Everything about Docudrama totally explained
Docudrama is mainly understood as being a
docufiction with the participation of actors and narrative dramatization. This term is generally used to refer to films in TV programs. It’s incorrectly used when simply referring to docufiction films.
It may mean a documentary film with a purpose of didactic or historical illustration. It’s sometimes also referred, in terms of
journalism or
literature, as «docufiction», for example as a piece of «literary journalism» or literature: the
creative nonfiction.
Generalities
Docudramas tend to demonstrate some or most of the following characteristics:
- A strict focus on the facts of the event being treated, as they're known;
- The use of literary and narrative techniques to flesh out or render story-like the bare facts of an event in history;
- A tendency to avoid overt commentary and assertion of the creator's own point of view or beliefs.
Docudramas, then, are distinct both from the main line of historical fiction, in which the historical setting is a mere backdrop for a plot that could be set in many periods, and from straight documentary or journalistic writing in its creation of a coherent narrative out of the materials of history.
History
The impulse to incorporate historical material into literary texts has been an intermittent feature of literature in the west since its earliest days.
Aristotle's theory of art is based on the use of putatively historical events and characters. Especially after the development of modern mass-produced literature, there have been genres that relied on history or then-current events for material. English
Renaissance drama, for example, developed sub-genres specifically devoted to dramatizing recent murders and notorious cases of witchcraft.
However, docudrama as a separate category belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. The influence of
New Journalism tended to create a license for authors to treat with literary techniques material that might in an earlier age have been approached in a purely journalistic way. Both
Truman Capote and
Norman Mailer were influenced by this movement, and Capote's
In Cold Blood is arguably the most famous example of the genre.
Notable works
Film docudramas of note
Ala-Arriba! (1942)
A Night to Remember (1958)
The Gallant Hours (1960)
Culloden (1964)
The War Game (1965)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
Pumping Iron (1977)
Threads (1984)
Life Story (1987)
Cathy Come Home (Drama documentary) (1966)
Dien bien Phu (1992)
Hillsborough (1996)
Bloody Sunday (2002)
The Laramie Project (2002)
The Last Dragon (2004)
Touching the Void (2003)
End Day (2005)
Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)
Supervolcano (Drama documentary) (2005)
The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
Bobby (2006)
United 93 (film) (2006)
The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007)
The Day Britain Stopped (2003)
Death of a Princess
TV series
America's Most Wanted
E! True Hollywood Story
Space Race
Cook's Last Voyage
A Haunting
Rescue 911
Unsolved Mysteries
COPS
Airport
Bondi Rescue
Motorway PatrolFurther Information
Get more info on 'Docudrama'.
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