This article examines how science studies in general and actor-network theory
(ANT) in particular can inform scholarship on documentary. More specifically, we
argue that both ANT scholars and documentary scholars are faced with the question
of how a particular set of interactions are transformed into representations of reality
that can travel into other contexts with their truth value intact. The ANT perspective
views putative truth as circulating through a series of networks shaped through
specific interactions, and identifies the interlinking of the networks as crucial to the
preservation of truth value across them. Furthermore, the ANT perspective provides
tools for understanding how representations are transformed into facts through the
labour of specific networks. We thus refuse sharp distinctions between documentary
production, distribution and reception, and instead see all aspects as central to how
documentaries themselves function as actants and representations.