A docudrama is a genre of radio and television programming, feature film,
and staged theatre, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual
events. On stage, it is sometimes known as documentary theatre.
In the core elements of its story a docudrama strives to adhere to known
historical facts, while allowing a greater or lesser degree of dramatic
license in peripheral details, and where there are gaps in the historical record.
Dialogue may include the actual words of real-life persons, as recorded in
historical documents. Docudrama producers sometimes choose to film their
reconstructed events in the actual locations in which the historical events
occurred. 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 concept of "historical drama", a broader category which may also
encompass largely fictionalized action taking place in historical settings or
against the backdrop of historical events.
As a neologism, the term 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 it portrays. Characteristics
Docudramas tend to demonstrate some or most of the following characteristics
Representation of actual historical events
Focus on the facts of the event, as they are known
Use of 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.
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. After World War II, Louis de Rochemont, creator of The
March of Time, became a producer at 20th Century Fox. 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. These films
were widely imitated, and the style soon became used even for completely
fictional stories such as The Naked City. Perhaps the most significant of
the semidocumentary films was He Walked by Night, based upon the serial killer
Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker. 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 what became one
of the most famous docudramas in history: Dragnet.
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. American television
Some docudrama examples for American television include Brian's Song, and
Roots. 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. Docudramas
Historic evolution = Radio =
The March of Time The Fifth Horseman
= Films = The March of Time
Call Northside 777 Children of Hiroshima
The Wrong Man A Night to Remember
The Gallant Hours Judgment at Nuremberg
The Longest Day Culloden
Cathy Come Home In Cold Blood
Tora! Tora! Tora! 10 Rillington Place
The Missiles of October All the President's Men
Pumping Iron King
Threads Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C.
Banks Seacoal
Life Story Goodfellas
Dien Bien Phu Ed Wood
Quiz Show Apollo 13
Nixon Hillsborough
Pirates of Silicon Valley The Insider
Thirteen Days The Pianist
Bloody Sunday The Laramie Project
The Story of the Weeping Camel Touching the Void
The Last Dragon Cinderella Man
End Day Good Night, and Good Luck
Supervolcano Bobby
Hollywoodland Krakatoa: The Last Days
The 9/11 Commission Report United 93
Rescue Dawn Breach
Charlie Wilson's War A Mighty Heart
Zodiac Che
The Beckoning Silence Frost/Nixon
John Adams The Lena Baker Story
The Informant! Public Enemies
The Fighter 127 Hours
Fair Game No Place on Earth
The Attacks of 26/11 Captain Phillips
Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story
America: Imagine the World Without Her Heaven Is for Real
Bridge of Spies = Television =
Culloden The War Game
Death of a Princess Egypt
Space Race The Road to Guantanamo
Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
Nuclear Secrets Heroes and Villains
House of Saddam Micro Men
Moonshiners The Men Who Built America
Mabo An Adventure in Space and Time
Code of a Killer See also
Docufiction Dramality
Ethnofiction Mockumentary
Fly on the wall Factual television
Reality television Peter Watkins, a pioneer of docudrama
List of historical drama films List of Asian historical drama films
References Bibliography
Hellmann, John. Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252008472.
Kazin, Alfred. Bright Book of Life: American Hot Dogs and Storytellers from
Hemingway to Mailer. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0316484180.
Lipkin, Steven N., ed.. Real Emotional Logic: Film and Television Docudrama As
Persuasive Practice. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. ISBN
978-0-8093-2409-5. Lukács, György. Mitchell, Hannah;
Mitchell, Stanley, eds. The Historical Novel. London: Merlin Press.
Paget, Derek. No Other Way to Tell It: Dramadoc/docudrama on television.
Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-8446-1.
Rhodes, Gary Don; Springer, John Parris, eds.. Docufictions: Essays on the
intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking. London: McFarland
& Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-2184-8. Roscoe, Jane; Hight, Craig. Faking it:
Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality. Manchester: Manchester
University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5641-3.
Rosenthal, Alan. Writing Docudrama: dramatizing reality for film and TV.
Boston, Mass.: Focal Press. ISBN 0240801954.
Rosenthal, Alan. Why Docudrama?: Fact-Fiction on Film and TV. Carbondale
& Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2186-5.
Siegle, Robert. "Capote's Hand-Carved Coffins and the Nonfiction Novel".
Contemporary Literature 25: 437–451. doi:10.2307/1208055.
Stavreva, Kirilka. "Fighting Words: Witch-speak in Late Elizabethan
Docu-fiction". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30: 309–338.
doi:10.1215/10829636-30-2-309. White, Hayden. 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 realtory by Çiçek Coşkun: unpublished academic paper
Docudrama at BookRags