Steven Broadbent: Intro Paragraph

 As documentary film has expanded over the last fifty years into a major genre of filmmaking it has come under increasing ethical scrutiny. The treatment of its subjects, the integrity of the footage used, the conditions under which the footage is captured, and the final edit and representation it constructs have all been called into question. And rightly so, because the documentary form makes different claims upon the viewer and social world than do most fiction films. As film scholar Bill Nichols asserts, "[d]ocumentary film speaks about situations and events involving real people (social actors) who present themselves to us as themselves in stories that convey a plausible proposal about, or perspective on, the lives, situations, and events portrayed" (Nichols 14). Audiences expect documentary film to frame the real world in terms of real people and events. The camera is not an unobtrusive glimpse into scripted narrative, but an obtrusive and often forced perspective embedded in an historical time and place. As such the perspective of documentary offers the audience a take on reality. The documentary is not a perspective from nowhere in particular. It is a concrete perspective from real people, the filmmakers. It is in accordance with this line of reasoning that I propose that filmmakers ought to be held accountable for the conclusions they draw. After all, the conclusions offered stem from the representations they have created. In this essay I look at five documentary films analyzing the proposed solutions of each. I pay particular attention to The Law In These Parts (Alexandrowicz, 2012) and the way this film is able to escape the usual pitfalls of inadequate solutions. This analysis focuses on the efficacy of such solutions and argues that if documentary filmmakers are going to offer solutions in their films they ought to be held accountable for them.