The Real Story: A Viewer’s Guide to Documentary Films

This is a golden age for documentaries: millions of people now see them in movie theaters. While not every documentary can match the success of Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins, or An Inconvenient Truth, their wide availability on video and specialty cable channels has ensured them a long life. Yet until now there has never been a general film guide devoted solely to documentaries.

            The Real Story examines some 300 of the world’s most notable documentaries, offering their background stories and a critical consideration of each. From 1895’s humble Arrival of a Train, the Lumiere Brothers’ record of a locomotive pulling into a French rail station, to 2009’s Earth, a Disney nature film spanning the globe to capture stunning images using the latest digital technology, the variety of films is extraordinary.

            A film shot directly from the annals of real life, without a script or actors playing their parts, can touch viewers in a way that fictional movies can never quite duplicate. Whether they rediscover a forgotten page of history; expose an injustice; champion society’s underdogs; celebrate a peculiar aspect of sport, music, film, or art; commemorate a notable life; or take us on an adventure, documentary films comprise a rich humanistic tradition.

            The Real Story offers a wide-ranging survey of the best non-fiction films. Viewers should find in it a treasure trove of movies to revisit or discover.