What Makes a Documentary?  

Documentary is a term that is popularly used first by John Grierson, to  describe Robert Flaherty's film "Moana", coming from the French documentaire, a form that grew out of realities actually cinema. While describing one feature from "Moana" the term gained a new meaning in relation to the film's approach to depicting the real. However a more familiar use of the term presented its self after the birth of early cinema with the polish filmmaker Boleshaw Matuszewski, who suggested a use for the form as a museum of contemporary life, capturing events and activities which would be of interest for documentary.  

Documentary is an approach to real life events and activities opposed to fictitious events and activities. Dealing with issues of fact, of actuality. The approach is popular with audiences and is highly significant. John Grierson explained that it is not just actuality but it is the creative treatment to actuality. The filmmakers hand will always be behind the structured representation of the subject. What is seen on screen isn't always the actual truth and is sometimes what the filmmaker wants you to see.  

The process of constructing the images seen on screen give them meaning. Images do not posses meaning on their own. Therefore on a grand scale a filmmaker can never depict the real, so instead exhibits a selective "real". It is argued that only the true documentaries were made in the original early cinema of actualities.  

There are many documentaries in the modern film world today. Documentaries have expanded into different genres now. Social realism is a popular selection for documentaries such as "race riots", "on benefits and proud" and "far right and proud" etc. People enjoy watching social realism's because the documentary takes them too a place where they don't to go because they're scared or they can't go to. Another popular genre in documentary is biography. The documentary film "AMY" by Asif Kapadia won an academy award for best documentary feature. People take pleasure in learning about their favorite celebrities lives.  

You could say that the only way to make true and real documentary is place a camera, press record and don't touch it but in the process of doing that you have planned where that camera has been placed, what way it's going to point and so on. Therefore by that example you can never get a true documentary. I believe that's what makes documentaries so interesting because it's filmmakers trying their hardest to get a true and honest depiction the real.