The character of the documentary film as a genre of the cinema is very equivocal. Its cause comes from a character of cinema itself : insuffiency of the differentiation of its genres, and also from the obscurity of the principle of its genre-classification. Then, I want to clarify the characteristic of the documentary film, according to Aristotle's principle of the genre-classification : the character of (1) means of representation (2) object of representation and (3) mode of representation. And I think that the documentary film, reduced logically to its pure form, can not be regarded as a genre of the art of film.
