recording instruments to produce images that offer the imprint of sights and sounds with great fidelity. The indexical quality is precisely the uncanny sense of an image bearing a very accurate correspondence to what it refers to in the real world: the object photographed. It relates to the way in which the appearance of the image is directly shaped by what is records (2017: 24). According to Nichols, “it gives these imprints value as documents in the same way fingerprints have value as documents” (2017: 24). Thus, cinematic sounds and images are able to accurately capture certain aspects of what stood before the camera, called the profilmic event, and do so mechanically rather than by human intentionality, though filmmakers do choose what to

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include (Plantinga 2005: 106). Honess Roe further unpacks the unique existential bond between photographic media and the world itself, stating that documentary’s indexicality is often equated with evidence. This evidentiary quality of the photographic image is based on two, mutually dependent assertions. On the one hand, there is a relationship of causality between the world and the image: whatever is being shown in the image has to have been in front of the camera because that is how the photographical process works. On the other hand, there is a relationship of analogy, meaning that what we see in the image is necessarily something we would have seen ourselves, had we been present when the image was shot (Honess Roe 2013: 28-30). It is this assumed evidentiary “power of the indexical image has contributed enormously to the appeal of the documentary film” (Nichols 2017: 25). And the ensuing strong belief in the authenticity of the image – the ‘indexical whammy’ – makes documentary such a compelling form and gives it its emotional punch (Nichols 2017: 25).

Though this ability to exploit the camera’s recording and revelatory powers may be the most elemental function of documentary, images and sounds alone are not enough fully justify the audience’s act of faith in the documentary images, nor does it fully characterise the documentary film (Renov 1993: 25). A document cannot be evidence on its own, based solely on its indexicality; it is just information. One has to ascribe meaning to facts, so that the information can support a larger argument made by a documentary. Only then is factual data converted into evidence (Nichols 2017: 26). Thus, a documentary is more than just indexical images and indexical sounds; it is a way of using evidence to interpret the world to ultimately move or persuade the viewer. According to Plantinga, accounts that merely focus on documentary’s ability to record the world tend to underestimate the creative and interpretive nature of documentary film (2005: 107).

This interpretation does not have an indexical relation to reality, but arises from the subjectivity of the filmmaker. As individuals have different opinions, indexical images can be put to use to support different arguments. Consequently, Nichols claims that “what we need to keep in mind, therefore, is the difference between the indexical image as source of evidence and the perspective, explanation, story, or interpretation it supports” (2017: 24). Documentary images are mediated images and the result of multiple interventions and transformations that have come between what we see on the screen and what existed in the world (Renov 1993: 33-34). This is precisely what needs to be remembered when talking about documentary and how it can be defined. As much as we want to believe that documentaries gives us an unmediated representation of a subject or event, this is simply impossible. Notwithstanding the fact that documentaries do offer invaluable information to us, watching a documentary is

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not the same as having been there to experience it ourselves. Documentary does not transparently show what happened, but offers an assertion by the filmmaker or the filmmaker’s perspective on what happened.

Hence, in order for indexical images to become a documentary film, an internal logic and external verification needs to be added. There has to be a recognition of the fact that a documentary consist of a reality that is indexically recorded and subsequently organised through a perspective (Nichols 2017: 26). This is where rhetoric comes in and where the documentary’s sound track plays a decisive role: “For the filmmaker, creating trust, getting us to suspend doubt or disbelief, by rendering an impression of reality, and hence truthfulness, corresponds to the priorities of rhetoric more than to the requirements of science” (Nichols 2017: 91, emphasis in original). Documentaries almost always address abstract and invisible concepts, which cannot be filmed directly and need rhetorical strategies to connect them to the images. According to Nichols, then, “the documentary value of nonfiction films lies in how they give visual and audible representation to topics for which our written language gives us concepts” (2017: 73). Through rhetoric, documentaries are able to generalise the specific and organise individual experiences into a greater whole. This is what sets them apart from mere footage or factual documentaries (2017: 74-75).

A documentary may employ persuasive rhetorical strategies to a greater or lesser extent, but in any case, the usage of rhetoric should not be confused with turning the documentary into a story. Documentaries are always arguments for or against something, or at least try to convince the audience of something. This could be in the form of a story, but the story and its potential entertainment value always remains secondary to the argument and the persuasive goals of documentary: “That a work undertaking some manner of historical documentation renders that representation in a challenging or innovative manner should in no way disqualify it as nonfiction because the question of expressivity is, in all events, a matter of degree” (Renov 1993: 35). Choices inevitably need to be made, and some may appear more artful or purely expressive than others, but evoking an emotional response is not necessarily a distraction from the main event of a documentary. On the contrary, Renov claims: “The communicative aim is frequently enhanced by attention to the expressive dimension” (1993: 35). In my opinion, it is precisely indexicality and rhetoric combined that makes documentary so impressive. Its ability to offer sensuous experiences, to activate feelings and tap into our beliefs, to make us experience an issue from a perspective that is not our own is what gives documentary film its power.

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1.4.1. Ethos, logos and pathos

Thus, every documentary has a specific way of engaging with the world to convince us of the strength of their argument. This is called the documentary voice (2017: 50). Nichols differentiates between three kinds of voices: rhetorical, narrative and poetic. The poetic voice does not aim for advancing an argument or telling a story, but rather implies a perspective on the world and gives a sense of how the world is experienced from that perspective. The narrative voice primarily speaks through the story it tells, which is often character driven. Though it may include poetic and rhetorical elements, the focus is on the story. Lastly, the rhetorical voice is the one most characteristic of documentary and can be defined by persuasion to inspire belief (2017: 56-58). It is generally used when neither science nor logic can provide a definitive answer to a question and persuasion is needed to convince the audience of a possible answer. It is here that the five divisions of classic rhetoric – invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery – have made a valuable contribution to documentary film (2017: 66-67). With the following chapter in mind, invention – the discovery of evidence to advance an argument – seems particularly relevant. This concerns the way in which documentary images and sounds provide proof in support of their point of view. As such, it seems to get to the heart of the discussion surrounding the animated documentary and whether animated images can be just as compelling and convincing as live-action footage.

There are different rhetorical techniques to generate the impression of conclusiveness or proof: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos relates to credible or ethical proof: “Generating an impression of good moral character or credibility for the filmmaker, witnesses, authorities, and others.” Pathos relates to compelling or emotional proof: “Putting the audience in the right mood or establishing a frame of mind favourable to a particular view.” And logos involves convincing or demonstrative proof: “Using real or apparent reasoning; proving, or giving the impression of proving, the case” (Nichols 2017: 59). These three techniques can and ideally should be combined: “Much of the power of documentary […] lies in its ability to couple evidence and emotion” (2017: 66, emphasis in original). Nichols underscores that the convincingness of the argument may not only depend on how well the different rhetorical techniques are put to use. It is also a matter of conventions and shared values (2017: 63; Formenti 2014a: 2; Landesman 2008: 42). If one subverts the conventional ways of representing the world in documentary, one may also subvert the values that compel belief (Nichols 2017: 63-64). For instance, if a documentary uses conventions associated with, for instance, science fiction, a viewer is less likely to belief in the truthfulness of the representation. Correspondingly, in

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order for a documentary to be compelling and persuasive, it has to tap into the assumptions and expectations that an audience brings with it (Nichols 2017: 71-72).

1.5. Nichols’s documentary modes

As mentioned above, to get a full understanding a what a documentary is, one has to consider the different subgenres that together make up the documentary film. Here I follow Nichols’s division which has very frequently been quoted by other scholars. The question begged by this categorisation into subgenres is whether or not an ideal documentary is possible. Is there one perfect documentary that embodies everything one demands of a the genre? Probably not, but this is where Nichols’s modes come in. Each of them offers a slightly different understanding of what a documentary should aim for and simultaneously acknowledges the blurry boundaries between them.

As such, the modes can be compared to the different subgenres of fiction film. Because

fiction film is equally diverse as documentary film, it makes more sense to look at the various subgenres to get an understanding of how different techniques are employed across the genre, than to consider the genre as a whole. And as these subgenres work in different ways, they bring about different genre-expectations: a viewer will expect something completely different from a romcom than from a thriller. Nevertheless, these subgenres are not mutually exclusive and some overlap occurs. A thriller may include elements from a romcom and vice versa. The same is true for the documentary modes: a documentary can be fitted into more than one mode, and some documentaries may more fully embody a subgenre’s characteristics than other documentaries belonging to the same mode. Thus, it is not a black-and-white division. Rather, the different modes can be thought of as a pool of resources from which filmmakers can choose (Nichols 2017: 114). Modes can be mixed and matched in one documentary: “Filmmakers frequently adopt a fluid pragmatic approach to their material, blending different models and modes to achieve a distinct result” (2017: 110). This once again attests to the fluidity of documentary film. Nichols proposes a total of seven modes: the poetic mode, the expository mode, the observational mode, the participatory mode, the reflexive mode, the performative mode and the interactive mode. The seventh mode has recently been included in the third edition of Introduction to Documentary (2017) and is only mentioned briefly due to

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its relative newness and immaturity as a mode. For the same reasons, I will leave this mode out of my own discussion as well.

The poetic mode emphasises the filmmaker’s engagement with film form and is ultimately an exploration of visual associations and patterns. Social actors are not given much importance, but rather function like any other object as raw material to be arranged by the filmmakers into interesting patterns and juxtapositions. The poetic mode stresses mood, tone, and affect much more than factual information or rhetorical argument. It is all about the documentary’s expressive quality: “We learn in this case by affect or feeling, by gaining a sense of what it feels like to see and experience the world in a particular, poetic way” (Nichols 2017: 117). Though this mode bears a close relationship to experimental and avant-garde filmmaking, it belongs to documentary because it takes the historical world as its source material (2017: 117).

The expository mode is mostly associated with documentary in general (Nichols 2017: 22). It assembles fragments of the historical world into a more rhetorical or narrative frame, rather than an aesthetic or poetic one. It addresses the viewer directly with titles or voices that tell a story, suggest a perspective or advance an argument. This mode relies heavily on an informing logic carried by the spoken word through voice-over commentary that is traditionally a Voice-of-God commentary. Here, the images support the spoken word rather than the other way around. This emphasis on the spoken word affords an economy of analysis to the expository mode and makes it ideal for conveying information. Evidentiary editing is commonly used to maintain the continuity of the spoken argument and create the impression of objectivity (2017: 121-124).

The observational mode, sometimes called ‘fly on the wall’, is characterised by “a direct engagement with the everyday life of subjects as observed by an unobtrusive camera” (Nichols 2017: 22). It abandons all forms of control that are common to the poetic and expository mode. Instead, lived experiences are observed spontaneously. The resulting documentary generally does not contain voice-overs, intertitles, re-enactments, supplementary music, interviews or behaviour repeated for the camera (Nichols 2017: 136). Furthermore, the filmmakers do not interact with the subjects and the viewer is inclined to take on a more active role in making meaning of the images. The observational mode therefore raises ethical questions about voyeurism, intrusion, and the filmmaker’s responsibility to intervene. While observational documentaries may seem to have simply ‘happened’, it should be remembered that they are in fact very much constructed (2017: 132-136).

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between filmmakers and their subjects. Filming takes place through interviews, conversations, or even more direct involvement like collaboration or confrontation. In general, the filmmaker’s presence contributes significantly to the overall impact of the film. The participatory mode gives us a sense of what it is like for the filmmaker to be in a given situation and how that situation alters as result. In doing so, it raises questions about the ethics and politics of the specific encounter (2017: 137-142). It acknowledges that “if there is a truth here, it is the truth of a form of interaction that would not exist were it not for the camera” (2017: 143).

The reflexive mode foregrounds the filmmaker’s engagement with us, the viewer, and is characterised by an intensified level of reflection both formally and politically. It is equally about what is represented as how it is represented: “The motto that a documentary film is only as good as its content is compelling is what the reflexive mode of documentary calls into question” (2017: 125). Reflexive documentaries ask the viewer to acknowledge the constructedness of documentaries to draw attention to the problems in representing others and they tackle issues posed by realism as a style. The reflexive mode, then, is the most self-conscious mode and aims to lead the audience to an enhanced form of self-consciousness about documentary form and its conventions (2017: 125-131).

The performative mode raises questions about what counts as knowledge. It emphasises the subjective aspect of a filmmaker’s involvement with a subject, and generally rejects notions of objectivity. Performative documentaries have an autobiographical note and demonstrate how personal knowledge provides entry into an understanding of the more general processes at work in society: “‘My experience of this aspect of the world is like this,’ these films say, and they do so in emotionally more than rationally compelling ways. This is knowledge in a tacit, implicit, or embodied form” (2017: 150). It is about making the viewer feel on a visceral level, rather than understand on a conceptual level (2017: 152-153).

1.6. Conclusion

Whereas documentary may seem easy to define using common-sense knowledge, it turns out that matters are more complicated. Overall, the term ‘documentary’ is considered as vague and it is frequently used as an umbrella term to include various nonfiction forms. Nevertheless, the often-quoted Grierson definition of documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ is still relevant today and contains two essential elements of the documentary film: being rooted in reality and embodying a unique perspective on that reality. The more elaborate definition that Nichols has offered, then, seems rather thorough and complete. Like

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Grierson’s definition, it points to the two defining features of documentary film that make it a combination of both actuality and creativity: indexicality and rhetoric. Through the indexicality of its photographic images, documentary is often ascribed an evidentiary power. It is only with the addition of rhetoric, however, that indexical images and sounds invite interpretation and create meaning. This combination of indexicality and rhetoric is what distinguishes documentary from other film genres and nonfiction forms and gives it its unique strength. Documentary is neither a fictional invention nor a factual reproduction, but connects directly to the historical world and represents it from a distinct perspective.

Even so, what counts as a documentary may change over time and fuzzy boundaries between nonfiction and fiction and between documentary film and fiction remain. In addition, the different modes of documentary need to be taken into account to get a full understanding of the film form. Apart from the relatively new interactive mode, Nichols has made a distinction between six modes that still stands today: the poetic mode, the expository mode, the observational mode, the participatory mode, the reflexive mode and the performative mode. Though each of these modes embodies a distinct set of characteristics, modes can overlap and a filmmaker can use different elements from different modes in one documentary. It is here that a connection to the animated documentary can be made. Many authors have argued in favour of animated documentary’s status as a documentary by showing how it can be fitted into one of Nichols’s models. This raises many questions: Can the animated documentary actually be seen as belonging to one of the mentioned modes?; Can one of these modes do full justice to the potential of the animated documentary?; Is the animated documentary a mode in its own right?; Or are animated documentaries so different that they fall into different modes?; And if the animated documentary cannot be fitted into one of these modes, can it be considered to be a documentary at all? A discussion of these questions will follow in the next chapter.

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Chapter 2: The Animated Documentary

2.1. Introduction

The animated documentary: this seems like a paradoxical pairing of terms after the previous chapter. Both animation and documentary are associated with a very specific set of characteristics that seems to exclude the use of the other. For when one thinks of animation – commonly (but mistakenly) referred to as the cartoon – its creative constructedness and purpose of children’s entertainment immediately come to mind (Wells 1998: 3). This could not be further removed from the notions of factuality and rhetoric so closely connected to documentary (Ehrlich and Murray 2019: 1). And yet the growing popularity of the animated documentary shows that animation and documentary can be combined in meaningful ways, exemplifying the cliché phrase that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, disputes about whether or not animation can be included in a documentary film has been a part of the subgenre ever since its emergence. As this chapter will show, however, animation is the representational strategy par excellence to expand what documentary film can show about the world, exactly because of its differences to conventional documentary footage. So what exactly is an animated documentary?

According to Honess Roe, the animated documentary is characterised by the following features. It “(i) has been recorded or created frame by frame; (ii) is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator; and (iii) has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics” (2013: 4). I will elaborate on this definition further on in this chapter. To be sure, the animated documentary is

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not to be confused with either ‘docudrama’ or ‘docufiction’. Docudrama is a genre in which actual events are portrayed through dramatized re-enactments that use fictional storytelling techniques. Docufiction looks resembles observational documentary, but introduces elements of fiction to strengthen its representation. Animated documentary, on the contrary, is very much rooted in reality in the way that documentary film is. In addition to her definition, Honess Roe’s main argument in Animated Documentary forms an important premise for this thesis. She states that while animation may seem to jeopardise documentary’s claim to represent reality as it is, it actually offers new ways of seeing and representing the world: “By releasing documentary from the strictures of a causal connection between filmic and profilmic, animation has the potential to bring things that are temporally, spatially and psychologically distant from the viewer into closer proximity” (2013: 2).

2.2. A brief historical overview

Without going too deep into the complex genesis of documentary, I do want to point out some key moments in the history of the animated documentary in order to sketch out a general idea of the way it created meaning in the past. Honess Roe points out that the birth and evolution of the animated documentary has not been a linear trajectory but rather one that is more complicated, with different developments happening simultaneously in different places (2013: 5). Generally though, The Sinking of the Lusitania (McCay, 1918) is thought to be the first (commercially released) animated documentary (Honess Roe 2013: 6; Strøm 2015: 92; DelGaudio 1997: 190; Ward 2011: 294). This animated documentary uses animation to reconstruct the sinking of the ocean liner ‘Lusitania’ during the First World War as truthfully as possible, since no footage of the event existed. In doing so, it shows an “unproblematic application of animation as a medium for an actuality subject” (Honess Roe 2013: 7-8). Thus, The Sinking of the Lusitania can be considered to be an early example of how animation can be used as a substitute for live-action material that is missing or non-existent.

Even earlier than 1918, there are examples where animation was used in a nonfiction context to illustrate or clarify a certain topic or statement. Especially when it comes to the topics of war and education, animation was a favourite tool to explain things more efficiently (Honess Roe 2013: 8). This trend continued for quite some time, with films such as The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1923), Victory Through Air Power (1943) and the Why We Fight series (1942-1945). Animated documentaries were pretty common before the 1960s. However, the 1960s brought about new representational strategies in documentary film, strategies that placed great emphasis on observational filmmaking and cinematic realism. As such, they eschewed re-enactments and animation fell out of use. In fact, it is only during the

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last few decades that animated documentaries have again been accepted as ‘real documentaries’ (Strøm 2015: 92). This can be connected to the rise of reality television and factual entertainment, which reveal increasing possibilities to (digitally) alter the image or fabricate it altogether. According to Honess Roe, these possibilities have led to a documentary uncertainty, where one is inclined to distrust the origin of the image or the profilmic. She states that “at a time of documentary uncertainty, animation became a particularly appropriate tool for non-fiction as there can be no mistaking the constructed nature of the animated image that, by wearing its ontology on its sleeve, circumvents any potential duping or trickery” (2013: 171). Thus, the animated documentary quite explicitly goes beyond the point of potential distrust by embracing its quality as a construction instead (2013: 171; Ehrlich and Murray 2019: 4; Formenti 2014a: 14). In combination with democratisation of the media and the subsequent growing accessibility and affordability of animation, there has been an increase in the production of the animated documentary over the last thirty years. The form also regularly appears at festivals, gets mainstream theatrical releases more frequently, and is made available to a wider audience through the internet (Honess Roe 2013: 1). Nowadays, animation’s unique asset to compensate for missing footage, or footage that is impossible to film, is widely acknowledged (Honess Roe 2013: 10; Ehrlich and Murray 2019: 4). Its employment is commonly associated with documentaries that take as their subject natural history, science or history and considered a standard device to simplify or illustrate complicated content (2013: 9; Bernstein 2013; Skoller 2011: 211). In short, there is a long-standing relationship between animation and documentary stretching back to the early 1900s, and from early on, “animation was seen to have a unique representational function for the non-fiction moving image, one that could not be fulfilled by the conventional live-action, photographic-based alternative” (Honess Roe 2013: 6).

2.3. A question of ontology

Many of the disputes about whether or not animation can be used as a representational strategy in documentary film have to do with its ontology being different than that of live-action images. As the notion of what a documentary film is or should be is very much connected to the indexicality of photographic images, animation almost automatically

presents a problem.

Being created and not filmed, it does not have the same indexical qualities and seemingly lacks the indexical whammy that has contributed so strongly to the appeal of documentary film (Nichols 2017: 25; Ward 2011: 294; Rozenkrantz 2011). Consequently, animation could

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obfuscate the difference between reality and fiction and jeopardise documentary’s relationship with reality. As Honess Roe indicates, whereas an animated documentary can surely be called an animation film, it can always be questioned whether that film is an acceptable documentary (2013: 3). Ultimately then, the use of animation in documentary can be considered existentially problematic because it cannot offer the same physical causal link and analogical relationship with reality as live action can (Honess Roe 2013: 30-38; Rozenkrantz 2011). Sybil DelGaudio states: “Since an animated film ‘exists’ only when its projected – there is no pre-existing reality, no profilmic event captured in its occurrence – its classification as documentary can be problematic” (1997: 190).

Therefore, the animated documentary does not seem to fit easily into a definition of documentary and it is difficult for some to accept the use of animation in documentary film (Ward 2019: 70; Rozenkrantz 2011). Although animation entails a variety of styles and techniques – one having a more direct visual and aural relationship with reality than the other, or bearing the ‘indexical’ imprint of the artist to a greater or lesser extent – the fact remains that animated documentaries will never be indexical in the image like live-action images are (Strøm 2015: 93; Honess Roe 38). This leads Formenti to conclude that the animentary is better described as docudrama (2014b: 108-113). And Rozenkrantz states that the problem isn’t objectivity – since no documentary can be objective – but rather the existential difference between the photographic image and the animated one: “The visual evidence of an animated documentary is […] of a completely different order than the one live-action footage provides” (2011). Another mentioned characteristic that causes photographic images to maintain a privileged position among forms of representation, is the unique relationship between past and present they offer. Photographic images are able to put the viewer in the presence of events that belong to the past as soon as the photograph was taken (Honess Roe 33; Renov 1993: 26). This spiritual capacity of film to create a feeling of ‘co-presence’ with the past, is apparently out of reach for animation, again because it lacks the necessary indexicality.

2.3.1. How the animentary does fit in

However, this binary between documentary’s truth claim and animation’s constructedness seems increasingly irrelevant (Skoller 2011: 207; Nichols 2017: 23-24). As Honess Roe points out, animation is becoming vulnerable to the same criticisms as photographs, with new technologies ever-improving just how much animation can look like the world around us. Consequently, animation could potentially fake this feeling of co-presence – or indexicality

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altogether – and “this leads one to question whether the important thing is to know that an image was created in a past moment of co-presence with the object, or whether it looks as if it did, something that animation is increasingly, incrementally, progressing towards” (2013: 34). Moreover, one could equally question the ontology of photographic media, and by extension of documentary, to begin with. As DelGaudio points out: “The status of the photographic image’s ‘ontological or evidentiary nature’ is far from ‘cut and dried’” (1997: 193). This continuous questioning of the indexical nature of the photographic image, opens up the term documentary to include animated films as documentaries (DelGaudio 1997: 190). Honess Roe likewise demonstrates that the indexical basis of the photographic images has been overemphasised and used as a shorthand, ignoring the iconic and symbolic properties of photographic images. Basically, “indexical signs do not always resemble and resemblance is no guarantee of indexicality” (2013: 36). This means that the indexical quality of documentary images has been given more significance in determining their unique relationship to the world than might actually be desirable or warranted (Honess Roe 2013: 36; Beckman 2011: 260).

To take this a step further, the fact that more and more documentaries are digitally recorded and possibly digitally altered is destabilising the assumption that documentary images are evidence even more (Landesman 2008: 33-35). One should also not forget that taking photographs and shooting documentary footage has always involved making choices about what to include and how to portray it. Honess Roe aptly emphasises “how easily photographs can be made to not look like what we see in front of the camera” (Honess Roe 2013: 31, emphasis in original). Thus, “animation can confound the outdated notion that documentaries are simply a straight retelling of the truth – surely, in this age, we accept that all filmmaking – based on actual events or not – involves a certain amount of artifice” (Bernstein 2013). A documentary never simply reflects the world, but always offers a perspective on it, which is so important to distinguish it from other nonfiction forms (Lefèvre 2019: 16). One needs to keep in mind that there is a difference between the indexical image as evidence, and the argument it supports. This connects closely to John Grierson’s definition of documentary as the creative treatment of actuality. But also to Renov’s documentary function ‘to express’, and also Corner’s addition ‘to entertain’. Honess Roe argues that these, by emphasising and allowing the use of creative and stylistic interventions, may lead one to conclude that documentary never fully upheld the characteristics so commonly associated with the form (2013: 3).

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To the same end, Nichols mentions that documentary never had a very precise definition. This is why Grierson’s definition is still applicable to contemporary documentaries. The fact that documentary can combine creative vision with respect for the factuality of the historical world is also one of its appeals (2013: 6-7). It is precisely because of this in-betweenness, being neither a fictional invention nor a factual reproduction, that one can usefully extend the definition of a documentary to include animation: “After all, if Grierson’s definition allows re-enactment […], why not also animation as a way of creatively treating actuality?” (Honess Roe 2013: 3). As DelGaudio concludes, ultimately every representation, conventional documentaries included, is a fabrication (1997: 197). Along these lines, it can be stated that an objective representation of reality is neither possible, nor something that a documentary aims for: “No documentary makers worth their salt ever attempt simply to “objectively” record reality” (Forceville 2015: 67). A documentary’s value as a representational form lies elsewhere, namely in its ability to be about the world and to offer a perspective on it. Ultimately, this is an ability that animation has as well.

2.3.2. The animentary and Nichol’s documentary modes

Many have tried to legitimise or define the animated documentary by fitting it into one of Nichols’s modes (see also Widdowson 2018). According to DelGaudio, for instance, the animated documentary can be considered to belong to the reflexive mode. Since this is the “most self-aware of the modes” and the constructedness of the animentary constantly draws attention to itself, it questions the fabricated nature of the image just like the reflexive mode does (1997: 189). He states that “animation itself acts as a form of ‘metacommentary’ within a documentary” (1997: 192). The performative mode is also often mentioned in trying to describe the animated documentary. As the performative mode raises questions about what counts as objective knowledge and emphasises the subjective aspect of a filmmaker’s own involvement with a subject, it seems particularly adequate for trying to theorise the way animentaries are created. According to Eric Patrick, “the very nature of animation is to foreground its process and artifice.” (2004: 38). Besides these two modes, the animentary also potentially fits into the expository mode (through an emphasis on the spoken word and voice-over commentary), the poetic mode (through its emphasis on form), and the participatory mode (through the filmmakers’ engagement with their subjects in the form of interviews). Nichols, for instance, does not write extensively about the form in his book Introduction to

That other reality: An investigation into animated war documentaries and their claims to documentary veracity