Rauschenberg's work after that is often, in spite of itself, on the edge of the decorative or the documentary; it has lost much of its transformative capacity.
Most of the time, because it's a documentary, it has to trot around with its characters -- the staff -- as they run themeless errands and navigate prosaic, or at best amusing, reality.
But if the film has the look of a documentary, it has the psychological density and narrative coherence of a novel.
IT ALL started when RDF Media, a production company, sexed up a documentary it had made for the BBC called "A Year with the Queen" in order to sell it to foreign television firms at a market in Cannes.
I love a bit of bossa as much as the next person, but by the end of the documentary, it had all become a bit too sophisticated and noodly.
In September, Wada banned the gas xenon following allegations, in another German TV documentary, it had been used as a performance-enhancing substance by Russian competitors at Sochi.
HBO indeed originates and finances most of its documentaries, as it has "Children in War," rather than buying films or works in progress.
Like many documentaries, though, it has an afterlife on DVD.
Consider this: WNET has decided that it is no longer enough to broadcast an eight-week series of short films and documentaries, as it has done every spring since 1995.
Technically, Mr. Fowler's film is a documentary, though it has the flavor of creative nonfiction.
