The Zulu mask: the role of creative imagination in documentary film : an investigation into how subjective creative imagination was applied to strategically enhance the "Mimicry of the Real" in the documentary film, the Zulu Mask

Abstract

Scholarly discourses on documentary film have focused on the debate between documentary’s claims of ‘objectivity’ and ‘truthfulness’ versus the reality of its subjective ontology. At the turn of the 21st century, there seems to be appreciation of the constructiveness of documentary film. This development is taking place at the backdrop of emergence of more subjective documentary films produced by a new crop of filmmakers who do not shy away from exposing their subjective production thoughts and processes, contrary to earlier documentary filmmakers. This renewed interest is interesting and points to something that calls for an investigation in order to understand fundamental reasons behind it. In this report, I investigate the relationship between this development and the concept of ‘Creative Imagination’ normally associated with fiction film. Particularly, the paper investigates why ‘Creative Imagination’ may be understood to deploy aspects of realism style which manipulates time, space, character, and characterisation, in the production and analysis of documentary films. Through a production of a documentary film The Zulu Mask, this report hypothesises that documentary just like fiction film utilises the logic of creative imagination of the mind and aspects of realism style’ to mimic the real. Documentary and fiction, I argue are thus the products of the same thought process and desire.