DOC: A Special Kind of Cinema and Modern Technologies

Abstract

The article raises the age-old question: can documentary film remain documentary today if reality is no longer singular but fragmented into multiple truths? Post-truth, post-truth, metamodernism – all this call into question the very nature of documentary work. Even the Lumière brothers filmed productions masquerading as newsreels.
The modern documentary project is no longer what it was yesterday. It exists in the here and now, responding to the challenges of the digital age. Today, docs incorporate reconstructions, animation, virtual reality, AI, and interactivity.

This is not a betrayal of authenticity, but an evolution of language: the generic characteristic – a connection to real events – remains, even if the author chooses a theatrical version or a VR docudrama.
Based on an analytical selection of festival and educational cases (including from the course «Screen Documentation in the Space of Contemporary Audiovisual Arts»), key trends were identified: genre hybridization, immersiveness, personalized narrative, and technological boldness. From «Waltz with Bashir» to the VR project «Grandmother,» documentarians are increasingly speaking to audiences through the language of games, social media, and neural networks.

The main thing is to preserve the document’s source code: don’t distort the facts, even if they’re presented through animation or deepfake. Otherwise, the document risks becoming not a media medium, but a simulacrum.
Technology is no longer a decoration – it’s becoming a language in which a new generation of directors speaks about war, trauma, ecology, and memory. But the question remains: where is the line between bold interpretation and manipulation? Perhaps time, not theory, will answer this.