This book proposes an alternative to established theories of nonfiction film and video, especially the post­-structuralist and postmodernist model of reflexivity. The field that it covers includes social and journalistic documentaries through historical compilation programs to poetic and experimental forms, produced and disseminated via diverse state, commercial and independent arrangements. The book spans different documentary times, from those of Robert Flaherty to our own, but is not intended as a history. Rather, it is presented as a pragmatics, a study of how nonfiction films 'are used to perform various social tasks' (p. 2), combined with a rhetoric, a study of their expressive techniques and the ways in which these may influence viewers.