In 2018, six documentaries each earned at least $1.5 million at the box office – and some surpassed $20 million. It’s about RBG , Won’t You Be My Neighbor? , Three Identical Strangers , Whitney , Pope Francis: A Man of His Word , and Pandas . The golden age or the Renaissance, as someone has defined it, of the documentary is for many in full bloom, also thanks to the video-streaming platforms that facilitate its use. Wrongly mistreated and considered boring compared to fictional stories, the documentary has become a mainstream productto which even the brands look with interest. And he managed to respond in a new way to one of the strongest needs of our time: the hunger for stories, for true stories.
The documentary in the narrative age
The unexpected success of Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders, 1999) and Bowling a Columbine (Micheal Moore, 2002) marked the Slovenia Mobile Number List international documentary panorama. Maurizio Fantoni Minnella, in his book Author Documentary Films , states in fact that these works may have even provided models and canons for the next generation. To emerge, slowly, is a cinema of reality totally different from the conventional one. Rethinking language would thus lead to a renaissance of the documentary.
The non-fiction narration between new technologies and evolutions
In 2010 , The Guardian headlined Camera, laptop, action: the new golden age of documentary . In the article, Sean O’Hagan talked about the Hong Kong lead variety of themes and styles of the 120 documentaries presented at that year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest. YouTube was born just five years ago, Netflix had recently added the paid video-streaming platform to the DVD mailing service. At the same time, the means and ways of making documentary cinema were rapidly evolving, especially among young authors. The diffusion of new mobile technologies, able to ensure high quality, had joined the need to tell that vibrated in the new generations. These were some of the reasons why the landscape of non-fiction storytelling was changing. The new golden age of documentary had just begun, and it would have found a powerful ally in video-streaming.
Is the success of streaming documentaries (also) a question of algorithms?
Today, in fact, 75% of Netflix users watch documentaries .
A good story, but not only
Making a good documentary is not easy. In recounting real life, everyday life, one can arrive at a very different result from what one imagined.
Video-streaming, low costs and awareness
. Similarly, the ease with which it can be used on on-demand platforms is not the real and only reason. The golden age of documentary is the result of the interaction of many factors, not least the growing social awareness.
The success of the documentary genre and its diffusion among the general public have aroused the attention of marketers.
Furthermore, the golden age of the documentary only applies to a certain type of production. While the forms change and evolve, the hope is that the substance never betrays itself.
