From fake documentary to what is fake in documentary: fake documentary as a symptom of documentar

Abstract

Although its long existence, and its popular discussion among filmmakers, audience and critics, fake documentaries did not start to be considered a topic of research within cinema studies until the beginning of this century. A popular consideration is that fake documentaries are a «third space» than inhabits between fiction and non-fiction. This paper exposes why those proposals fall out short to explain the complexity of fake documentaries, while proposing the concept of «point of view» to understand the agency of cinematic form to create the experience of a fictional truth; and finally, taking account on psychoanalytic theories of cinema (specially the distinction between the statement and its enunciation), it is considered that a fake documentary is an awry gaze towards reality in order to capture the truth of enunciation beyond the enunciated content. In other words: fake documentaries open a new space that scapes the logic of fiction vs. non fiction, and with this, it can tell the truth while lying.