It is important to ask the question of why documentaries are made.


Every paragraph should properly establish and explain your position or response to the documentary, backed with evidence and examples. Devote every paragraph to a particular idea and a few related evidences.


Your stance can be supportive or opposed to the view of the producer of the film. However, it has to be well discussed in a way that readers can read and understand even without watching the documentary.

This should make up the bulk of the paper, and present a comprehensive evaluation of the documentary. This section highlights the body paragraphs and should clearly indicate that you have watched and understood the context of the film.

The Why Michigan “Why this College” Essay Example

In this three-hour documentary film “Women Who Make America,” the director Barak Goodman shows the struggle and fight women from different social strata have put to end the prejudice against them. The narrator, Meryl Streep, gives the story of these notable women who helped end social and political injustices against women in different fields for the past five decades. The movie is a true depiction of how women have struggled to end injustices in society.

Reading samples of response papers is also another way through which you can easily find out how to write a reaction paper to documentary. The following are samples of professionally written reaction papers to refer to.

Jenifer Siebel’s “Miss Representation” is an award-winner documentary film that focuses on how the media represent women. The film is comprised of a selected group of high-profile women who are against the media depiction of women. Rather than focusing on remedies to the way media degrades women, the film poses juxtaposition. This serves as fuel to an already biased society against women instead of offering a solution.

There are many different views about refugees in Australian society, where illegal boat people and over flowing detention centres are a controversial problem today. Go Back To Where You Came From is a documentary directed by Ivan O’Mahoney about a social experiment that challenges the dominant views of six Australians about refugees and asylum seekers. These six Australians are taken on a 25 day journey where they are placed into the troubled “worlds” of refugees. For a few of the Australians it is their first time overseas but, for all of them it is the most challenging and confronting experience of their lives. This essay will discuss


The Why Penn “Why this College” Essay Example

It gives us a clear and precise portrayal of individuals, events, and items, and is regularly utilised in real life reportage „Documentary relies on the construction of an image in the representation of reality” - David Bate....

The Why Tufts “Why this College” Essay Example

This narration refers not only to the narrator, but also to Guetta and Banksy. The narration by Guetta was heavily dependent on real people and events, as evident from his shadowing of the various street artists and their production and installation processes. On the other hand, Banksy’s narration was largely based on his own interaction with Guetta and with the footages that he shot. According to Nichols (2001, p. 68), such a speech-oriented film like Exit through the Gift Shop (2010) convey meanings that may be worlds apart than what was literally expressed. The narration then, presented different accounts of the real to the .

Lastly, the use of talking heads was also another convention used to show the real. There were many interview scenes with talking heads such as Guetta, Banksy, Fairey and Invader throughout the film. Using talking heads allows for them to bear witness to and authenticate the claims of the “true accounts” shown in the film, which further allows the audiences to believe in the realness of the

The Why Cornell “Why this College” Essay Example

The concept of a documentary is far from being new. Narrating one’s life can be regarded as one of the most basic ways for artists to express themselves. The documentary can be defined as the attempt to recreate the actual events, either from a biographic perspective or representing a particular time period (Archeoten). For this reason, the documentary can be defined as the narration of actual and important historical events using realism as the lens through which these events are viewed.

The Why Bowdoin “Why this College” Essay Example

Documentary filmmakers strive to capture the real in their documentary films – a convention used by both fiction and non-fiction films to immerse their audiences into the issue. There are a few common methods used by filmmakers to capture the real, all stemming from Dziga Vertov’s theory of Kino Pravda, which explores the idea of truth in films. Realism is important to filmmaking as it helps question the relation of a to . More often than not, our disbelief are suspended the moment we are exposed to a documentary, and we believe what we see much more easily than when watching, say, a movie or television program. A documentary’s main concern is to present a film taken from reality, and to show that reality to audiences as closely as possible. Thus documentary filmmakers have come up with several conventions to capture the real. Many of these conventions were spotted in Exit

How can you write an essay like this?

When you hear obesity, do you imagine malnutrition or simply an individual who “eats too much?” Well, these health threatening issues go hand and hand. Learning that a large number of obese individuals are low income, it can be concluded that a lack of funds results in cheaper, more fattening and unhealthy food purchases, which ultimately can develop into malnutrition and unsafe weight gain. The eye-opening film, A Place At The Table, provides viewers with a true representation of how the issues of hunger and malnutrition in the United States affect individuals on a daily basis. Throughout this movie, the filmmakers, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, examine the lives of three individuals who suffer from hunger and and lack of nutrition.