Catfish
Catfish is a 2010 American documentary involving a young man being filmed by his brother and friend as he builds a romantic relationship with a young woman on the social networking website Facebook. For the documentary, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost film Nev, Ariel's brother, as he begins a long-distance relationship with Megan Pierce, the older sister of 8 year old art prodigy Abby Pierce whom Nev befriended on Facebook, conducted over the Internet and phone calls and the film develops from there.
The film is shot entirely by handheld cameras, by Ariel and Henry. We know this because at various points in the film we see the cameras and also whenever the holder of the camera is moving we get the shaky camera movements. Also the filmmakers use a camera that is hidden away at one point in the film so that their subject does not know they are filming them.
The film follows many of the codes and conventions of documentary films. for example the film features interviews, most of which are pre-planned interviews with only one or two coming as vox-pops. There is no voice-over, which is odd, however, in place of the voiceover is captions which give any extra detail with is necessary. Also, there is some music featured in the film at various points.
In an interview Ariel Schulman stated that some viewers believe Catfish to be a fake documentary, or a hoax. Among those on that list are fellow documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock and comedian and actor Zach Galifianakis. The film also has critics opinion split with many questionning why the young filmmakers would choose to document the relationship that Nev is involved in so early on. However, well-known critic Roger Ebert referred to the questions as a "severe cross-examination" and also stated that "everyone in the film is exactly as the film portrays them to be."
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