What was documentary? An elegy for Robert Gardner

Is it time to put away this mirage of ‘nonfiction’ cinema? A video essay by Kevin B. Lee for Sight & Sound’s Greatest Documentaries of All Time poll, probing changing documentary aesthetics and ambitions through the ethnographic films of Robert Gardner, from 1963’s Dead Birds to 1994’s Forest of Bliss. Read Kevin’s essay on his video: See all our Greatest Documentaries of All Time poll: