A documentary film is a non-fictional motion picture, for the purpose of education entertainment or maintaining historical record.

Early documentary films, called "actuality films", lasted for one minute or less. Now  documentaries are longer  and include more categories like educational, observational, docufiction.

Documentaries are informative to a wider audience, resource for information, inspirational and motivate.

Some of the example of documentary film are Symphony of a Big City (1927) Finns Terra (1929) Las Hurdes (aka Land Without Bread) (1932)

Types of Documentaries

1. Poetic Documentaries:- 

Examples: Joris Ivenss Rain (1928) Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930).

2. Expository Documentaries:-

Examples:Ken Burns The Civil War (1990)  John Berger's Ways of Seeing; Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New (1980).

3. Observational Documentaries:-

Examples.: Frederick Wiseman's  High School (1968);  Gilles Groulx and Michael LesRacquetteirs (1958); D.  A Don't Look Back; Edgar Morin's Chronicle Of A Summer (1960)

4. Participatory Documentary:-

Examples:Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Ross McElwee's Sherman's Match (1985); Roich and Morin's Chronicle of a summer (1960).

5.Reflexive Documentary.

Example: Buniel Land without Bread; L.M kit Carson's David Holzman's Diary (1968) David & MacDougall's Wedding Camels (1980).

6.  Performative Documentaries:-

Examples: Alain Resnai's Night and Fog(1955); Peter Forgace Free Fall(1988);  Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss (1985).

  Docufiction.

Docufiction is the combination of documentary and fiction. Docufiction are narrative. It is a film which capture reality such as it is and introduce unreal elements or fictional elements.

  Docudrama

Docudrama  dramatizes creation of actual event. Radio and Tv program, feature film, include in this. Dialogues include in docudrama, it may be actual word of real life people.

   Sitcoms

A sitcom, situational comedy, is a creation of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters. Here, the comedian tells Jokes and stories to an audience. Sitcoms originated in radio, later it comes to television.

   Soap Opera

Soap opera is a television or radio program,  dealing with domestic situation. The term soap opera originated from radio dramas, sponsored by soap manufacturers.

 Importance of Documentaries.

•  Source of information.
•  Help to understand topic.
•  Inspirational and entertainment.
•  Bring awareness of unknown stories.

 Impact of Documentaries.

Documentary films tell the importance of an event, historical record and bring awareness to a large audience.    Documentaries are the best resource for information. Sometimes documentaries are informative inspiration, entertainment.

            Documentaries help to access information about many subjects like history, politics, social issues, helps to access average person. Documentaries helps to capture the content easily.

There are some advantages and disadvantages for Documentaries.

Advantages of Documentary:-

•  Educate about issues.
•  Helps think in a deep way.
•   Inspire us to take action.
•  Summarize the topic in an interesting way.
•  Get lots of information about the topic.

Disadvantages:-

•  Possibility to false information.
•  Sometimes it is hard to understand the theme of the documentary.
•  Possibility to lack of Audio visual quality.
•  Possibility of misunderstanding about the reality.
•  Lack of time. 

Documentary helps to get information about social, political, historical issues. Documentaries are mainly used for educational purposes. Help teachers to convey message easily. But now the value of documentaries become decrease, not much interest for watching this type of movies. 

The value of documentaries become decrease, we should have awareness about documentaries. We should inform about the importance of documentaries to youth.

It is an article about documentaries. It helps to understand the importance of documentaries.