The Poetics and Politics of Nonfiction: Documentary Film
Charles Wolfe

The document is a basis, and the document transfigured is the ultimate
work of art in the cinema.
Harry Alan Potamkin, "Movie: New York Notes," Close-Up 7, no. 4
(October 1930), p. 250

In today's troubled times, the documentary film has come into its own; it
meets an urgent need for a medium of mass education and finds a highly
receptive audience eager for the information, instruction, or propaganda
it presents. Time, spirit and technique are well matched: the
documentary film is on the march.

Lewis Jacobs, "Documentary Film Advances," Direction 3, no. 2
(February 1940), p. 14

In the ten years between the above remarks, the term documentary for the first time gained wide currency among filmmakers, critics, and cultural commentators in America as films on diverse topics, produced under various...