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Docudrama

April 15, 2023

Not to be confused with docufiction.

Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events.[1] It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event".[2]

Docudramas typically strive to adhere to known historical facts, while allowing some degree of dramatic license in peripheral details, such as when there are gaps in the historical record. Dialogue may, or may not, include the actual words of real-life people, as recorded in historical documents. Docudrama producers sometimes choose to film their reconstructed events in the actual locations in which the historical events occurred.[citation needed]

A docudrama, in which historical fidelity is the keynote, is generally distinguished from a film merely "based on true events", a term which implies a greater degree of dramatic license, and from the concepts of historical drama, a broader category which may also incorporate entirely fictionalized events intermixed with factual ones, and historical fiction, stories generally featuring fictional characters and plots taking place in historical settings or against the backdrop of historical events.

As a portmanteau, docudrama is sometimes confused with docufiction. However, unlike docufiction—which is essentially a documentary filmed in real time, incorporating some fictional elements—docudrama is filmed at a time subsequent to the events portrayed.[citation needed]

Characteristics

The docudrama genre is a reenactment of actual historical events.[1] However it makes no promise of being entirely accurate in its interpretation.[1] It blends fact and fiction for its recreation and its quality depends on factors like budget and production time.[3] The filmmaker Leslie Woodhead presents the docudrama dilemma in the following manner:

[instead of hunting for definitions] I think it much more useful to think of the form as a spectrum that runs from journalistic reconstruction to relevant drama with infinite graduations along the way. In its various mutation it's employed by investigative journalists, documentary feature makers, and imaginative dramatists. So we shouldn't be surprised when programs as various as Culloden and Oppenheimer or Suez, or Cabinet reconstructions refuse tidy and comprehensive definition.[4]

Docudramas producers use literary and narrative techniques to flesh out the bare facts of an event in history to tell a story. Some degree of license is often taken with minor historical facts for the sake of enhancing the drama. Docudramas are distinct from historical fiction, in which the historical setting is a mere backdrop for a plot involving fictional characters.[1]

The scholar Steven N. Lipkin considers docudrama as a form of performance through recollection which in turn shapes our collective memory of past events. It is a mode of representation.[5] Educator Benicia D'sa maintained that docudramas are heavily impacted by filmmakers' own perspectives and understanding of history.[6]

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 subgenres 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. Louis de Rochemont, creator of The March of Time, became a producer at 20th Century Fox in 1943.[7] There he brought the newsreel aesthetic to films, producing a series of movies based upon real events using a realistic style that became known as semidocumentary.[8] The films (The House on 92nd Street, Boomerang, 13 Rue Madeleine) were imitated,[7] and the style soon became used even for completely-fictional stories, such as The Naked City.[9][10] Perhaps the most significant of the semidocumentary films was He Walked by Night (1948), based upon an actual case.[11][12] Jack Webb had a supporting role in the movie and struck up a friendship with the LAPD consultant, Sergeant Marty Wynn. The film and his relationship with Wynn inspired Webb to create Dragnet,[13] one of the most famous docudramas in history.

The particular portmanteau term "docudrama" was coined in 1957 by Philip C. Lewis (1904-1979), of Tenafly, New Jersey, a former vaudevillian and stage actor turned playwright and author,[14][15] in connection with a production he wrote, in response to the defeat of a local school-funding referendum, for the Tenafly Citizens' Education Council addressing "the development of education and its significance in American life."[16] Lewis trademarked the term "DocuDrama" in 1967 (expired, 1992) for a production company of the same name.[17]

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.[18]

American television

Some docudrama examples for American television include Brian's Song (1971), and Roots (1977). Brian's Song is the biography of Brian Piccolo, a Chicago Bears football player who died at a young age after battling cancer. Roots depicts the life of a slave and his family.[1]

Examples

This list is ordered by release date.

Radio

Film

Television

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e . The Museums of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on 2012-08-12. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  2. ^ Ogunleye, Foluke (2005). "Television Docudrama as Alternative Records of History". History in Africa. 32: 479–484. doi:10.1353/hia.2005.0019. ISSN 0361-5413. JSTOR 20065757. S2CID 162322739.
  3. ^ Hoffer & Nelson 1978, p. 21.
  4. ^ Rosenthal 1999, p. xv.
  5. ^ Lipkin 2011, pp. 1–2.
  6. ^ D'sa, Benicia (2005-01-01). "Social Studies in the Dark: Using Docudramas to Teach History". The Social Studies. 96 (1): 9–13. doi:10.3200/TSSS.96.1.9-13. ISSN 0037-7996. S2CID 144165650.
  7. ^ a b Aitken, Ian, ed. (2013). The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. Routledge. pp. 767–768. ISBN 9781136512063.
  8. ^ Schauer, Bradley (2017). Escape Velocity: American Science Fiction Film, 1950–1982. Wesleyan University Press. p. 42. ISBN 9780819576606.
  9. ^ Krutnik, Frank; Neale, Steve; Neve, Brian; Stanfield, Peter, eds. (2007). "Un-American" Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (Illustrated ed.). Rutgers University Press. p. 143. ISBN 9780813541983.
  10. ^ Spicer, Andrew (2018). Film Noir. Routledge. p. 57. ISBN 9781317875031.
  11. ^ Krutnik, Frank (2006). In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity. Routledge. p. 206. ISBN 9781134973187.
  12. ^ Sanders, Steven; Skoble, Aeon J. (2021). The Philosophy of TV Noir. University Press of Kentucky. p. 55. ISBN 9780813181561.
  13. ^ Nickerson, Catherine Ross (2010). The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction. Cambridge University Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780521136068.
  14. ^ "Philip C. Lewis, 75, dramatist, writer for various media". The Bergen Record. 5 September 1979. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  15. ^ "Philip C. Lewis, Writer For Film, Radio and TV". New York Times. 6 September 1979. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  16. ^ "docudrama (n.)". Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  17. ^ "DOCUDRAMA - Trademark Information". Trademark Elite. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  18. ^ Siegle 1984, pp. 437–451.

Bibliography

  • Hoffer, Tom W.; Nelson, Richard Alan (Spring 1978). "Docudrama on American TV". Journal of the University Film Association. 30 (2): 21–27. JSTOR 20687422.
  • Lipkin, Steven N. (2011). Docudrama Performs the Past: Arenas of Argument in Films based on True Stories. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443827874.
  • Rosenthal, Alan (1999). Why Docudrama?: Fact-Fiction on Film and TV. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2186-5.
  • Siegle, Robert (1984). "Capote's Hand-Carved Coffins and the Nonfiction Novel". Contemporary Literature. 25 (4): 437–451. doi:10.2307/1208055. JSTOR 1208055.

Further reading

  • Duarte, German A. (2009). La scomparsa dell'orologio universale. Peter Watkins e i mass media audiovisivi. Milan: Mimesis Edizioni. ISBN 978-8857501222.
  • Duarte, German A. (2016). Conversations With Peter Watkins/Conversaciones con Peter Watkins. Bogotà: UTADEO PRESS. ISBN 978-958-725-195-1.
  • Goodwin, Andrew, et al. Drama-Documentary. London: British Film Institute, 1983.
  • Hellmann, John (1981). Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252008472.
  • Kazin, Alfred (1973). Bright Book of Life: American Hot Dogs and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0316484180.
  • Lipkin, Steven N., ed. (2002). Real Emotional Logic: Film and Television Docudrama As Persuasive Practice. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2409-5.
  • Lukács, György (1962). Mitchell, Hannah; Mitchell, Stanley (eds.). The Historical Novel. London: Merlin Press.
  • Paget, Derek (2011). No Other Way to Tell It: Dramadoc/docudrama on television (2nd ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-8446-1.
  • Rhodes, Gary Don; Springer, John Parris, eds. (2006). Docufictions: Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking. London: McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-2184-8.
  • Roscoe, Jane; Hight, Craig (2001). Faking it: Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5641-3.
  • Rosenthal, Alan (1995). Writing Docudrama: dramatizing reality for film and TV. Boston, Mass.: Focal Press. ISBN 0240801954.
  • Stavreva, Kirilka (2000). "Fighting Words: Witch-speak in Late Elizabethan Docu-fiction". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 30 (2): 309–338. doi:10.1215/10829636-30-2-309. S2CID 170650915.
  • White, Hayden (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801821274.

External links

  • British Film Institute paper on British drama-documentary
  • Docudrama: the real (his)tory by Çiçek Coşkun (Middle East Technical University, Department of Sociology): unpublished academic paper
  • Docudrama at BookRags

April 15, 2023
docudrama, confused, with, docufiction, documentary, drama, genre, television, film, which, features, dramatized, enactments, actual, events, described, hybrid, documentary, drama, fact, based, representation, real, event, typically, strive, adhere, known, his. Not to be confused with docufiction Docudrama or documentary drama is a genre of television and film which features dramatized re enactments of actual events 1 It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and a fact based representation of real event 2 Docudramas typically strive to adhere to known historical facts while allowing some degree of dramatic license in peripheral details such as when there are gaps in the historical record Dialogue may or may not include the actual words of real life people as recorded in historical documents Docudrama producers sometimes choose to film their reconstructed events in the actual locations in which the historical events occurred citation needed A docudrama in which historical fidelity is the keynote is generally distinguished from a film merely based on true events a term which implies a greater degree of dramatic license and from the concepts of historical drama a broader category which may also incorporate entirely fictionalized events intermixed with factual ones and historical fiction stories generally featuring fictional characters and plots taking place in historical settings or against the backdrop of historical events As a portmanteau docudrama is sometimes confused with docufiction However unlike docufiction which is essentially a documentary filmed in real time incorporating some fictional elements docudrama is filmed at a time subsequent to the events portrayed citation needed Contents 1 Characteristics 2 History 3 American television 4 Examples 4 1 Radio 4 2 Film 4 3 Television 5 See also 6 References 7 Bibliography 8 Further reading 9 External linksCharacteristics EditThe docudrama genre is a reenactment of actual historical events 1 However it makes no promise of being entirely accurate in its interpretation 1 It blends fact and fiction for its recreation and its quality depends on factors like budget and production time 3 The filmmaker Leslie Woodhead presents the docudrama dilemma in the following manner instead of hunting for definitions I think it much more useful to think of the form as a spectrum that runs from journalistic reconstruction to relevant drama with infinite graduations along the way In its various mutation it s employed by investigative journalists documentary feature makers and imaginative dramatists So we shouldn t be surprised when programs as various as Culloden and Oppenheimer or Suez or Cabinet reconstructions refuse tidy and comprehensive definition 4 Docudramas producers use literary and narrative techniques to flesh out the bare facts of an event in history to tell a story Some degree of license is often taken with minor historical facts for the sake of enhancing the drama Docudramas are distinct from historical fiction in which the historical setting is a mere backdrop for a plot involving fictional characters 1 The scholar Steven N Lipkin considers docudrama as a form of performance through recollection which in turn shapes our collective memory of past events It is a mode of representation 5 Educator Benicia D sa maintained that docudramas are heavily impacted by filmmakers own perspectives and understanding of history 6 History EditThe 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 subgenres 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 Louis de Rochemont creator of The March of Time became a producer at 20th Century Fox in 1943 7 There he brought the newsreel aesthetic to films producing a series of movies based upon real events using a realistic style that became known as semidocumentary 8 The films The House on 92nd Street Boomerang 13 Rue Madeleine were imitated 7 and the style soon became used even for completely fictional stories such as The Naked City 9 10 Perhaps the most significant of the semidocumentary films was He Walked by Night 1948 based upon an actual case 11 12 Jack Webb had a supporting role in the movie and struck up a friendship with the LAPD consultant Sergeant Marty Wynn The film and his relationship with Wynn inspired Webb to create Dragnet 13 one of the most famous docudramas in history The particular portmanteau term docudrama was coined in 1957 by Philip C Lewis 1904 1979 of Tenafly New Jersey a former vaudevillian and stage actor turned playwright and author 14 15 in connection with a production he wrote in response to the defeat of a local school funding referendum for the Tenafly Citizens Education Council addressing the development of education and its significance in American life 16 Lewis trademarked the term DocuDrama in 1967 expired 1992 for a production company of the same name 17 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 18 American television EditSome docudrama examples for American television include Brian s Song 1971 and Roots 1977 Brian s Song is the biography of Brian Piccolo a Chicago Bears football player who died at a young age after battling cancer Roots depicts the life of a slave and his family 1 Examples EditThis list is incomplete you can help by adding missing items December 2015 This list is ordered by release date Radio Edit The March of Time 1931 45 The Fifth Horseman radio series 1946 Film Edit Bandits en automobile in French 1912 The March of Time 1935 51 The Wrong Man 1956 A Night to Remember 1958 The Gallant Hours 1960 Judgment at Nuremberg 1961 The Longest Day 1962 In Cold Blood 1967 The Boston Strangler 1968 Tora Tora Tora 1970 10 Rillington Place 1971 Goodbye Uncle Tom 1971 The Legend of Boggy Creek 1972 Edvard Munch 1974 The Missiles of October 1974 All the President s Men 1976 Helter Skelter 1976 Pumping Iron 1977 King 1978 The Onion Field 1979 Christiane F We Children from Bahnhof Zoo 1981 The Right Stuff 1983 Canada s Sweetheart The Saga of Hal C Banks 1985 Seacoal 1985 Life Story 1987 Eight Men Out 1988 JFK 1991 Malcolm X 1992 Dien Bien Phu 1992 Schindler s List 1993 Quiz Show 1994 Apollo 13 1995 Nixon 1995 Saving Private Ryan 1998 Hillsborough 1996 Pirates of Silicon Valley 1999 The Insider 1999 Thirteen Days 2000 The Pianist 2002 Bloody Sunday 2002 The Laramie Project 2002 The Story of the Weeping Camel 2003 Touching the Void 2003 Good Night and Good Luck 2005 Krakatoa The Last Days 2006 The 9 11 Commission Report 2006 United 93 2006 Rescue Dawn 2007 A Mighty Heart 2007 Che 2008 The Beckoning Silence 2008 The Lena Baker Story 2008 The Informant 2009 Public Enemies 2009 The Fighter 2010 127 Hours 2010 Fair Game 2010 No Place on Earth 2012 The Attacks of 26 11 2013 Enemy of the Reich The Noor Inayat Khan Story 2014 Heaven Is for Real 2014 Pride 2014 Spotlight 2015 The Big Short 2015 Soaked in Bleach 2015 0 41 2016 Nise The Heart of Madness 2016 Snowden 2016 Sachin A Billion Dreams 2017 American Animals 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody 2018 Rocketman 2019 Sergio 2020 Walnut Tree 2020 Argentina 1985 2022 The Other Fellow 2022 Television Edit Culloden 1964 The War Game 1965 Insurrection TV series 1966 The Missiles of October 1974 Death of a Princess 1980 Miracle Landing 1990 From the Earth to the Moon miniseries 1998 Mayday Canadian TV series 2003 DC 9 11 Time of Crisis 2003 Egypt 2005 Space Race 2005 The Road to Guantanamo 2006 Ancient Rome The Rise and Fall of an Empire 2006 Nuclear Secrets 2007 Heroes and Villains 2007 2008 House of Saddam 2008 Micro Men 2009 Moonshiners 2011 Present The Men Who Built America 2012 Mabo 2012 An Adventure in Space and Time 2013 Code of a Killer 2015 Barbarians Rising 2016 The American West 2016 Mars 2016 Roman Empire TV Series 2016 2019 Genius 2017 Wormwood 2017 When We Rise 2017 The Detectives 2018 Chernobyl 2019 Washington 2020 Grant 2020 Valley of Tears 2020 See also EditDocufiction Mockumentary Pseudo documentary Semidocumentary Dramality Ethnofiction Fly on the wall Factual television Reality television Peter Watkins a pioneer of docudrama List of historical drama films List of Asian historical drama filmsReferences Edit a b c d e Docudrama The Museums of Broadcast Communications Archived from the original on 2012 08 12 Retrieved 28 June 2012 Ogunleye Foluke 2005 Television Docudrama as Alternative Records of History History in Africa 32 479 484 doi 10 1353 hia 2005 0019 ISSN 0361 5413 JSTOR 20065757 S2CID 162322739 Hoffer amp Nelson 1978 p 21 Rosenthal 1999 p xv Lipkin 2011 pp 1 2 D sa Benicia 2005 01 01 Social Studies in the Dark Using Docudramas to Teach History The Social Studies 96 1 9 13 doi 10 3200 TSSS 96 1 9 13 ISSN 0037 7996 S2CID 144165650 a b Aitken Ian ed 2013 The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film Routledge pp 767 768 ISBN 9781136512063 Schauer Bradley 2017 Escape Velocity American Science Fiction Film 1950 1982 Wesleyan University Press p 42 ISBN 9780819576606 Krutnik Frank Neale Steve Neve Brian Stanfield Peter eds 2007 Un American Hollywood Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era Illustrated ed Rutgers University Press p 143 ISBN 9780813541983 Spicer Andrew 2018 Film Noir Routledge p 57 ISBN 9781317875031 Krutnik Frank 2006 In a Lonely Street Film Noir Genre Masculinity Routledge p 206 ISBN 9781134973187 Sanders Steven Skoble Aeon J 2021 The Philosophy of TV Noir University Press of Kentucky p 55 ISBN 9780813181561 Nickerson Catherine Ross 2010 The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction Cambridge University Press p 102 ISBN 9780521136068 Philip C Lewis 75 dramatist writer for various media The Bergen Record 5 September 1979 Retrieved 25 June 2022 Philip C Lewis Writer For Film Radio and TV New York Times 6 September 1979 Retrieved 25 June 2022 docudrama n Online Etymology Dictionary Douglas Harper Retrieved 25 June 2022 DOCUDRAMA Trademark Information Trademark Elite Retrieved 25 June 2022 Siegle 1984 pp 437 451 Bibliography EditHoffer Tom W Nelson Richard Alan Spring 1978 Docudrama on American TV Journal of the University Film Association 30 2 21 27 JSTOR 20687422 Lipkin Steven N 2011 Docudrama Performs the Past Arenas of Argument in Films based on True Stories Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN 9781443827874 Rosenthal Alan 1999 Why Docudrama Fact Fiction on Film and TV Carbondale amp Edwardsville Southern Illinois Press ISBN 978 0 8093 2186 5 Siegle Robert 1984 Capote s Hand Carved Coffins and the Nonfiction Novel Contemporary Literature 25 4 437 451 doi 10 2307 1208055 JSTOR 1208055 Further reading EditDuarte German A 2009 La scomparsa dell orologio universale Peter Watkins e i mass media audiovisivi Milan Mimesis Edizioni ISBN 978 8857501222 Duarte German A 2016 Conversations With Peter Watkins Conversaciones con Peter Watkins Bogota UTADEO PRESS ISBN 978 958 725 195 1 Goodwin Andrew et al Drama Documentary London British Film Institute 1983 Hellmann John 1981 Fables of Fact The New Journalism as New Fiction Urbana University of Illinois Press ISBN 0252008472 Kazin Alfred 1973 Bright Book of Life American Hot Dogs and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer Boston Little Brown ISBN 0316484180 Lipkin Steven N ed 2002 Real Emotional Logic Film and Television Docudrama As Persuasive Practice Carbondale Southern Illinois Press ISBN 978 0 8093 2409 5 Lukacs Gyorgy 1962 Mitchell Hannah Mitchell Stanley eds The Historical Novel London Merlin Press Paget Derek 2011 No Other Way to Tell It Dramadoc docudrama on television 2nd ed Manchester Manchester University Press ISBN 978 0 7190 8446 1 Rhodes Gary Don Springer John Parris eds 2006 Docufictions Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking London McFarland amp Co ISBN 978 0 7864 2184 8 Roscoe Jane Hight Craig 2001 Faking it Mock documentary and the subversion of factuality Manchester Manchester University Press ISBN 978 0 7190 5641 3 Rosenthal Alan 1995 Writing Docudrama dramatizing reality for film and TV Boston Mass Focal Press ISBN 0240801954 Stavreva Kirilka 2000 Fighting Words Witch speak in Late Elizabethan Docu fiction Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 2 309 338 doi 10 1215 10829636 30 2 309 S2CID 170650915 White Hayden 1978 Tropics of Discourse Essays in Cultural Criticism Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 0801821274 External links EditBritish Film Institute paper on British drama documentary Docudrama the real his tory by Cicek Coskun Middle East Technical University Department of Sociology unpublished academic paper Docudrama at BookRags Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Docudrama amp oldid 1148901546, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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