While many still view the documentary as the ugly stepsister of the glamorous feature picture, the truth is that non-fiction has played an important part in the development of film, being just about as old as the art itself. The term itself was coined some 90 years ago by young Scottish academic John Grierson during his review of Robert Flahertys 1926 ethnographic piece Moana, a film funded by Paramount Pictures that aimed to document the traditional lives of the Polynesians. Pioneer Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov developed the genre further with his experimental work in the late 20s and beyond, though the documentary would be taken in a different direction entirely during the 1930s and 40s, used as a war-time tool rather than a means of education or entertainment. It wasn't until the 1960s that a new generation of young filmmakers in the US and Europe took steps to redefine the nature of the documentary. Cinéma Vérité (or Direct Cinema, as the US variation became known as) strived to bring the audience closer to the subject, doing away with voice-over narration and keeping directorial intervention to a minimum in favour of filming real people in unrehearsed situations. This cinematic movement, along with the increasing availability of affordable home camera equipment in the decades that followed meant that anyone with an idea and enough cash could make a film, and nowadays all you need to become a documentary-maker is a smartphone. As people continue to discover the power that non-fiction film has to entertain and enlighten, the more people are inspired to get out there and create it, and the amount of documentaries that have managed a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes is as much a testament to those dedicated filmmakers as it is a recognition of the genre as a major presence in film. Here are twelve mind blowing documentaries with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes...
