The best animated documentary in my mind is Waltz with Bashir.
The film is based on a scene in which Shmuel Frenkel, one of the interviewees and commander of Foreman’s infantry unit at the time of the film, grabs a general purpose machine gun and “does a crazy waltz” (to the tune of Chopin’s Ballade in C minor) in the midst of heavy enemy fire on Beirut Street, which is covered with huge posters of Bashir Gemayel . The title also refers to Israel’s brief political waltz with Bashir Gemayel as President of Lebanon.
A documentary is a film or television art form that responds to objective reality, takes real life as its source material, uses real people as its object of expression, and processes and presents it artistically, in order to present the truth as its essence and use it to provoke thought.
The inclusion of animation in a documentary makes it somewhat less serious, but increases people’s curiosity about the content of the story, which is good for promotion.
Some may question whether animated documentaries may distort or misinterpret historical content due to the subjective element of the director. I think this is a question well worth exploring, but I think its advantages outweigh its disadvantages.
Firstly, the normal filming method requires time and manpower to capture a lot of day-to-day content, which is undoubtedly boring and tedious. Animation, on the other hand, makes up for these disadvantages, with animated characters and stories that capture people’s attention in a very short period of time, while being able to carry out the detailing of the characters’ expressions.
Secondly, traditional documentaries take a long time to shoot, taking 1-2 years or more. Moreover, documentaries are an art form without detailed split scripts, and sometimes it takes a lot of luck to produce highly compelling footage, which undoubtedly makes it more difficult to shoot a documentary. With the addition of animation, this can all be done in a short period of time, saving a great deal of ineffective expenditure.
At the end of the day, any film or television production is a reflection of the director’s thoughts and feelings about something, and anything that is put on the screen has been artistically manipulated to some degree, even if it is a documentary. I believe that the point of a documentary is that ”the film introduces and explains to the viewer a piece of footage that really happened, and guides and directs the viewer to think about and discuss that piece”.