Its amazing that in this documentary portrait the protagonist does not show up (because she is dead)The nature of documentary films has changed in the past 20 years from the cinema verité tradition.The recent success of the documentary genre, and the advent of DVDs, has made documentaries financially viable even without a cinema release. There are now around thirty quality feature-length documentaries on notable photographers, for instance, a situation that would have seemed incredible twenty years ago.Docudramas tend to follow a set of following guidelines... * A strict focus on the facts of the event being treated, as they are known * A tendency to avoid overt commentary or authorial editorializing * The use of literary and narrative techniques to flesh out or render story-like the bare facts of an event in history. * A tendency to avoid literary techniques as regards the overt assertion of the creator's own point of view or beliefs.Modern documentaries have a substantial overlap with other forms of television, with the development of so-called reality television that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged.Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. A good site on the net is: http://www.documentarychannel.com/