Docudrama
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Fact and fiction are old acquaintances. They are both derivatives of Latin words. Fact comes from facere--to make or do. Fiction comes from fingere--to make or shape." --Elements of Fiction (1968) by Robert Scholes |
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Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama.
Docudramas typically strive to adhere to known historical facts, while allowing some degree of dramatic license in peripheral details, such as when there are gaps in the historical record. Dialogue may, or may not, include the actual words of real-life people, as recorded in historical documents.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 concepts of historical drama, a broader category which may also incorporate entirely fictionalized events intermixed with factual ones, and historical fiction, stories generally featuring fictional characters and plots taking place in historical settings or against the backdrop of historical events.
As a portmanteau, 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 portrayed.
See also
- Docufiction
- Mockumentary
- Pseudo-documentary
- Semidocumentary
- Dramality
- Ethnofiction
- Fact and fiction
- 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