To answer this question, armed with a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant, Vanstone teamed up with British counterparts, Professor Brian Winston and PhD student Wang Chi from University of Lincoln, United Kingdom (UK).

The resulting book, The Act of Documenting: Documentary Film in the 21st Century, published by Bloomsbury (UK) in January 2017, cuts to the very core of the documentary film. It does this by revisiting both the original query (Why, how and with whom does one tell a true-to-life story?) as well as the idea of film as 鈥渁n archive of humanity,鈥� in the words of Chilean film director Patricio Guzm脿n.

鈥淥ur book is a call to reexamine traditional documentary film in light of the advent of the digital,鈥� says Vanstone. 鈥淚t addresses what this means for the documentary鈥檚 21st Century position 鈥� for its future in a world where assumptions of photographic image integrity cannot be sustained,鈥� she adds.

Today, the documentary has almost no boundaries

A documentary film is defined as a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The term 鈥榙ocumentary鈥� was coined in 1926, but the art form dates back to the pre-1900s. Over the course of the 20th Century, documentaries were created to serve many different purposes 鈭� from newsreels and propaganda machines during wartime, to avant-garde films in the 1920s, to anti-studio cin茅ma-v茅rit茅 in the 1950s to 1970s.

Over the last 20 years, the nature of documentary films has greatly expanded. In fact, the idea of the documentary is continually evolving and it is, today, without clear boundaries. More specifically, the line blurs between documentary and narrative. Some works are subjective, personal and poetic, rather than information or news based.

It鈥檚 an exciting time for this art form. The documentary has never before attracted such a wide global audience. Theatrical releases such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and An Inconvenient Truth have been box office successes. As well, documentaries have never before been produced with such ease from all over the world, and never before embraced such diversity of expression and creativity.

This new book by Vanstone and others brilliantly captures the sense of potential听and dovetails with Vanstone鈥檚 ongoing research, which frames women and the stories they tell as powerful critical tools for understanding women鈥檚 experience in a world where their voices are often suppressed.

鈥淲e wanted to examine new forms; expand the boundaries of the documentary; and recast the roles of the filmer, the filmed and the spectator.鈥� 鈭� Gail Vanstone

Traditional documentary foundations undercut by the digital

The first page of Vanstone鈥檚 book regenerates an assertive quotation from Britcom (2014), 鈥淭he power of [documentary] film to change the world has become impossible to ignore,鈥� and in doing so, sets the stage for a meaningful discussion.听听

The Act of Documenting is organized in an unconventional way. The first part of the book, 鈥淒igital Potentials,鈥� addresses what current changes mean for the traditional supports of the Western documentary 鈥� specifically, scientism (the view that only scientific claims are meaningful), Eurocentrism (a worldview centered on Western civilization) and patriarchy (a social system in which males hold primary power) 鈥� all of which are deeply undercut by the digital, Vanstone argues.

The fact that these previous frameworks no longer dictate, that their dominance is unsustainable, is where the great potential lies. 鈥淭he potential of that liberation is the real triumph of the documentary. This is what is truly liberating of the act of documenting in the 21st century,鈥� Vanstone explains.

鈥淰oices of the excluded and marginalized are being heard because what were once insurmountable technological barriers to entry are no more.鈥� 鈭� Gail Vanstone

Book seeks to recast roles of filmer, filmed and spectator

With the supposition that the very distinctions between the filmed, the filmer and the spectator are being dissolved in the modern documentary, the second part of this book considers the actual effects of the documentary on the three components of the Western hegemonic documentary tradition.

鈥淲e wanted to examine new forms; expand the boundaries of the documentary; and recast the roles of the filmer, the filmed and the spectator,鈥� Vanstone explains.

New voices emerge via the digital era. 鈥淰oices of the excluded and marginalized all over the world are being heard because what were once insurmountable technological barriers to entry, thanks to complexity and expense, are no more,鈥� says Vanstone.

Vanstone was especially pleased to be able to include a reference to a 2016 Canadian documentary Angry Inuk, by Inuit filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril.听This important film gives a voice to a tech-savvy generation of Inuit听and presents the Inuit as a modern people seeking a sustainable economy.

The Act of Documenting explains how new understandings of听the process of documentary production听are transforming the theoretical, critical and political implications of what documentary is and does. By necessity, it debunks certain ideas about the documentary, while it puts forward new and original ideas that will be fodder for very interesting discussions in classrooms, conferences and symposia across the globe and well into the future.

As noted, this work was funded by a grant from the SSHRC that is related to extending ideas set out in Vanstone鈥檚 2007 book, D is For Daring: the Women Behind Studio D of the NFB.

To learn more about the book, The Act of Documenting, visit . For more information about Professor Vanstone鈥檚 work, visit her .

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, 91亚色, muellerm@yorku.ca