The Perception of a Contemporary in Non-fiction Films

Abstract

The article analyses the difference in the perception of a contemporary between the filmmaker and the audience as exemplified by national non-fiction filmmaking. Documentary cinema is socially focused by nature and being a specific way of studying, reflecting and shaping reality, follows certain aesthetic principles. The viewer’s artistic comprehension is determined by a certain axiological landmark: the focus on the social evaluation of the film, but the audience’s unwillingness to cognize another individual’s experience leads to subjective judgments limited by personal preferences.
The article points out artistic issues of non-fiction cinema. Unlike the situation when there is a sponsor with distinct requirements, a real person is unaware of the ultimate goal of their screen image until they see the finished portrait. The process of the contemporary subject’s familiarization with their portrait and its acceptance is one of the vital creative problems of documentary filmmaking.
In the era of digital technologies and on-line communication, a non-fictional contemporary subject has their own idea of themselves in both real and screen worlds. They generally want to see a positive image of themselves thus they might idealize their representation in the final version of the film. The creation of a documentary portrait is influenced by the attributes of the modern world: the Internet, digital recording technologies. The problem of interaction between the filmmaker, the subject and the spectator in art is considered by referring to the experience from other art-forms.
A real person, who for the most part perceives the process of creating a portrait as a game, may subsequently reject their portrait, but when a lot of work has already been done, this problem can prove a serious one for the director, because it may require dramatic alterations in the film.