The documentary today is flourishing like flowers in the spring. The commercial success of mainstream documentaries along with the usual low cost of documentary production make production companies willing to invest in such a rentable market. On the other hand, thanks to the recent development of the Digital Video technique, filmmaking is now as common as cooking. Everyone considers himself a documentary filmmaker. For some reason we tend to think that capturing reality is enough to make a documentary. For example, the Internet Movie Data Base has placed Paris Hilton's sex-tape into the Documentary genre!

Is it going crazy? Is the documentary threatened by its own success? Or, are these consequences the normal ones for any "hot" business?

With a budget of $8 million, Academy Award winner March of the Penguins made $106 million in total gains worldwide. That is what attracts producers; you don't have to pay any fees to a couple of penguins. But the penguins only take second place after Fahrenheit 9/11 in the all time box office success of a documentary. Michael Moore won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 2004 and made $220 million out of a $6 million budget film. No actor fees either, Bush is not an actor and Moore was the co-star. It doesn't take very long for a production company to think: "Why are we wasting all our cash on actors, make-up, screen write, studios, etc. while Morgan Spurlock video tapes himself eating fast food for 300k and makes $11,5 million off of his crappy footage?"

They are not the only ones to think that, actually a lot of sharks from everywhere now want to make it in documentary filmmaking. Why Wal-Mart works and why that makes some people crazy is a documentary created by brothers Ron and Robert Galloway. Their comments: “documentary filmmaking is the best ****ing business in the entire world.”

Last week I watched a BBC documentary on contemporary British rock icon Pete Doherty called Who the f*** is Pete Doherty. Doherty is an enormous star in the UK, therefore, they had to make a documentary, that's all! The documentary form is now enough to make things look real, the film on Doherty was full of opinions and judgments but it looked like the truth, only because it is not fiction.

One of the gravest dangers linked to the growing success of documentaries is that which may lead to badly reported and propagandist documentaries on screen. Like Socialist Realism, it only abuses and lies to the public.

Hopefully, exploiting feelings has not yet overcome the need for thorough investigations and well-crafted art. While it might be true that anyone can make a documentary, but not anyyone can make a good one. Not everyone films like Albert Maysles. Not everyone find stories like Hubert Saupert did with Darwin's Nightmare.

Like Tocqueville said, with the flourishing of Democracy comes the increase of artistic productions. If we feel that the quality is declining, it is because there are a lot more bad productions. However, there are still a lot of good ones so let's focus on those.