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The purpose of this guide is to familiarize you with the best resources for research on documentary films. Click here for a complete guide to film resources.
Click here for the outline of the article The Fog of War (in-class activity, Nov. 13, 2006). 
Getting Started
For this assignment, you will analyze a documentary film using tools from the texts for the class.
This is meant to provide a general research process to write your paper:
- Identify your documentary
- Write a thesis/argument - You may have to revise your argument or thesis statement as you research and understand your topic better. Click here for an online thesis builder. You can also use it to generate an outline of your paper.
- Conduct your research- What kind of resources do you need to support your thesis and analysis of the film? Where will you find these resources?
- Write your paper
- Cite your sources - Using the style of your choosing, cite direct quotes, summaries and paraphrases in the text of your paper, and provide a bibliography or works cited list of all the materials used in your paper.
Books
Books are a great source for background information, or general information about the broad topic area. For example, if you are analyzing the film Farenheit 9/11, you may not find any books specifically about that film, but you might find one about Michael Moore, or political documentaries.
To search for books, you need to use a library catalog. Depending on how much time you have, you have a couple of options:
Libraries use subject headings to describe what the book is about. They're a great way to find "more like this." A few useful subject headings for documentary films:
Articles
Articles are great resources on your specific topic. The list of databases below will help you find scholarly and news articles about your topic.
What is a scholarly article?
Search Tips
- To find reviews and critical analysis of your film, search for the title of the film in quotation marks. E.g. "fog of war"
- Look for the
 button in the databases to find the full-text of the article, or to request it through interlibrary loan.
Suggested
Databases
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Project Muse
Full-text coverage for hundreds of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. |
Communication & Mass Media Complete
Provides abstracts and full text for more than 200 communication journals. |
Lexis Nexis Academic
Provides access to a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.
Use the Guided Search to search for Entertainment news. Click here for instructions. |
JSTOR
Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others. |
Academic Search Premier
A large, multi-disciplinary
database offering full text for nearly 1,850
scholarly journals, including more than 1,250
peer-reviewed titles. |
Websites
These may not be
as scholarly as published journal reviews, so be aware
of the credentials of the reviewer. Keep in mind when
searching the internet that not all material will be
scholarly and other search terms will be 'cinema' or 'film'
rather than 'movie'.
Introduction to Genre Theory
From England, this site offers a
more scholarly discussion of genre.
IMDb Genre
Browser
A list of genres from the Internet Movie Database
Specialized Sites
DocumentaryFilms.net
Information on documentary films and those who make them
including a finding aid for the rarer titles.
Folkstreams.net
A site devoted to the
documentary genre, offering viewable documentaries on a wide
variety of topics from the folk historian's view.
Reviews of films
These
may not be as scholarly as published journal reviews, so be
aware of the credentials of the reviewer.
Images: A Journal of Popular Film and Culture
Discussion of films, genres and directors along with
reviews of both theatre-release movies and video.
Internet Movie Database
For basic information about a film, this is one of the
more complete sites. The comments from other visitors
are NOT scholarly, so don't rely on that part the site.
Movie Review
Query Engine
This site collects reviews from a variety of resources
for over 45,000 movies.
Roger Ebert
One of the more well-known popular movie reviewers,
this site assembles his reviews from the Chicago
Sun-Times newspaper.
Citing Sources
As you write your paper, you'll need
to cite passages and ideas from the sources
you've found. Check with your professor
which style is preferred for this assignment.
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APA: Publication manual
of the American Psychological Association.
5th ed. Washington, DC : American
Psychological Association, 2001.
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Chicago
manual of style. 15th
ed. Chicago : University of Chicago
Press, 2003.
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MLA handbook
for writers of research papers.
6th ed. New York : Modern Language
Association of America, 2003.
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