There is a DVD available titled “Ryan” that contains two documentaries about a famous Canadian animator, Ryan Larkin. The secondary documentary is about the making of the first. The first is not, in my opinion, a documentary but exploitation at worst and animated ethnography at best.
A young animator got some money to make a new type of documentary where he interviews some subjects and then blends the audio and video with computer generated animation. Essentially, the video is replaced with computer generated animation to create a new fictional work that includes the audio with some heavily distorted video of the subjects. In this case the subject is a famous animator who has some serious problems. The documentary heavily focuses on the documentary-makers ideas about the subject. This animated documentary was offensive to me but it was really interesting to see the contrast between this experimental documentary and the real documentary included on the DVD.
The “real” documentary is about the making of the animated documentary. The film maker uses conventional documentary mechanisms and does an effective job. The flaws of the animated documentary and its maker are revealed through candid scenes and interviews and the presentation seems balanced and non-judgemental.
This is really worth seeing. I love documentary, and seeing these two pieces together back to back was impressive. Ryan is from the National Film Board of Canada and I believe I rented it from Blockbuster.