Documentary Film: Zapruder and Interpretation

Above you will find a copy of the film Abraham Zapruder took of the assassination of JFK.

This can be used as a case study of the limits and possibilities of documentary film. Many people are convinced that somehow the "Truth" of the Kennedy assassination are somewhere in this footage.

What does this film show us? We could state this in detail: "First, we see a street lined on both sides with people (a single line on both sides of the street); a motor cycle carrying a police officer drives down the side of the street... a man is shot." My play-by-play is pretty elementary, but I hope it serves to show how much of the meaning of what happened is dependent on the context an interpretation. These images alone explain neither what happened, nor the meaning of the event. For that we would need to understand something of political reality, the motives and identities of any assassin(s), what the perspective was from the other side of the street, etc. Documentary film makers can begin to connect those dots into a coherent story, but their story is never complete.