However, no one who watches Nanookcould argue
that the film’s portrayal of the Inuit and their
nomadic northern lifestyle is a complete failure. The
challenge for the viewer is to untangle Nanook’s non-
fiction functions from its dramatic license, to view
its anthropology apart from its artifice. Such a task
requires a broad appreciation of both the movie and
its subject from cinematic, historical, and scientific
perspectives. We tend to assume that a wide sepa-
ration exists between fact and fiction, historical
reality and crafted story, truth and artifice. The dif-
ference, however, is never absolute in any film.
Historically, documentary films have been bro-
ken into four basic approaches: factual, instruc-
tional, persuasive, and propaganda. Factual films,
including Nanook of the North, usually present
people, places, or processes in straightforward ways
meant to entertain and instruct without unduly influ-
encing audiences. Early examples include some of
the first movies made. In 1896, audiences marveled
at the Lumière brothers’ short, one-shot films docu-
menting trains arriving, boats leaving, and soldiers
marching off to the front. (At that time, the specta-
cle of moving images impressed viewers as much as,
or more than, any particular subject matter.) More
recent documentaries that could fall into the fac-
tual-documentary classification include Patrick
Creadon’s Wordplay(2006), an appreciation of the
people who create and complete crossword puzzles.
Instructional films seek to educate viewers
about common interests, rather than persuading
them to accept particular ideas. Today, these movies
are most likely to teach the viewer basic skills like
cooking, yoga, or golf swings. They are not generally
considered worthy of study or analysis.
Persuasive filmswere originally called docu-
mentary filmsuntil the term evolved to refer to all
nonfiction films. The founding purpose of persua-
sive documentaries was to address social injustice,
but today any documentary concerned with pre-
senting a particular perspective on social issues or
with corporate and governmental injustice of any
kind could be considered persuasive. Director Davis
Guggenheim’s motivation in adapting Al Gore’s
global warming lecture into the documentary An
Inconvenient Truth(2006) was not to simply enter-
tain or inform audiences, but to persuade them to
do something about climate change. Michael
Moore’s darkly humorous, self-aggrandizing docu-
mentaries take the persuasive documentary a step
further. His confrontational and provocative
movies address a series of left-of-center political
causes, including health care (Sicko, 2007), gun
control (Bowling for Columbine, 2002), and the Bush
administration’s role in the Iraq War (Fahrenheit
9/11, 2004).
When persuasive documentaries are produced
by governments and carry governments’ messages,
they overlap with propaganda films,which sys-
tematically disseminate deceptive or distorted
information. The most famous propaganda film
ever made, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
(1935), records many events at the 1934 Nuremberg
rally of Germany’s Nazi party and, thus, might mis-
takenly be considered a “factual” film. After all, no
voice-over narration or on-screen commentator
preaches a political message to the viewer. But
through its carefully crafted cinematography and
editing, this documentary presents a highly glori-72 CHAPTER 3 TYPES OF MOVIES
Nanook of the NorthRobert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the
North(1922), a pioneering nonfiction film, gave general
audiences their first visual encounter with Inuit culture. Its
subject matter made it significant (and successful), and its
use of narrative film techniques was pathbreaking. Flaherty
edited together many different kinds of shots and angles,
for example, and directed the Inuit through reenactments
of life events, some of which——hunting with spears——were
no longer part of their lives.