Documentary sounds like an archaic and outdated word to me. It has always been a misunderstood, misused word and a concept; For example today people say "I watch discovery or national geographic night and day" as they just want to exhibit their own intellectual status, sensitive personalities by proving they keep watching documentaries. However those things on those channels stand to be the most distant productions to general concept of documentary.

Documentaries are categorized in many different forms by the researchers. They could be ethnologic, research, travel, nature documentaries; real news documentaries, document-dramas or suitcase documentaries etc. I will not go into detail on those categories as I do not suppose they will be beneficial for students of “documentary” except that they will ease the job of classifying shelves in a television station or allow a researcher to analyze documents in an orderly manner. In my lectures I define all documentaries as "propaganda" documentaries. Again during my lectures, “reality of a documentary and objectivity in a documentary” are almost never discussed subjects that in my opinion do waste an important couple of documentary lesson hours in this country. How will it be possible for an opinion claiming that documentary is a propaganda tool, to mention reality and neutrality? Moreover we accept that documentary is fictitious and we dwell on the techniques required while fictionalizing. That is we try to perceive and apply the methods necessary to create an illusion; a good way of lighting, a solid editing, how to use a camera better, how it is done, etc.

Actually above mentioned matter is not the subject of this essay; I have mentioned it to come closer to a point. And also with the hope that it will be effective and shocking enough to bring educators come to the real point who use some of the educative seats related to documentary at an extreme level of masturbation leaving the virtual topics like neutrality, reality, ethics aside… At least maybe some will get nervous…

Even this is a change… But in general, like some of visual trials that I have used, my essays whet their appetite instead of creating an effect of shocking. For instance, the chain of relationships between “documentary-commercial” I have tried to establish in this essay is an approach that I have been working on for four years now and that I have not yet met a similar one in any resource. Actually its value can be discussed but the authenticity and my ownership of the approach is a subject out of the discussion. Do not be surprised when you meet quite a number of people producing documentaries using, writing on and taking the possession of concepts which this essay tries to determine even without presenting any reference to my name. When we have watched a lot of virtual experimental materials we have tried in First studios after us on various number of video clips, television commercials, we have waited for a very long time wondering whether the people who have used it would ever call and say something, thank us, announce that they have been inspired by us, we still wait …

I said documentary is propaganda and documentary is not to be watched on discovery. Please let me say something small aside all of this:

We assume that the purpose of commercials is to increase the sales of a good or a service. Probably it is true in general; there is not much to think about that. But today I see a second purpose very distinctively and I find it important enough forcing me to share it with you. Let me tell this giving an example. The last campaign started by Yapı Kredi Bankası or some other bank (which one fits better) to orient youngsters towards the bank, as far as I could understand tells about seventies, eighties, if I am wrong is about sixties and fifties. Girls flipping back and forth, licking lollipops play with hula-hoops and slide on top of stair banisters and they go to a bank. This commercial may have the purpose of increasing consumption too which I do not have any intention to discuss but its most important function is to TRANSFORM HISTORY; write it again, distort it, make it crooked, destroy it (use the one you like). In eighties (in fifties, sixties and in seventies too) people died in this country, there was torture, there was black market, there was the coup, there was war, they sent people on exile out of their countries and their universities. There were not only the girls jumping ropes, flipping back and forth then. So when you take a look at important commercials recently especially shot with a big production budget, you will see it much more clearly that their purpose and function is actually to transform history. When you transform history, you transform today and more important tomorrow too. Is it our Anatolia where that girl in the telephone commercial strolls around, is freedom such a cheap word to use? Is it as fertile and green as the place that we watch in Ford minibus commercials, are the fish and the cows as well fed as we see, are the villagers always as happy as they look, do the lorry drivers always kindly give slight slap on the back of their trucks with smiling eyes as if they have horses (what a creativity, isn't it? Well, well …) No. Look at these gasoline, bank, automobile, detergent, soda pop drink propaganda films and you will see that those films TRANSFORM HISTORY very clearly (Of course they want to pump up the consumption, I do not say the opposite and this is not even important at this stage).

In the last sentence of the previous paragraph I have the term of propaganda film instead of commercial film and underlined it. Can we define a commercial film this way? Yes, we can do it very naturally. In the beginning I have said documentary is propaganda film. So according my own approach commercial film and documentary propaganda films become two different versions. If we carry this one more step, commercial becomes documentary. Of course it does. Can there be something more natural than this? The perception limits of today's human being, their way using time, capacity to understand, patience and similar features are taken under consideration documentaries shortened to j-half or a minute period are produced and we know them by a more common name as "commercials" and watch. Lene Riefenstahl or Flaherty periods are over. Today's very short documentaries are produced by governments, national and multinational companies in this new format and make people watch them. There are too many advantages not to be counted here for them to be that short (Of course advantage is not for us but for the people who create the propaganda) but the topic of "shortness and its functional importance" is the subject of another essay. Choosing this format does not stem from lack of time or period on television is expensive, it is a very conscious choice that increases propaganda's effectiveness …

These propaganda films or pictures or texts or logos; bursting out of billboards, radios, televisions, virtual medias, cinemas, uniforms of sports teams, hats of celebrities, building facades, lighters, bus seats head rests, train and flight tickets, meatball restaurants, ice cream selling points and sports field surfaces, under the sea and the sky with their rude, cruel, aggressive, repetitive until you wear out, repeating again and again and repeating one more time structures do not only take our words, language, everything we want to say from our own hands, transform all meaningful images into one single plastic element and approach “abused” with the same purpose, but also just like a flock of grasshoppers plundering a field do try to exalt a consumption ideology and sell it; but also TRANSFORMS HISTORY, consequently TOMORROW too.

In fact, nowadays in some third world countries other things are happening too. Let me tell you. Commercial(ist)s claiming themselves as the biggest shareholder in development of this crazy consumption culture are one of the responsible aspect in ecological vanishing process if their claim stands to be true (This is an inference received as a logical result looking through the points of view belonging to people in the advertisement business).

As the world gradually walk towards ecological vanishing level and income distribution continues to loose its balance in a country like Turkey which stayed behind (underdeveloped, developing, EU candidate etc.) a time comes when government or the private sector spares a budget for something called "social commercial" (this is another subject for another essay). This budget sparing timing moment is determined by the day on which children trying to clean your car's windshield in Taksim blow up a big rock on a luxurious car's windshield. I mean, budget sparing matter is determined by a moment when hunger, unemployment, injustice in income distribution, actually violence touch pretty boys and girls. And do you know what happens when they spare a budget? Advertising agencies that are one of the important causes for this environmental, ethical degeneration and collapse and consumption craziness a little or a lot, direct or indirect by producing these consumption and service propaganda films until that day, (documentary companies, companies producing propaganda films etc.) will dare to produce this social commercial. Once they said "if communism has to come to this country, it will be us to bring it ". We were angry then. These boys, gentlemen of Istanbul, who are literate enough, been there done that people who have their breakfast in Dulcinea in the morning and entertain themselves in Babylon at night, walking around with Radikal in their arms, addicts of Açık Radyo, who have studied in Cambridge of course will produce "social commercials" themselves. In both ways; some will prepare music, some will write the texts, some will perform and they will not see a bit of harm in that…

“Besides” they will/still do it with a mighty logic that can be put as "let my elder sister sing the songs, my wife perform, my brother-in-law shoot, sister-in-law will do the editing " style that is nationwide familiar, putting it rude as in "I will not leave a penny to strangers " or stating politely "what good is it to me that it is a good production let the money stay with us at least ".

I said that commercial and documentary actually is the same thing today. If there is any truth in this; we, lecturers on documentary should provide ourselves and our students with such a good enough technique to shoot a commercial each, so that they can realize propaganda films that will influence the audience. It is not possible to draw transformed history and ethics to a positive level with good intentions, bravery and an archaic pronunciation. It will not happen and it is obvious.

Esthetically and technically documentary should take back what has been stolen undeterred from all of art history and science by commercials and use them when required.

June 2002