This paper explains that Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" and Albert and David Maysles' "Grey Gardens" are examples
of the evidential style of
documentary film, a sort of cinema verite, or truth-cinema, which attempts to portray reality through the lens of the camera, objectively and truthfully, with no commentary or underlying message. The author points out that Errol Morris in his documentary "The Thin Blue Line" uses a rhetorical style, in which the filmmaker has no intention of remaining objective to the subject matter and often features the filmmaker as a primary character or narrator, and, in contrast to evidential documentaries, often employs the use of
dramatization, staged scenes and direct interviews for the purpose of convincing the audience of the truth of the film's message. The paper relates that rhetorical and evidential documentary techniques are not completely mutually exclusive as presented in Kidlat Tahimik's "Perfumed Nightmare" ("Mababangong Bangungot"), which blends dramatization and filmmaker interaction with objective, removed footage of unstaged events in real life.