Through out the first chapter Bill Nichols brings out three points that I think are important. When we hear the word documentary the first thought that comes to mind is that of reality. That is not entirely true or correct, there are many aspects that make up a documentary and lets not forget that there are many forms to. We might modify this definition of documentary like so “Documentary films speak about actual situations or events and honor known facts” (p7). I think that when filming a documentary if we are following the definition above is more real when the images and people are actually from the world we share. Then there is also another point witch is that documentaries are about real people. In some films they use actors to represent that person whom the film is about. It’s still a documentary about real people because these actors are reliving that individual’s life. Of course there is room for modification. For example fiction films also focus on real people, except that these people are usually trained actors playing assigned roles called characters. Last is documentaries tell stories about what happens in the real world.  This perspective refers to the story-telling power of documentaries. They tell us what leads up to actual events. However how do we know whom the documentary is about, the filmmaker’s or the subject’s. Its important to identify the story if it comes from events and people involved or is it just primarily the work of the filmmaker even if the setting, people, and events are base on reality.

During class we saw Nanook of the North, is a 1922 silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty.  It is a film about the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian Artic.  However Nanook is in a way an invention of Flaherty because even though the film has actual events. The structure of characters and their roles can be non realistic. There are some scenes in the film that doubt the reality of the documentary. For example Nanook (Allakariallak) who normally used a gun when hunting, Flaherty encouraged him to hunt after the fashion of his recent ancestors with a spear before the influence of the European. I think that Flaherty did a good job with the filming, however there were some moments that I felt were to exaggerate.