The Burning Question: The Future of Documentary

Abstract

In 1996 the editors of a collection of essays devoted to aspects of documentary film and television invited a selection of international documentary producers, directors and editors to answer a number of questions, among them, ‘What is the future of the documentary?’ The inquiry, undertaken in a chapter titled ‘The Burning Question’, provided a range of responses, including observations on documentary cinema, the fate of documentaries commissioned for television, the funding regimes ruling both environments, and occasionally, reference to the part new digital technologies will play in the future of documentary (Macdonald and Cousins, 1996). Perhaps the most striking aspect of the investigation was the number of participants who chose not to answer this particular question. Attempting to predict the future is a demanding and risky task which some filmmakers and commentators simply chose to ignore. Unfortunately, one result of such a silence is the suggestion that documentary does not have a future. One thing that can be stated with certainty is that documentary representations of the real will continue to be produced in the twenty-first century.