DispoDoc

Since the invention of the cinematograph, the documentary genre has been made up of a multitude of cinematographic approaches to filming reality. From the didactic documentary to the investigative inquiry, from the intimate portrait to the autobiographical narrative, from the ethnographic observation to the archive film, from the images collected on the web to the animated documentary, it is clear that it is difficult for a public not initiated to the "creative documentary" to find its way in the great variety of the patrimonial and contemporary production.

In this context, the DispoDoc (Documentary Devices) mediation project proposes to produce a series of 15 6-minute episodes to convey the results of the AlgoDoc1 scientific program to a neophyte audience. The aim of this mediation project is to clarify the concept of a "documentary production device", which has been formalized over the course of three years of interdisciplinary research2. This theoretical model has served as a basis for systematically categorizing documentaries according to their filmmaking devices (their staging biases) rather than the subject matter addressed (their subjects).

To sum up, the DispoDoc program presents three mediation objectives for a non-specialist audience in close collaboration with our partners:

1) Draw up an overview of the variety of filmmaking devices present in contemporary and heritage documentary production. The aim is to deconstruct the amalgam maintained by the television industry between standardized programs (magazines, journalist reports and formatted documentaries) and auteur documentary films.

2) Categorize the diversity of documentary creation through a series of major film families (documentary sub-genres). The aim is to provide socio-semiotic reference points to enable audiences unfamiliar with this film genre to find their way through the great diversity of production. Indeed, the documentary genre cannot rely on the fame of filmmakers, the casting of actors, or the sub-genres that structure fiction cinema. We therefore need to think of mediation as a decision-making tool to help viewers of video-on-demand platforms find the film they want to see in a context of overabundance of proposals (hyperchoice of catalogs of several thousand titles on the Internet).

3) Nourish an image education pathway where the various episodes of the "Documentary Devices" series will be accompanied by educational supplements on the history, techniques and practices of filmmakers to question reality.