Introduction: Fiction, Documentary, and Cultural Change in Latin America

Abstract

There has been a rising interest in recent years in theorizing the similarities and differences between fiction and documentary film, fuelled in part by the growing stature of documentary within academic film criticism. Precisely what it is that divides documentary from fiction, if anything, is a matter of some disagreement. Like most categories and genres, in practice these terms resist definitions, becoming—as Bill Nichols suggests—”a little like our everyday, but unrigorous, distinction between fruits and vegetables.”² It is nonetheless clear that this distinction, however slippery, has become a significant fulcrum for contemporary controversy over the nature of the relationship between the cinematic sign and its referent.

… the most intense and productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries of its individual areas and not in places where these areas have become enclosed in their own specificity.

Mikhail Bakhtin¹