Looking Back: Using the Lens to Represent the Past

There is concern documentary is undergoing a crisis in production. A common criticism alleges the genre''s sacrosanct reputation to reveal ‘truth and reality'' becomes vulnerable when art and drama merge in filmic text. Media practitioners are increasingly mixing fiction with fact, entertainment with information. Films based on historical time, events and people have not been immune to these changes. This study looks at two visual accounts that are both based on the same specific period of Northern Ireland''s Troubles. One is a conventional, made-for-television documentary. The other a form of hybrid-doc, made with highly stylized artistic and dramatic elements. This research examines how art and drama help reveal associations with ‘truth and reality''. It compares the depictive modes and the levels of discourse to assess specific historical facts. The findings suggest possibilities for films based in history to move beyond the historical evidentials. By moving beyond a strictly empirical type of realism, art and drama may help elicit a more affective psychological reality of the time, events and people from the 1981 Ireland Republic Army (IRA) hunger strike at H-blocks prison.