Film as dialogue: Documentary theorization through practice

Abstract

A large body of documentary scholarship approves of the documentary’s effectiveness in addressing social issues beneficially. However, documentaries that have been made with the primary aim of testing such effectiveness are rare. This article presents the findings based on a documentary made specifically to test this theory. Titled Forsaken, the documentary was made and used as a test tool to assess its rhetorical ability to generate pledges for support of neglected adolescent orphans in South African communities. This article highlights the documentary’s rhetorical strategies and the extent to which such strategies led audience members to pledge support for this category of orphans. Contrary to views in the extant literature that pay little attention to the contextual limitations of the documentary’s rhetorical principles, the present article argues that a documentary’s effectiveness in addressing social issues beneficially is largely dependent on the cultural attuning of the documentary’s rhetorical principles.