Contemporary documentary film production is going through a moment in which the documentary filmmaker’s reflection becomes a strong element of the narrative, as well as their motivations, and even an interference with the film’s object. In Latin America, although these documentary films are not numerous, they are innovative in their language. Performance documentary films, hybrid productions by which the film is a process and not a means to understand the world; in which the author/character builds a sensitive discourse from their own subjective vision of the world. In the Chilean case, this modality is concerned with the country’s identity and its historical memory, issues linked to the experience of almost 20 years of military dictatorship. Chile-La Memoria Obstinada, by Patricio Guzmán, La Flaca Alejandra, by Carmen Castillo, and En un Lugar del Cielo, by Alejandra Carmona, are three documentary films from the nineties that are part of this new trend in documentary filmmaking.

This text is a summary of a thesis written to obtain the BA degree in Journalism at the Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa. The Portuguese documentaries shown in Docs, a television program of RTP2 channel, are analyzed with the intention of understanding, in a restricted approach, what type of documentaries were selected to be exhibited, and on a broader approach, the current trends in Portuguese documentaries.

The text presents the historical analysis of the Cabra Marcado para Morrer, by Eduardo Coutinho, and the “cinematographic reading of history” by means of statements of the characters and sequences of the film presented by the filmmaker. Also, it is investigated the reason why Coutinho can be identified as a documentarist who adopts procedures that allow us to relate him with the field of Oral History, since in his working method it is possible to find interface points such as the transparency of intentions, the use of pre-interviews, metalanguage as form, and statements with self-sufficiency status.

This text presents an historical view of documentary filmmaking in Brazil, from the arrival of cinema in the country, through the most significant phases of its production, its aesthetic evolution and its strengthening as a genre. Also, this text presents the main names in Brazilian documentary production and its main films.

In this article, we show that if Louis Lumière, heir of the impressionists, considered the cinematograph as a privileged instrument of the movements of nature and men, that very cinematograph, by its quality of presence and capacity of authentic images projection of registered life instants, quickly attracted the attention of public personalities, who saw in the cinematograph not only an instrument to propagate their image, but also an exceptional means to defend and illustrate their points of view.

In this article I examine religious documentary. I will analyze Jesus e Sua Época (1995), and Quem Foi Jesus? (1996). About their structure and form I make a connection between this production and the one made by British Documentary Film Movement, investigating how religious institutions or its representatives appropriated this format, and adopted it to their apological and theological ends. Moreover, using data of a survey carried out on Video Stores on the different types of religious videos in the market and available to the public, I comment and categorize these productions.

In 1996 the documentary Asaltar los Cielos, by Javier Rioyo and José Luis López Linares is released in Spanish cinemas, causing a point of inflexion for this genre in Spain. The narrative schemes of Rioyo and Lopez Linares were at their time revolutionary in documentary filmmaking. The novelty was that they introduced in documentary a style that until then the public associated with fiction: drama. This article analyzes in detail Asaltar los Cielos and shows how historical documentary in Spain is oriented towards a new sub-genre: documentary of dramatic divulgation, characterized to offer dramatic and narrative processes similar to cinematographic fictions.

Documentary cinema has had, in Argentina, an uncertain destination, in some periods it was protagonist, and in others almost disappeared. In this last decade it reached levels of interesting production and quality. It is already a common place to associate this growth to the social situation of crisis since 2001 that overflew in “filmed events”. However, in Argentina documentary possesses a long history that includes fundamental names for its construction.