There are three types of documentary genres described in the document: reflexive, observational, and poetic. A reflexive documentary acknowledges the filmmaker's presence and role in constructing the narrative. An observational documentary aims to observe real life with minimal intervention. A poetic documentary organizes real world images through associations and patterns rather than a linear narrative, presenting people and objects as aesthetic fragments.

1. Documentaries Genres
Chris Reade

2. Reflexive Documentary
A reflexive documentary is basically when the
maker of the film acknowledges his presence in
the film and provides a narrative to the film.
You would mainly see this with experimental
documentaries, were the viewer is just as
interested in how the film was constructed as
they are with the actual content.

3. Example – ‘All this Mayhem’
‘All this mayhem’ is a skateboarding
documentary that uses a reflexive style when
filming, In the trailer you will see the director
(who is also one of the skaters) providing a
narrative to the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wDiszm
A2o8&safe=active

4. Observational Documentary
Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously
observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who
worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract
and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs
date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made
them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable
sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode
of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue
and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy,
intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life
situations.

5. Example – ‘Companion care’
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=Lf-
lmVRDtGY&safe=active
Companion care is a documentary about taking care of
animals in a veterinarian showing there side of the
story.

6. Poetic Documentary
which first appeared in the 1920’s, were a sort of reaction against both the
content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The
poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized
images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in
terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—’life-like people’—were
absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other,
that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary,
impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—
a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an
element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The ‘real
world’—Nichols calls it the “historical world”—was broken up into fragments
and aesthetically reconstituted using film form.

7. Example – ‘Gravity’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
-pA33mf6ouw&safe=active
Gravity is a short documentary, that was made by
some people in university about skateboarding,
throughout the documentary you can see the
emotive state and the way the music links with the
documentary.